As August enters, the air over Europe begins to become increasingly tense.
Although the EU as a whole is a complex institution, generally speaking, everyone wants to live a good life, so they unite together in order to enjoy the benefits of economic integration.
Unfortunately, in order to take the overall situation into consideration, the EU does not only exist with a few powerful countries, but has absorbed many small and medium-sized countries. To put it bluntly, they are poor countries.
For example, Greece is a completely poor country.
Originally, in the 1980s and 1990s, Greece relied on its huge shipping fleet, together with Italy, to support the entire world's shipping transportation, and it was in the limelight at that time.
However, with the development of the aircraft industry, the continued economic downturn of various countries since the Asian crisis, and the constant competition from Asian fleets such as Japan, South Korea, China, and Hong Kong, the Greek shipping industry has declined.
For a long, long time.
As a result, Greece is now unable to develop any decent industries. The most eye-catching and most profitable industry is the tourism industry, and then there are the remittances from their overseas Chinese.
It is really a pity that a country with ancient civilization has fallen to what it is today.
But if you take a closer look at the way the Greeks live, you will know that they are simply asking for it.
First, Greeks are very lazy. They are used to working lazily for five or six hours a day, spending more time on meals and banquets than working.
You can say that five or six hours of efficient work is fine, but the problem is that these five or six hours are equally useless. At best, it can only be regarded as the labor of three hours of Chinese workers.
People live their lives not afraid of poverty, but of laziness.
If you don’t work hard yourself, how can you expect your work to get better and better?
The second point is that Greece has little interest in any innovation.
For example, heavy industry, light industry, electronics industry, network industry... They seem to be born a few steps slower, and they don't care at all about the constant changes in the world's economic and innovative forms.
The third point is that as a once developed country in the West, Greece’s social security system is very complete. This also means that many of their residents do not have to work. When they are unemployed, they receive relief funds to live. If they do not meet the conditions for relief funds,
Then go work for a few months and then come back to collect benefits.
In addition, Westerners are hypocritical and unwilling to have more children and be more responsible, so the population of Greece has not grown much for many years, resulting in a very serious aging of Greece, which has also led to an increase in the number of people receiving benefits.
Wait a minute.
As mentioned before, Greece itself is not rich. Tourism is a pillar industry and there is almost no heavy industry. How can their government have so much money to pay for various huge social security system expenses?
Is it printing more money?
of course not!
The greatest value of currency actually lies in its credibility.
The circulation of currency must be circulated internationally in order to be able to move in and out. If it is circulated domestically, it will be completely useless except for causing serious inflation.
You issue more currency to buy things outside, and everyone knows that Greece is just messing around. Where can you accept your currency and wait for the purchasing power of the currency to continue to depreciate?
Therefore, Greece took the simplest and most direct approach.
Borrow money!
They borrowed money everywhere, whether it was from the European Union Bank, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, or the Royal Bank of Scotland... Anyway, they borrowed everything they could.
As for what to do if you have no money after borrowing?
It's very simple, just cover the old debt with a new one, continue to borrow money to pay it back, and borrow money to spend it!
All right.
Money borrowed in the name of the country is the so-called national sovereign debt.
If you just borrow money for a long time without any continuous repayment plan, then the sovereign debt will be okay on weekdays and can always be slowly dragged down by fiscal taxes.
But once the economic situation suddenly becomes very bad and you cannot repay a single debt, it will directly trigger a chain reaction, and all the debts will bring down your government.
This is the origin of the first debt crisis in Greece in the previous life.
The problem is that Greece is definitely not the only country in the EU that borrows money to live.
Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland...a lot of countries live like this on weekdays.
So when their debt crises broke out one after another, the entire European Union fell into a desperate effort to rescue them.
In addition, the United Kingdom, the world's second largest troublemaker, fanned the flames across the English Channel and dragged down the entire EU's bailout plan. Therefore, before Xiao Qi's reincarnation, only Ireland had nominally withdrawn from the bailout mechanism.
, the rest of the countries are still early!
Originally, Europe wanted to take advantage of the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States to develop well and try to catch up with the United States.
But if there is such a commotion, let alone three to five years, even ten or eight years, it will not be able to recover. How can it compete with the United States?
