BA of PIIGS

Speaking of Bond Market Vigilantes, what countries, after Greece, have the biggest exposure to foreign investors? Or put another way, what governments have been the least successful in forcing their banks to aid and abet the fiscally unsustainable social model? Answer: Austria and Belgium. Everyone simply assumes Portugal, Spain and Italy are next in line to cause trouble in the Eurozone. That may well be given their deficit/GDP ratios, but this assumes that a failure to impose enough austerity will be what triggers the next phase of the crisis. What if the bond markets impose a solution and differentiate little between peripheral economies. What if investors say, "Germany, UK, US...that's all that is really low risk, the rest is all just varying degrees of garbage." What if. Then throw Belgium and Austria right into the mix too.

We are a long way from this being over.

Oh, and just to give you a sense of what a bunch nimrods these Euros are...the city of Athens has 2,000 buses for its municipal system but they have about three times as many drivers on the payroll.