Barossa come to Cameron's aid?

[aeolium]

Yes, but the whole point here is that it was US money which allowed post-war Europe to recover and similar extraordinary aid is no longer available. The US has her own severe budget problems. We have to borrow at the rates decided upon by the international creditors and they dictate the terms and significant national budget cuts are the main part of these terms. Even within the EU Germany will not doll out money to countries like Greece without a reasonable expectation of getting that money back with interest!

Yes, there are problems with the unregulated nature of international finance, but even creditors would prefer somewhere safe and stable to put their money than somewhere where due to severe instability they may not get it back. Surely even they would rather see a return to a more economically and politically stable Europe than what we have now.

There are other solutions being attempted to get round the logjam. Both America and Japan (and to some extent Britain) have been printing money in an attempt to stimulate consumption and at the same time reduce effective indebtedness - the value of the indebtedness shrinking with the depreciation of the currency. The reasons why this has not been significantly attempted in Europe are mainly political not economic: the German historical fear of inflation and political opposition to bailing out debtor nations without imposing harsh conditions (even though it is in Germany's interest to have those nations bailed out).

Here is a proposal for tackling the European Catch-22 situation involving eurobonds, from the Greek economist I linked to earlier.