The United States is doing better. It has slowly recovered in a few years. It has also passed on its losses to Europe and Asia. It has also continued to incite internal conflicts in the European Union and various countries, earning the title of the world's biggest troublemaker.
, it really has to be them.
Therefore, Xiao Qi firmly suggested that Europe must know in advance the intentions of the United States and the huge crisis it is facing.
Only if they are prepared will they not be busy fighting fires everywhere and ignore the disasters the United States has brought to them, as well as the losses and debts caused to them by investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley.
Making waves in a crisis.
After a meeting of more than 30 giants from China, a decision was quickly made.
An overly weakened Europe is not in China's interests.
But an unweakened Europe is even less in line with China’s interests.
If the notification time is late, they will suffer heavy losses and it will be difficult for them to get up; if the notification time is early, their losses will be reduced a lot, which is also detrimental to China.
Therefore, it was at the end of July that China's foreign affairs department warned the EU through various channels, pointing out the major national debt crisis that Greece and other five countries would face.
The EU is a loose organization. After hearing China's warning, they did not respond, but they need to hold a meeting to discuss, then go to Greece, Italy and other countries to investigate, and have these countries come to talk... and so on.
It's fixed. The investigation procedures were decided in August.
After receiving the news, Greece strongly protested against the EU's interference in their finances and adopted a resolutely non-cooperative attitude, claiming that its financial situation was good and there were no problems!
Xiao Qi smiled bitterly after hearing the news from Niu Ruzheng.
There is nothing wrong in itself that the EU wants to investigate countries such as Greece and require them to confess themselves and discuss how to solve the problem.
But the problem is that countries like Greece will not give up until the Yellow River, and until the national debt crisis breaks out, they will not pay attention to the people in the EU at all, and they will think that they are too much to dictate. As for their own accounts, they will not care about it at all.
It is impossible to be honest with the EU.
This is what they did in previous lives.
Then when the debt crisis broke out, they cried and begged the EU to save them and give them money to tide over the crisis.
As a result, when the EU gave them money and put forward conditions for rectification, Greece resolutely refused, claiming that the EU was taking advantage of the situation and that they only wanted money and no conditions.
All right.
If you look at what Greece is doing, you will see that it is a complete idiot who only takes but does not pay.
Therefore, when the powerful countries of the European Union met later, the United Kingdom ridiculed France and Germany, saying, "Why did you bring this thing in? Didn't you hire a father to raise it?"
Now seeing Greece doing the same thing, Xiao Qi knew that Greece couldn't escape this time.
But fortunately, the UK, France and Germany all attach great importance to China's opinions. While they are actively checking the financial status of EU countries, they are also sorting out their own financial problems.
Especially the "credit default swap insurance" business that Xiao Qi highlighted, many banks from the three countries of Britain, France and Germany are involved in it.
Once the debt crisis breaks out in countries such as Greece, these banks will be the first to bear the brunt, and the losses they will suffer will definitely be much greater than the subprime mortgage crisis.
If there is no adequate preparation, there will be more than a few banks that close down!
Regarding this point, Britain, France and Germany were initially inspecting it, but banks in other countries were also inspected soon after. After all, the banking industry is the foundation of finance. If all banks close down, the impact on a country will be too great.
, it is not impossible for the government to be dismissed immediately.
Xiao Qi couldn't help but breathed a sigh of relief when he heard that EU countries had done this.
In previous generations, EU countries suffered the most from the banking industry, which then dragged down various industries.
If they can reduce the losses in the banking sector, then even if many countries encounter debt crises, the EU will have to spend much less effort to help them.
You know, take Germany, the most powerful country in Europe, for example. While they are helping countries such as Greece, they are still dealing with the major debt losses of several of their own major banks. It is really not easy.
If preparations are made in advance to reduce losses, Germany will increase its efforts to rescue other countries, thereby making great contributions to ending the European debt crisis as soon as possible and restoring the vitality of the European Union.
This is exactly in line with China's interests.
The EU has suffered heavy losses, but it has not been damaged. It can recover in three to five years. It can not only continue to compete with the United States after recovery, but also give China a few years of development and transformation time.
From this, China will become the big winner of this global financial crisis! (To be continued.)