“The eurozone faces an imminent, acute funding problem. Member states need to repay over $1,100bn of debt in 2012, the bulk of it due in the first six months. On top of that, European banks, heavily dependent on state largesse, have around $665 billion of debt coming due by June next year.” DT today.
And Matt says:
“Does Father Xmas visit countries in the Eurozone that are naughty?”
And all the Europrats have talked about is budgets and fines for malefactors! Good luck if you think the UK should be in there too. In my book it’s better to disembark before the ship sinks – probably next summer.
Boadicea's Chariot 
As late as that?
I couldn’t agree more!
Well, we’ve had the lifeboat drill…
We should all hail or dear and cherishes leaders, the Eternal President, Sarkozy Jong-il and the mother of liberation, Madame Maokel, we would be held under the bondage of prosperity and democracy. We should all hail their eternal glories! The Eternal President is a master of grace, charm, diplomacy, fidelity, and athletics. It is now often known that he can play basketball better than Shaqulle O’Neil. He was also able to tear down the Berlin Wall by himself, acting so quickly that no camera could catch him.
The mother of our liberation, Madame Maokel, is a person of infinite economic competence and sympathy.
She knows that Franco-German dominance is the singly most important thing for the future of our dear, liberated continent. We should all collect scrap metal in order to build a 50-yard-tall monument to them.
Yes, I did start out my day reading about North Korea.
Excellent cartoon, Janus. I predict that things are going to be coming to a head pretty quickly as well.
I just wish it wouldn’t drag on so: I have had enough! I want to know what happens next, even though I probably won’t actually enjoy it! I’m sure it will all end in tears, but I would rather know the worst, and then we can move on from this nonsense.
I’m with you, Araminta. The incompetents of the eurozone have been “kicking the can along the road” for so long now it’s getting tedious. And all they have agreed is to do it better next time! They seem incapable of grasping what it is that is threatening the single currency. Dumm geboren und haben nichts dazu gelernt! (Apologies to christopher for “dissing” his “dear leader”.)
Araminta: it’s often been described as a choice between a rapid, painful death and then rebirth or a long, drawn-out tortuous death, a death of a thousand cuts in which no part of society, no part of the economy isn’t injured in some way. Those of us who had the fortune of coming from, or having embraced, Anglo-Saxon cultures and world-views have a hard time understanding what’s going on in the continent.
When something is broken we recognise it and usually try to do something about it. When we know something is helpless, we give up on it. That is why we may never have had to high glories of the French Ancien Regime or Spanish Golden age, but we’ve done reasonably well for ourselves over the centuries and can reasonably expect to continue to do well as we once again set our priorities straight. On the continent they would rather go down in flames than just let go.
Sheona: none taken. After all, I’m the one who coined the term “the Hag of Mecklenburg”.
I’m just really, really happy that I don’t live there any more.
Boa, that’s when the debts come up for renewal – i.e., when the Euro-countries, the ECB and the local banks will all be looking for new loans – which the world seems unlikely to provide at any price the Eurozone can afford.
François Hollande, the Socialists’ candidate in France’s presidential election in April, has pointed out that whatever Sarkozy thinks he did last week, he certainly did nothing to solve the current crisis in the eurozone. But then none of them did.