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[size=150:1io4w701]Bulgaria has decided to 'indefinitely' delay talks to join the euro

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Where does this leave the Leva being pegged against the Euro I wonder
Please read the bit about "
Things are so bad even Bulgaria won't join"

From Day One of the start of the Euro currency I believed it would be Germany that would come off worse in the end. The country has no known poverty for decades and would not be able to deal with it. On the other hand countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy have. They are the countries that can get only on very little and now have the opportunity of reaping a fortune when they get back to their old currencies They have all the things that make people want to visit them. . Germany on the other hand makes all the things that people want BUT the South Koreans are making them cheaper.

Lets face it this is monopoly money and its a game just as the board is.

The euro is dead in the water. It was doomed to fail at some time. One currency for such a diverse basket of economies and cultures........no way. It survived all the time the World economy kept growing. But that only hid the growing insolvency in the experiment. It will take 5-10 years but out of it will come a return to "
old"
currencies in some countries and probably a new euro invoving the northern EU countries including the UK.

The problem has been staring the various leaders of the EU in the face for many years now. The spendthrift way that most countries have behaved has been building up the very thing they are facing, with their finances empty, with huge deficits and with an ongoing input and output negative balance. Everybody buys so much stuff from the Far East that it is very difficult to redress the trading balance, which makes it almost impossible to reach a position of financial stability. The poor Greeks seem to have it worst, where it appears that they will actually become really poor, suffering from hunger etc. Merkel still has her head in the sand and thinks that imposing her will on these countries will achieve something and keep her dreams of a United States of Europe alive. She and those like her are deluded and we should not be dragged into their delusions, sinking ever more money into a bottomless pit.

The worth of the Euro was always over inflated and lets be honest any country can make there curriencies seem worth more than it is.After all this country has been doing it for centuries.The trick is we always had money in the bank,unlike the eurozone who only had it on paper.Has for Barroso I don,t remember anybody voting for him or any of the E.U. commission for that matter. The euro has damaged the lives of countless people. The only ones immune from the suffering caused by this mis-begotten and catastrophic project are the politicians and bureaucrats of Brussels. Their gravy-train of huge salaries and expenses keeps on rolling regardless, while they continue to spout self-deluding platitudes. These are the people who devised a clumsy, unworkable, ill-conceived and poorly monitored monetary system and then foisted it upon Europe. Yet they remain unscathed and unpunished.

:Good post:Bigsavak. Can you imagine setting up the Euro without any back-up plan should things go wrong? This is the big problem if Greece defaults and has to come out of the Euro. The Greeks have voted in the pro-europe candidate so people think Greece and the Euro will be saved. The bureaucrats will continue to delay until such an exit plan is in place because no ordinary person can see a resolution to Greece staying in the Euro and if Greece goes back to the drachma the domino take effect. Its all a complete mess which, it seems, China is taking advantage of. What next when the Far East becomes more involved never mind the problems regarding the oil from the Middle East. Where does it all end? Meanwhile ordinary folks keep on budgetting and going to work if they are lucky and the wagon trundles on.

The Economist Asks
Will the euro survive 2012 intact?

MOST people are assuming that, in the end, European leaders will do whatever it takes to save the single currency. That is because the consequences of the euro’s destruction are so catastrophic that no sensible policymaker could stand by and let it happen. But so far, they do not seem prepared to pay the price. Will the euro survive 2012 intact?
Total votes: 88676
66% voted for Yes and 34% voted for No

Well the European leaders might well do anything to keep the Euro intact but who has to pay the price? The ordinary people of course and there will be protests and anarchy in response to austerity measures that will have to be in place. What a mess.

[size=150:2wp69ar9]Is Bulgaria so bad after all
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A very truthful and worrying report. Thankfully I never had a mortgage on my Spanish property and managed to sell after 2 years and bought in Bulgaria. I lost money but recouped Spanish tax because of this. I feel for the many Brits suffering now through no fault of their own. Who could have foreseen this dreadful recession largely the fault of indescriminate lending and investing by banks everywhere? The ordinary man in the street is the one suffering. Even in Bulgaria where I believe its probably the safest place to be, sterling income has lost 30% spending power due to poor exchange rates. This means that people renting an apartment will get less bookings because of the euro exchange and the more expensive and less frequent flights and permanent residents will have tighter budgets. At the moment there seems no way out in spite of the endless meetings by the eurocrats.

oldun wrote:

Well the European leaders might well do anything to keep the Euro intact but who has to pay the price? The ordinary people of course and there will be protests and anarchy in response to austerity measures that will have to be in place. What a mess.

How right you are oldun who in fact pays the price of this financial devastation. Well, the working man in the street of course, the person struggling to bring up their families. The well off in the UK and other European countries especially Greece continue to pay very little tax or no tax at all. The UK system of tax haven loopholes needs looking at desperately, but this will never happen regardless of what political party is in charge, they don't won't to hurt themselves or their friends do they? The gap between the well off and the worse off is widening in very country you care to mention. You mention protests and anarchy oldun and maybe one day it will happen in the UK, in France however, they have protests all the time and the government there appear to take notice of what their citizens think. No wonder France was the most popular country for people to live in a survey carried out by a national UK newspaper and where did the UK come in this survey - well, 25th of course!! No surprises there I guess.

The Germans and the French will not be happy until the UK is in the same state as Greece is now. When is our government going to wake up to that fact. Germany wants to control Europe and the French are greedy and only want to look after themselves, neither care about the other EU countries. If the tax on financial transactions goes ahead who are the ones who will lose out, Britian again. The only reason the EU does not want us to leave is the thought of losing all the money we give them. The time has come for the uk to leave the EU and spend the BORROWED MONEY that goes to the EU on trying to rebuild Britian. People are starving in the uk!! Cameron, open your eyes. Greece is finished as part of the eu and the politicians should just get on with it. The longer this drags on the more misery it brings. The markets won't stabilise until Greece has gone and the eu is broken up. The long delay is that politicians never admit they got it wrong. Their reputation is more important to them than the people of this country. If any of this government (and labour as they are good at criticising but they did nothing when in power) had any brains, or listened to the public they would have known this would happen four years ago. We should never have joined in the first place and we need to get out NOW!

Carmen wrote:

The Germans and the French will not be happy until the UK is in the same state as Greece is now. When is our government going to wake up to that fact. Germany wants to control Europe and the French are greedy and only want to look after themselves, neither care about the other EU countries. If the tax on financial transactions goes ahead who are the ones who will lose out, Britian again. The only reason the EU does not want us to leave is the thought of losing all the money we give them. The time has come for the uk to leave the EU and spend the BORROWED MONEY that goes to the EU on trying to rebuild Britian. People are starving in the uk!! Cameron, open your eyes. Greece is finished as part of the eu and the politicians should just get on with it. The longer this drags on the more misery it brings. The markets won't stabilise until Greece has gone and the eu is broken up. The long delay is that politicians never admit they got it wrong. Their reputation is more important to them than the people of this country. If any of this government (and labour as they are good at criticising but they did nothing when in power) had any brains, or listened to the public they would have known this would happen four years ago. We should never have joined in the first place and we need to get out NOW!

:Good post:By golly Carmen, that is a strong and forceful posting, full of home truth's and facts. I like it, but you haven't mentioned Spain, are they not on the verge of bankruptcy and where does their future lie in all this EU mess

:Good post:Carmen - I think many ordinary people knew this ages ago hence the vote on this forum. Politicians will not lose face and there is no exit strategy. However, as I have said elsewhere, maybe the quote 'always do what people don't expect' should come into play and just get out of the euro sooner rather than later. Yes, there will be chaos but isn't there now? No other solution has been found in spite of all the G20s and summit meetings.

The following is what Tony Blair said on the BBC's Andrew Marr show this morning

Tony Blair: UK may face 'interesting choice' over euroComments (155) Tony Blair: "
If Europe moves forward again then Britain's going to have some very interesting choices"

Continue reading the main story
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Timeline to EU referendum debate

Tony Blair has said the UK will face an "
interesting choice"
over whether to join the euro if the currency's current crisis is resolved.

The former prime minister told the BBC he believed the UK should still be keeping open the option of joining it.

He said that looking at the "
broad sweep of history"
in the long term "
the European integration project"
was going to go ahead, "
like it or not"
.

The UK, as a "
small island nation"
, had to be part of it to have influence.

Mr Blair said that the only thing that would save the single currency now was to have a "
grand plan"
where Germany was ready to commit its economy fully - "
treating the debts of one as the debts of all"
.

This would be difficult for Germany, he said, and would have to be in return for other countries having "
precise, deliverable"
programmes of change and reform that could restore European competitiveness.

As well as economic changes, political change was also inevitable with Europe needing reform of labour markets, pensions, welfare, public services the role of the state, he said.

He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show that his former chancellor Gordon Brown had "
always been right"
on the economic case against the UK joining the euro when Labour was in power.

'Arab revolution'

But Mr Blair said he had always believed that it was important to be supportive of the project politically so the UK could join when the conditions were right "
and I still think that's the case"
.

Asked if that meant he still thought the UK should join the euro one day he said: "
Look, if they sort it all out and Europe moves forward again then Britain's going to have a very interesting choice in the future."


Mr Blair, who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007, told the same programme that he was still interested in public service and would have been happy to have remained as prime minister, or to have got the job of European president.

On the recent controversy of tax avoidance schemes, Mr Blair said he thought the mood had changed, saying that in tough times people wanted to know everyone was paying their fair share.

Mr Blair, who said he had made 86 trips to the Middle East since leaving office, said he believed that the Arab Spring was actually an "
Arab revolution"
and "
would sweep across the whole region and beyond"
.

He said the bad news was that in the short term there would be pain for people in the Middle East as they attempted to develop democracy after the overthrow of dictators, but in the long term it would be good news because it showed people wanted freedom.

The former PM also said there was nothing new in the suggestion, in Sunday's Independent, that he had stopped the attorney general telling the cabinet the full detail of the legal concerns ahead of the Iraq war in 2003.

"
No, it's absolutely not true... the notion that Cabinet never discussed this issue is absurd... there is no great hidden conspiracy about this, it was a decision (to go to war). Now some people agree with it, some people disagree with it,"
he said