Eurozone Crisis Over? Not by a Long, Long Way!

• Eurozone crisis over? Not by a long, long way! 
  by Liam Halligan, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ 
  ‘The euro is no longer under existential threat,” Herman Van Rompuy said three weeks ago. “Financial stability has been restored.”
  –
  Van Rompuy, if you can’t place the name, is president of the European Union. That makes him the most senior policymaker in Brussels, wielding considerable power over the governments of 28 countries with a combined population exceeding 500m people.
  –
  Despite this reality, Van Rompuy has a near-zero public profile. He’s probably best known, not only in the UK but across much of western Europe, for being the man who UKIP leader Nigel Farage once described as having “the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk”.
  –
  Earlier this summer, Van Rompuy and his fellow eurocrats were purring contentedly. The market turmoil seemed over and sovereign bond yields had eased.
  –
  Those of us still raising concerns about the structural incoherence of imposing monetary union on a group of diverse democracies were, once again, waved away.
  –
  Warnings of a return to the spiking bond markets, and European “crisis diplomacy” of last August and September, were dismissed. “There is no comparison between the situation today and the situation nine months ago, when the euro’s existence was threatened,” declared Van Rompuy in mid-June. “That is no longer the case.”
  –
  Unfortunately, though, it is. Amid events in Cairo, Wimbledon and the recent adventures of someone called Edward Snowden, you may not have noticed, but the eurozone crisis is back. Last week, the resignation of two key ministers in Portugal caused the country’s 10-year government bond yield to spike 150 basis points in just two days, approaching an unsustainable 8pc.
  –
  read more!

end