Today’s story ( http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/14/us-eu-spain-deficit-idUSTRE81D0LG20120214 ) about Spain’s attempts to falsify their defect figures to influence the outcome of regional elections, nicely demonstrate my earlier assertion that we should be very careful believing the statistics and promises thrown at us. What will the figures for France look like after Sarko has been voted out? Again, giving it pretty colours and fancy graphics is not going to make this crisis any better or the €U more believable...

@James So apparently you need to be a “total expert” to fuck-up everything, as our great European leaders have so nicely demonstrated? Or are you clamming the €U is doing a good job at solving this crisis and making Europe a better place to live in? Maybe the Goldman Sachs boys can come and show us the way again? Sorry for speaking out and saying I am totally fed-up with this €U-dictatorship. As citizen and slave to the system I should shut-up and contribute my part to the greater glory of the bright future of this fantastic Empire of ours. Face it, as long as the €U has a total lack of support among its people it will never get anywhere. Maybe you should start facing reality instead of believing in fairy tales and being arrogant.

Brilliant..its so nice to see that everyone is a total expert whilst still managing to offer a completely un-bias and fair summary of the situation facing the 'EU'. However i face the question, that i pose to myself, which is, so why are most of you hiding behind some pathetic existence of a life spouting nonsense instead of actually doing anything about anything. Writing comments, and beleive me i see the contradiction /hypocricy of me making this post, is not the way to go forward but instead you should perhaps put your money where your mouth is become an MEP or something...just a thought although i'm sure thinking isn't really your strong point so you will probably ignore my advice..Lets hope life is good to you all

@_that will not the case by making inventors

Ireland's problems began with brian lennihan, a terminally ill man, blanket garantee's banks that they knew were corrupt, why was this man allowed to continue in his role as minister? why has no one been asking this questiion.why has CAB not arrested anyone and taken everything they own, after all they are criminals, they broke the law.

Hello, the problem is global ...is the global debt crisis Something serious should have taken place, so that the US owes 14.5 trillion dollars... Here I quote an article from Greece about the greatest private fraud of human history. feel free to check out and review the full article written by PANAGIOTIS TRAIANOU "Who are the great fraudsters who are becoming the murderers of the human kind?" http://eamb-ydrohoos.blogspot.com/2012/01/global-debt-crisis.html

as I travelled many times to USA i think there are much bigger problems than in europe,,,every european country has a better system than USA,,,for examples jobless people, no medical treatment , no other facilities ,, perhaps in USA they have facilities from welfare but not for all people earn that, but in europe everyone has better facilities and the system treat everyone the same right ,,,,I think every economy failed when the war started,,, all the currency changed, sometimes we all forgot that,. Hopelly rather in united states or european country i believe they recover , not fast but slowly.

If the US had allowed all the different member states to have their own currency capitalism would never have developed to the extent it did. This is what the Civil War was fought over - establishing the dollar as a single unit of currency. slavery was a side issue in that slaves were used by the Confederate States as a unit of currency. There were always more slave owners in the North than the South. The US has always been a federal republic with central fiscal and taxation policies. The EU reforms may be too late - but why the shock horror over the proposals?

You can't have a financial union without a social and political union. That's lesson no. 1. Lesson no. 2: Financial transaction tax. Great approach - but 0.01%? Come on! It shouldn't be implemented in the first place to create funds for future crises, but to PREVENT crises by making day trading less attractive and more sustainable trading more attractive. That will not be the case by making investors pay 1/1000 of the transaction value. 2-3%, that's what they should talk about.

I think that EU will have a lot of problems with the financial cryses ; bigger then USA cuse it have one national bank , one Dolar, one economy ;; but in the europe union is diferent ..SOLUTION- 1°let¨s see where is the cryses ,;, and that country will fall down a lot of ,;; 2°helping toghether with ,BORROW money for the cryses country ;; from EU. or 3°crediting from MMF and world wide bank ;: