test yourself and become free. see what nature can give you. seven thirty pm on friday here in the russian capital and you will see a summary of the headlines now syrian activists claim security forces opened fire on and see regime protesters killing seventy people and while the death toll in the conflict reaches just more than three thousand the opposition says it's been joined by only defectors dismissed by the government as armed bandits. occupy wall street protesters win their first battle after new york city council's amounts to cleanup operation in the park where they've been camping corporate demonstrators say they won't give up as the occupy movement looks set to go global. and the european

central bank says it's now done enough and it's time for governments to take the lead in saving the region's economies i thought so spain becomes the latest russian to take a hit from breaking stride a standard and. daughters here in half an hour's time but for now up to. discuss the predicted death of a eurozone debate is coming your way in just a few moments. wealthy british scientists like. dr. margetts weiner scandal. find out what's really happening to the global economy because a report on r.g.p. . can.

well come across talk computor all about the euro crisis it is a high noon moment for a eurozone looking to stave off another recession while juggling indebted sovereigns flimsy banks and the specter of economic crisis in the mediterranean this has many seeing the worst this is currency can have a future. it can. start. to cross-talk year old jitters i'm joined by john gaunt in london he is chief executive of vote u.k. out of e.u. also in london we have andrew louis koch he is director and principal of europe economics and in dublin we go to jeff madrick he is senior fellow at the roosevelt institute and author of age of greed the triumph of finance and the decline of america in one nine hundred seventy s. to the present all right gentlemen this is cross i mean you can jump in anytime you

want and i very much encourage it but first tell us about this ongoing almost endless crisis there have been quite a few meetings but not much progress the global economy is emerging from one of the roughest squares yet with intense market volatility fueled by the fear that policymakers cannot contain the spreading crisis. means mired in its own debt due to the absence of political will power to avert disintegration this is the most serious financial crisis we've seen at least since the one nine hundred thirty. if not ever now we're having to deal with very unusual circumstances devising a rescue plan that would pull the monetary union out of a meltdown has so far been met with gridlock and resulted in political stalemate among the governments of europe they need for unanimity has significantly slowed the process with countries at odds over the need to recapitalize the banks and the source of the funds to make it happen germany is ready to recapitalize the banks and we need unitary criteria we are under the pressure of time and we need to take

a decision quickly but so far germany and france have been unable to find common ground over how to recapitalize with a letter insisting on the use of the four hundred forty billion hero european financial stability facility and recently opposition arguably less prominent players like humans and slovakia has threatened to throw any progress made on the issue into reverse all those has time and again highlighted the key issue behind the squabbles in my personal view we need to make significant progress toward sporty thing called unity within the executive branch of parliament with u.s. leaders now saying the hero's own risk as the biggest single impediment to an economic rebound the alarm bells will ring louder until the plan is unveiled in the upcoming weeks after kicking the can down the road for nearly two years the next kick could blow up in the face of the global financial system perhaps we'll see more in the upcoming days thank you very much for that russia i forgot to andrew first in london here we had sort of causing merkel meeting not too many not too

long ago and they said they're going to come up with a solution by the end of this month here what solution can they possibly come up with after been talking about it for two years watching this. currency crisis just continue to spiral out of control. well one of the problems we have here is that almost every solution proposed over the past few months has been a variance of the same basic theme which is that somehow germany should become responsible for all of the debts of the eurozone and in particular they should become responsible for the debts of its early and portugal and greece and other countries within the euro zone now that just seems to me to be a silly idea a nonstarter i don't see any reason why the germans should feel that they should have responsibility particularly for italian debts that were accumulated from long before the euro even existed all of the schemes are opposed to parents on this theme so the idea of having a huge stability fund of two trillion euros or leveraging the existing much smaller

funds up to two trillion or maybe printing loads and loads of new money your robot or all of those four kinds of ideas are variants of the same set sharing themes so they are a nonstarter the way that you should be going here is first of all to be seeking to address some of the fundamental problems in the euro zone banking sector by imposing losses on the lenders for the banks for people who lent money to the banks particularly in spain and ireland and then dealing with the problems in portugal and italy by having a system of transfers over time an extension of an existing system called the e.u. structural funds which would allow you to send money off each year just to raise the growth rates of those countries a little bit and finally accepting that greece really doesn't have a future in the euro zone so greece needs to be out there i mean cyprus leaves you bring up a very good point here and in and if i go to john here i mean the whole world except for a few leaders in the e.u. in some greek politicians have a long ago greed they view the greece will default on its debts and we still keep

