[Mika]

Ahahahaha!

Sorry, I shouldn't laugh since this is a serious matter. I just couldn't help noticing this comment from Chinese officials when EU politicians started ask for possible funding in the European financial crisis. So now, the "developing nation" is actually having the upper hand of the Union that was supposed to become the leading economy of the world? And Chinese just reply they do not just give out money, without any prospect of getting something back - that would be impossible to explain to the common people there. One month ago when Finnish government asked for collateral, EU harshly criticized this "selfish" Finnish policy. The end result rates into top five screw-ups of Fiinnish history, and is due to massive incompetence of our current minister of economy (she got the minister position by promising that no money will be given without collateral and she absolutely had to keep that one), we actually had to pay in order to get the collateral - and it is now certain we never get any money back. Also, what didn't help popular anger was that we were then painted as the boogeymen. Those who loaned more they could afford for were the good guys - seriously!!! Or this at least from the perspective of the media reported here - which definitely is not objective. But now China is doing the same thing, and I'm pretty sure EU will say yes, of course, collaterals for China are good. So when China says "collateral" EU can now only ask "how much?"

Now that media has been trying to portray the deal between EU, Greece and banks as positive development - evidenced by contemporary hikes in the markets - we get to know both Italy and Spain are having huge problems, and by any common sense, there is no way EU could ever pay that debt. Although, this has been pretty much known by the common people all the time, but I was surprised when I heard the actual unemployment number from Spain: 25%. Yes sirree, quarter of the population is officially unemployed! Talk about the death of the welfare state here, most of the European nations are heavily in debt, and most likely cannot survive debts over 100 % of gross national product. The question remains, who the **** thought this would be a good idea??? These mistakes were done before I had any chance of affecting it in elections, but I'm supposed to pay for it? Simply no way, unless there is a huge standardization of taxing system throughout the EU region, meaning that the Scandinavian tax levels will be paid by everybody else - with similar devotion. The other option is a popular referendum about paying this ****, if the majority agrees that the debt shall be paid, I will accept that then. But my personal feeling is that anti-EU sentiments are running all time high, probably over 70 % of the population would say get rid of Euro and EU right now. So I suspect popular referendum will not be organized.

The interesting part here is that EU is supposed to be a beacon of democracy, and China should be the oppressing one. But even though just hear-say, I wager to say that this is a role reversal, EU bailouts are actually against popular opinion and China is actually doing something democratic. Things will get interesting as well when one starts to ponder the collateral or conditions China will place on the loans, it is likely that EU now has to shut the **** up about human rights violations - and rest assured they do. Oh how foolish we look by that, but bear with me, that's not yet all of it. The green party has actually demolished quite a bit of the competitiveness of European markets by idiotic regulations, like the CO2 tax and energy production limitations. Then they logically proceeded and killed the nuclear plants in the aftermaths. Job well done, ****ers! Let's see how many of green people we are going to see in the coming years. I just wished that the Finnish government would be smart enough to allow foreign nuclear waste to be located in Finland for storage and charge a hefty sum for that favor (the oldest crust on earth, no disasters coming) so that we could at least get some money by doing something productive, but nooooo.

In the end it turns out that the aid for developing countries is also on the list of dumb things EU has done. China got better by not actually accepting financial aid and trying to implement Western moral standards, but by developing industry base. The moral base might follow, or not. Makes one think would Africa already be much better off without any meddling from West. At least my grandfather condensed it in "we shouldn't pay a single cent for those bastards!", likely a right thing to do, but with shaky grounds. So let's see if the government actually manages to get Finns into an open rebellion here. Most of you probably know that Scandinavians are known for their cool temper. But when they lose that temper, there is nothing in the world that could stop the movement after the fact. Changing the Constitution without a public referendum (and in secret) rates pretty high in my "**** this ****" scale, I just wonder what will happen when most of the people discover this. Not withstanding is the "Whoops, we made a mistake in the bailout sum, instead of 14 billions, it's 28 billions" by our prime minister.

Note to other Scandinavian countries: stay the hell away from EU!

[Bobboau]

TL;DR
China thinks they are getting their money back from the US.

[Luis Dias]

20% + unemployment in spain is a very old story. It's been like that for decades.

About China doing something "democratic" while Europe not, well well...

[Unknown Target]

China would be wise to try to help the EU and USA; both supernational entities will most likely be needed to help China cope with the environmental and social problems that are brewing now and will start to boil later (I believe).

That being said, the EU and USA will most likely need the help of the Chinese in the future as well.

I don't understand why international relations are always so hostile. I think the Cold War "everyone is ready to pull the trigger and look how crazy they are to do it!" is really outdated, but I think maybe a few policy makers in the USA hold on to it still?

[Mika]

China would be wise to try to help the EU and USA; both supernational entities will most likely be needed to help China cope with the environmental and social problems that are brewing now and will start to boil later (I believe).

That being said, the EU and USA will most likely need the help of the Chinese in the future as well.

Rest assured China will not "help". They do trade, and what is traded on what is the question.

[Unknown Target]

Well I guess the question I would propose is; which China are you talking about? From the article I linked below, I think that many of the people in China would see the need to be more helpful; same as I see in the USA.

From a post on my blog:

Read the essay. It's...powerful. Especially for an American reading it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/why-many-in-china-sympathise-with-occupy-wall-street/247356/

A couple highlights;

"I was lucky compared to others. By throwing together all the funds we had, and by taking out student loans, I was finally able to pay my first year of tuition. Meanwhile, I watched those students who'd been accepted and the heartbreak their families experienced for being unable to send them to school. I felt a pervasive sense of wrongness. Our education industry nowadays don't only recruit the best students, they recruit the students with the richest parents."

