Here is a succinct summation of the current state of Euro-Zone affairs.
1. Greece will default, but at this point it is irrelevant.
2. The situation in Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy is now so dire that it is does not matter whether or not Greece defaults.
3. Expect chaos
Identify the common characteristic of these three statements:
1. The Federal Reserve will never let the stock market decline, i.e. the “Bernanke put.”
2. The Chinese government will never let property prices decline.
3. The European Central Bank will never let Greece default.The answer of course is moral hazard
Insulate participants from risk and give them unlimited leverage and “free money” to play with, and what you eventually end up with is catastrophe. There is no other possible end state.
The catastrophe is of course the end result of decades of increasing corruption at the big banks who know their governments will do little if anything to them regardless of their crimes. One look at Wall Street and the complete lack of high level criminal prosecutions is ample proof of that.
The greedhead thuggery of the banksters is coming to an end. They having been trying to force the debtor nations of Europe to pay off at full value onerous loans forced down their throats. But the banksters nasty game of extortion and threats is about over with. French banks just crumbled saying they would accept haircuts. Other banks will be doing so too. Once that happens the power of the big banks will be greatly diminished. People will see that emperor has no clothes, and that’s when the (former) emperors may well go to prison. Like an FBI agent once said about Las Vegas mobsters, they aren’t smarter than us, it’s just that they’ll do things the rest of us won’t do. They are amoral criminals and their power is now waning. They tried to bully Europe and have failed. Now is the perfect time  for all of us, left and right, to focus on and expose the top level executives at the big banks as the criminals that the vast bulk of them are.
The only way this mess will be cleaned up is when those responsible go to prison. Really folks, it’s them or us.