kicking the can down the road here i mean why isn't it why is it we just they just take a huge haircut and just move on ok because after two years of your genius continue down the road everyone just has to pay more and more in more go ahead. well it's like the emperor's new clothes new clothes isn't it someone's going to shout out the emperor is naked somebody is going to shout out greece is already in the folks it is absolute nonsense as you say that they continue to kick the can down the road greece is bust it's time for greece to leave the euro zone it's time for greece to be able to take back the track mile and devalue itself will obey and you know to use a cliche go on holiday there again and help them rebuild their economy but i mean as you say every man cat dog and woman knows full well that greece is already finished greece has got to go they've already been focused haven't they in effect

why are leaders because i have to just don't grow some and realize that in my case and let's just get on and move on tara jeff in london dublin you want to jump in there you know. i'm always stunned by the utter insensitivity of these kinds of comments just let them go so if we're not talking about real people as if we didn't set up a situation in which it was a very easy for greece to borrow it in which we did not set up a situation in which germany indeed benefited from that the anger on the part of your two guests that's quite is quite sharp and stunning to me and the lack of a sense of obligation to greece which indeed i was absolutely made in these me here are saying obviously and also the author yourself and i would kill myself to hold on a second he wasn't agreed to the british people who went into this he was certain guilty man who took us into this folly we stand outside the euro zone anyway because we're not got the euro but let's less understand this this pain here in the u.k.

as well we're not responsible for creation problems and mature yeah well i know so i'm not sure if i'm nearly every time you seriously want to handle how it's whether we wanted to hear i you know you'll have your very elliot city so i need to try greece's economy to the economy of germany there. the guilty men know all the old nervous systems of all great country all right jeff you want to reply no they just the fact is sir yeah and i'm i'm not going to use that kind of the kind of language this man uses i mean he's entitled to say whatever he likes on whatever channel they live side like to have a somewhat more civilized discussion out of it countries as civilized i assume as britain i'm not a big fan of britain's current was terribly economic side there but the idea that you can talk with such. such insensitivity about a nation and its people just stuns me the idea that your if you were would you do that poll a little more money. and i just thought i'd share least an issue what is usually

a station is five i would like to hear my i do have your moderator i'm trying to master go ahead jeff the idea that you can talk yeah yeah i hear you the idea that you can talk in these terms and with no sense of moral obligation and with no memory no historical memory of the difficult periods especially after world war two and which you're of found itself and so little historical memory about the value of the common market and the idea of throwing nations out when trying when things get rough is it difficult to save greece yeah you bet it's difficult to save greece and maintain it in the eurozone can greece take a substantial haircut yeah i do do we need a substantial maybe even fifty percent haircut yeah can greece develop have a primary surplus next year the numbers suggest they can of course the debt load is very big and has to be cut. radically but the idea of saying that they're going to

cut their currency by fifteen percent were two thirds and somehow they'll just bounce back because you guys are going to go visit them and spend money there is just. it's as hard for nice to have them generally present. i'm going to shake your sense of shame in this kind but i kind of anger and i think that andrew on this i mean there's these there's the moral hazard issue here i mean nobody wants to see the greek people suffer i mean i think we all agree on that there but there is the moral hazard issue of you continue to throw money into greece to try to save an economy that most people leave is already bankrupt and you have the other pigs lining up and say will do the same for us i'm not trying to be insensitive fair to say you does the system work or not to work and i guess you go ahead and jump in and do this you haven't said much in the program go ahead. yes it's not it's not the germans the germans didn't force the greeks to borrow money so the greeks chose to borrow these these monies themselves and it's turned out they were unable to pay

and of course there were french and german and other banks have lent money to greece and they'd be the participants that would actually lose out when the greeks defaulted i'm not suggesting that actually decrease would particularly benefit by default and i just think it's inevitable that they will do so or they will default and they will exit from the euro at this stage i think things have gone beyond the point of helping them if the if the euro zone or thora t. says make more sensible decisions a couple of years ago i think it would have been possible to have a haircut for the greeks and then for the rest of the euro zone to have lent the money to keep them in the euro i just think that that's not really a possibility anymore and i think it's also important to understand what the difficulty is on putting up with some alternative solutions at this stage because you have to appreciate two things first is that the euro zone or thirty s. are terrified of the possibility of an unraveling of the whole euro zone project because if you go back to nine hundred ninety two and then there were you have found it was in a thing called the exchange rate mechanism a kind of fixed exchange rate regime in europe and as countries gradually started

to drop out so the italians dropped out and the british and others eventually the whole thing came to bits so that even countries like france in the end which had been thought to be absolutely core and inviolable members in the end came under pressure and they fear that your father the whole euro zone unraveled if you started to let people leave the other thing about this is that the reason why they didn't have a greek default back in two thousand and nine was because really most of the sovereign debt bailouts were just banking sector by another name and so once they start accepting that you get a default by the greeks and then you'll get a cascade of losses of various banks around europe we've already had some banks go bust earlier this week for example quite a large banking in belgium called dexia which has actually foreign currency foreign currency applications much larger even than the state of greece so. highlight your message on here we're going to a short break and after that choice we'll continue our discussion on the hero stay

with r.t. . and you can see. the future. of nature and discover its buzy. communicate with the wild. test yourself and become free. see what nature can give you are not safe. in some places but he's available in grand hotel europe grand hotel emerald marco polo club small hotel so close hotel in the big old circus hotel ski crazy

in the steepness reticent s.a.'s royal kempinski white coats when you take a look in the book of sky bargain. now so it. can see. the future you want to. welcome on your cross talk you a little to remind you we're talking about the possible death of a currency. and. again i could go back to jeff in dublin there's a lot of talk about the european financial stability facility and possibly pumping it up to two to three trillion euros now what is the logic of going into so much debt to pay off debts i mean at what point is it may come via because and also can ask the same can i can ask the same question of what austerity i mean how can i

stared bring prosperity go ahead. yeah well i agree that austerity in the in the cases of the countries for the most part with one or two exceptions who are following it is not going to bring prosperity but debt following debt is a long standing idea i mean you've got guys like padgett of the economist you've got our charles can goldberger who are probably the best history of bust you've got a you can interpret keynesian minsky this way always they say when things begin to unravel there comes a point where you have to say you have to throw debt overwhelming force to stop the bleeding now what's happened in europe and i think here to the two other gentlemen agree with us is they just drag this on and on for structural reasons for . the you structural reasons but also because they just didn't want to face the facts and also i think it was alexander who said the private lenders have to take

a hit when they've been trying to avoid that obviously in france and other places they have not gotten their private lenders to take a hit now we face this in the u.s. as you all know i'm to do bush administration with paulson and geithner and so forth and we had our tarp we had our f.b.i. saved guaranteeing all kinds of debt we had our federal reserve dramatically expanding its balance sheet now that stopped the crisis i don't think it was implemented and all that well because it did not get the banks lending again it did not change management it did not and serious conflicts of interest we have in america but there you have a pretty darn good example of some people who i don't always admire coming together and i think people forget it's so easy to forget history what a risky step they took and how many people like you just now ask how are we going to solve this problem by throwing debt after debt and in fact they did they did

solve the problem well i mean i will lot of people will say the problem is i'm solid on. it is a very courageous case actually a hot political potato and the debt ceiling john if i can go to you if i can let me finish this well no i'm sorry if i go to john in london i mean either i agree with jeff in principle i mean it's keynesian economics ok but i mean who pays for u.s. debt and it goes back to what we were saying earlier in the program i mean why should germans have to pay for the mistakes of the greeks i think that's what a lot of people are asking their heads around point how much our american friend in dublin was talking about the united states of america hand how they try to solve their country's problem now i agree they haven't really solved to have that because of their present problems that the states are suffering but that was one country we never asked to be in the united states of europe i mean here in britain or the united kingdom will still euro zone crisis got to do with this but we're still bailing out these paid countries and then when you look at germany for example why

should germany be bailing out greece you know grew in greece first joint you know did they tell the whole truth about their balance sheet for instance and i just did it either state within here and here you where you could ask that same clarity has while you're really a fan of well you know you aren't exactly right i mean course to these nations ok germans economy is benefiting a normal sleep by x. exports to these nations can i just finish this point apparently you gentlemen don't understand american history history very well we have had time and again conflicts in trying to unite this country going way back maybe the history precedes you both the fact is that there are quiet because you work you you have to talk to you know this is will he listen and there is a trust they tried to ask the story you needed and therefore your son you who union was a three hundred euros i do know measures. to stop to stop to stop the crisis at that moment that they didn't proceed as i said if you would listen to me that

they didn't proceed well enough along that they didn't adopt adequate keynesian stimulus that. as for the issue but they did succeed in staunching their crisis at that moment give them credit for that ok all right now i want to now i'm beginning to understand. your time go ahead you have the floor go ahead it's not it's not keynesian economics or the germans it's not keynesian economics for the germans to take on italian debts i think i think we need to get this discussion beyond greece because the reality is that greece is going to i mean greece has already agreed to default great greece is going to have a full set of faults within within weeks certainly by march so that's not even the issue anymore the issue that markets are interested in is how the how and whether they're going to keep italy in the euro whether they're going to keep the whole euro together and so did the greek thing needs to be off the table so the real issue here is how do you get enough growth in italy for italy itself to service its own debts or if you can't do that do you have to have the germans take on the

italian debts or have the italians default i think it's just a ridiculous idea that germany should accept trillions of years of debts that arose before the euro zone even existed and that's nothing to do with keynesian economics that's like some other country taking on some of body else entirely take on responsibility for their dads and their way of getting that growth within its early is of course partly to do with structural reforms and so on it's also though i think there have to be some transfers some monies will have to be sent from germany to the european union and the european union will then spend those monies in italy it's really fundamental situation isn't that bad it's not heavily in debt to the country in aggregate it has a bit of government debt obviously but in fact even by the middle of the twenty ten's even italian government that is projected to be lower than that in the united states so the united states situation is in many ways actually worse than that it's only because the united states not only has quite high government debt it has enormous levels of household interactiveness and the americans haven't in any way address that problem through the time it all that they did was that they were

targeted the moment of having to make a decision about these things. what you do when you when the government intervene in these ways is at best they put off the problem until later out worse they go the way of ireland and they find that the government then takes on so much that itself that the government goes broke and the reality for a number of countries within the within the european union is that they face that danger in your opinion perhaps the most egregious examples are spain ireland and the united kingdom but places like belgium aren't immune from the crisis well so we know what we need to have is a solution that deals with banking safe prices on the one side and deals with the gross growth and competitiveness italy and enjoy i think what you're getting at here we're getting at here is actually finding a solution and not something to start by just if i go to you what are some of the structural issues they need to address if they really want to fix this currency because if you don't have a fiscal side in the monetary side you know we've seen what's happened ok and enormous amount of irresponsibility going on entirely due. i don't entirely

disagree with alexander i am a little taken aback however by this idea that it's not some have it's not fair to germany to take over we're not talking about fairness and we're trying to stop a major crisis where's crime we're talking about practicality we're talking about what has to be done even at a cost but let me let me say something about the american economy because because i'm a little disturbed by this idea that somehow if you'll cut debt america has to cut its debt and therefore it will solve its problems the obama administration did expect to grow faster and debt they did not was not going to rise at this level according to their forecast they got it wrong what are they trying to do now well keep in mind we have a lot of taxing ability in america as you guys well know we're almost the lowest tax country in the world if we get the economy back on track we can begin to raise taxes and cover that in fact you may not know this but the obama plan which i don't

like because it was mostly tax saving cut government cuts not revenue increases down the road but it will get bedpan to the level around the level is stabilized at around the level of seventy to seventy five percent two thousand and thirty two thousand and twenty five that's when we have begin to have big health care problems and believe me a lot of us are talking about that so this is casting americans in the same light as these other problems is pretty whacky on the other hand i do agree with alexander's analysis of italy he is talking about a united fiscal policy in the u.a.e. e.u. which i do believe is necessary the idea of throwing greece to the dogs i five i frankly find pretty of doctors going to the right well for a major haircut one way or the other people are going to take a loss john if i go to you if we want to talk about having a greater fiscal side to the you or your or the euro well then you're going to have a lot more political control centralized with someone in brussels in frankfurt in

some place because that control spending and spending has a political price tag attached to it go ahead. well well of course but that control isn't actually going to be in brussels it's going to be frank for because it's the germans are going to be paying for it's a bit like when island will pay out normally when one goes into an election and you go into the booth it's the old story it's the economy stupid well if you're in your country and your own politicians are actually controlling your tommy what is the point in voting it actually did huge people their democratic rights and actually that's the way we're heading isn't it because the germans will dominate this because they are the ones who are going to bail it out because they're the ones who haven't had this rapid expansion and reliance on credit the rest of the euro zone nations of and that's where it comes to play and it's all right for our friend in dublin to talk about the united states but look at the level of get this let's look at the fact that they could well do for themselves or so they look like they might have been just a few weeks ago so we probably take lessons from them but they obviously think the

nightly states over. here we are not the university. who is really and we will temporarily i wanted to leave i want to return to the last word in this program go ahead ender. i think there's any there's all the distinction in the world between iranians in which either the germans accept but they have responsibility for italian threats and then the italians get to spend as they like or the tally the germans lend money to the town and then tally italians what they have to sell and so on and of those arrangements is a nonstarter the only way that this can work is if the germans send money to europe and europe then collectively on the parts of the eurozone which is going to have to be its own country will then spend money in italy and other places so it's not a matter of germany dominating anything it's a matter of a new country called europe coming into existence ok. general you know what you want to worry with that but the responsibility will be yeah i generally agree with that but lead to remember that the responsibility will be germany's as the

strongman of the morrow and we've all of the time your days you very much gentlemen a lot more years ago sherry many thanks and i guess today in london and in dublin thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember rostock rule. if. you think you can.

an. idiot. or limited. elitists.