Mass confusion reigns in Europe’s latest attempt at a balancing act over the Greek debt crisis. On Friday Merkel backed off her insistence on Greek debt restructuring for the greater good of the euro. But still we have a grand balancing act afoot with Greek mobs on TV defying angry German voters who have to pay for the whole mess. German voters who still want to restructure the debt despite Merkel don’t like the nervous investors from all over the world who react to every small piece of bad news and refuse to shoulder their fair share of the burden. The IMF gets in there somewhere telling the Europeans to hurry up and settle the crisis so they can give Greece the money they were promised last year under the original bailout plan, which of course makes the investors react more and angers the German voters and the Greek mobs.
Somewhere in there the other pigs — Spain, Portugal, and Ireland — fit in and contribute to the daily melodrama over the Greek debt crisis wringing their hands and insisting that they will be next.
And not only is there one Greek debt crisis but two. It’s hard to remember if the talking heads are discussing the first loan from 2010 which is still being paid out or the ever increasingly large second loan of 100 billion euros which is still being negotiated. It will probably be negotiated until the sun burns out and the earth becomes an empty globe.