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United Hopes of Europe

Just when the whole world was dreaming about a new superpower emerging from the newly formed European Union, the recent credit crisis in Greece has made one thing crystal clear. The hope of a ‘United States of Europe’ is still a farfetched dream. 
The relationships between these European states started from sixteen states adopting a common currency to common laws and the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. This relationship looked all but shattered when Norbert Barthle, a senior lawmaker with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats, remarked about Germany’s bailout of Greece, “We are throwing Greece a life preserver,” he said. But “they have to swim themselves.”
Germany is among the strongest states of Euro zone and is the least affected by this debt crisis.
As far as PIIGS states are concerned, willy-nilly Greece is agreeing to all demands imposed by the European countries to sustain its regular activities. What follows next is a series of strikes by their public sector union ADEDY. The government is totally hopeless and sooner or later, the feeble ADEDY will also get tired with their protests.
Portugal is having a hard time in convincing its debtors that they are not sinking along with Greece, but now, they too have entered troubled waters, as illustrated by recent remarks by Campos,  “If you look like somebody who is sick, you get sick”. With the weak economies of Italy and Ireland and their close proximity and heavy exposure to Greece, they too are fighting to save their own turf.
Spain, which gladly reduced its debt to just 70% of the GDP also got trapped in this dark shadow when investors lost confidence in Spanish government bonds and the government entered the spiral of rising interest rates, more financial troubles and further ratings degradation. This spiral is fueled by either the fear or the greed of bond investors.
The PIIGS became PIIGGS when the rating agencies placed a negative outlook on the United Kingdom (Great Britain) while downgrading the other four states.  Hence, this non-euro state also got deeply involved in the sovereign crisis.
As far as the rest of the European countries are concerned, currently their eyes are fixed on Germany and France, the two healthy bigwigs. Germany and France have their own selfish motives in helping Greece. They believe the crisis is spreading across Europe like a virus, hence they have to quarantine it to save their own homes. It’s similar to stopping the bushfire from becoming the forest fire.
Whatever might happen of this crisis, the crisis has exposed every state and as it’s seen now, they all have their own motifs, priorities and are fighting for their own lands. The very actions they are taking are creating cracks in their brotherhood; some more stress and the decade old ties will go loose.
Every state has the belief that their neighbor is their keeper.
What’s more devastating is its effect on the global markets. This event has unfolded at a time when the global economy has recently recovered from the worst slowdown of current times. The market, which has re-entered the correction period, is getting dominated by wild bears. We are living in a world where one sneeze can tumble the global markets, where hope is the only driver of market returns, which keeps wobbling by almost any sort of winds. In all markets, there are companies having profitable businesses, paying attractive dividends and possessing strong fundamentals, yet they are getting traded at throwaway prices. The market, driven by sentiments, has totally discounted any logical reasoning of stock pricing.
The onus to protect this fragile market lies with everyone. This includes all members of ADEDY, all states of Euro zone the rest of the world as well, simply because at this point, we are not ready for another crisis.

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