"During a macro-economics class, a classmate attacked blue collar workers who'd been laid off, and unemployed high school dropouts: "80% of them are where they are because they don't work hard. They chose not to specialize in something when they were young, so they can't get jobs now! Those kids are perfectly capable of studying and working. I've heard that a lot of students use their holidays to make thousands to pay their tuition." You can't find a person who knows less about the struggles of rural China than this classmate of mine."

[Grizzly]

TL;DR
China thinks they are getting their money back from the US.

Our media paints the situation in the US to be worse then in the EU, yet all the policy makers seem to think otherwise (even the US ones, who are now all like 'Wait! You are ruining our economy with that debt problem of yours' -- Hypocryites...)

I wonder why that is...

[Mika]

I'm well aware of the educational differences in People's Republic of China, but that will still does not give a very assuring answer to the question of Chinese help towards Western countries. The Chinese who fought very hard for their study places are likely not giving any money for foreign interests, but help their peers and families. That is what has happened as well with Chinese academicians who were allowed abroad decades ago. Some of them are returning back, and they are trying to improve things inside China, not elsewhere. Before going to China, I had never seen business being made out of pity of the tourists, as it was in Beijing - you'll see paralyzed people (who were kidnapped and paralyzed by criminal organizations) collecting for money, but note that no Chinese will hand them any. The only place I saw them giving money for a poor grandfather was in a place where no Westerners are likely to travel. Not giving any for him was a stupidity I still regret, but how could I have known back then?

My personal feeling is that Chinese will think that the economical crisis EU and US are facing are self-made and due to their very own stupidity. I can't help but to agree with this assessment. What they will do is trade as they have done before, it is the negotiation capability of the politicians and leaders that will be tested in this game. I fear they will fare poorly, as they have not witnessed what has happened in China and are unaware of dealing with Chinese. As a prediction, one can expect the food prices to climb as more and more of the food produced in Western countries will be traded with China.

I have noticed the attempt to display the situation in EU worse than what it is in US. This actually not yet reality, if analyzed over the debt levels. US fares worse in that respect, the thing why this is more common in English media is simply the US influence there. In other languages, this is not so. Wasn't it Dick Cheney who said that the amount of debt does not matter as long as the economy itself works. Do you seriously expect US to pay its debt? I don't think so, and neither do Chinese. It's the right to own something inside US what they are looking after, companies with good records, material production, and food production. EU still has a possibility of paying back the debt, but would require unbelievable solidarity from well of countries. But instead of cutting the welfare until better economic time, they proceeded with paying debt with debt, and this thing is going to end rather soon as can be seen from the Chinese response.

[Grizzly]

The point was that China does give money to the US for bizarelly obscure reasons.

But instead of cutting the welfare until better economic time

There are massive cuts on everything down here in Holland, on education and welfare and bloody well damn everything (but not on the tax bonus for people with mortgages, which is destabilizing the housing market, driving house prices up, and costs us more money then our Fascist' party claims immigration costs us).

[Kosh]

First off all of this assumes that Chinese are a reasonable people, and frankly nothing could be farther from the truth. One thing I have learned about them is, without exception whenever they THINK they have an advantage, no matter how short term or fleeting or nonexistent it is, they will almost always overplay their hand. They do not care what the consequences might be because they only think in the short term. China has no real friends, and because of its imperial baggage it will never learn to have any because it seeks to dominate and control everything around it.

When it comes to the issue of bailing out the Euro, in reality it is China that is at a disadvantage. Sure they have plenty of dollars, $3.2 trillion worth or so, but these are losing their value. They do recognize it and have been trying to use it to buy up other things to diversify, but it isn't enough, and the only thing that can possibly handle that kind of influx is the Euro. That's right, China is actually at the disadvantage here because if they dont get away from the dollar they will be dragged down with it.

Any plan that counts on Chinese being rational is doomed to failure, and this is no exception.

[Mika]

And so it begins

First large bank in USA has crashed, and declared bankruptcy. This is because the bank had a large fraction of Italian debt papers in, and since the markets at the moment do not seem to believe in the Italian capability of paying the debt back, the debt value has collapsed and so did the profit margins of this bank. The important thing now is to follow whether this will start a domino effect of collapsing banks. From my point of view, the reason why US has been pushing for a solution of the EU crisis (like paying debt with more debt) is that the US investments could at least be somehow protected. But, it seems that EU has been once again displayed the well-known behavior of just talking about the issue louder and then doing nothing, which didn't reassure the markets.

Additionally, Greece is now having a popular referendum whether they accept the EU support packages or not. I think that it is almost certain that they will not accept the packages (severe cuts in welfare), which will probably lead to larger bankruptcies, but the nations where this will start is at the moment unknown. And this is not enough, Portugal has requested a possibility of extending the loan times, which is here interpreted that what they actually want is to have the same deal like Greece: cut debt by 50 %, further leading to stress of EU taxpayers. However, since most of the well-of countries are already fed up paying the debts and support packages, there is a real possibility that Portugal's request will be denied. If this passes though, then well-of EU countries run the risk of moral void, or worse, a revolt. I wouldn't be surprised if the tax collectors here report next year that the reported amount of taxes paid has decreased significantly.

What it comes to Chinese, I know, they are like that on a personal level. On national level, their foreign policy makers have displayed better patience and have actually done better in the recent years. The problem China is now having is that since value of yuan has been artificially kept lower (I'm told that otherwise famine would result in China), euro and dollar have entered to an unsustainable situation where both of them are valued much higher than yuan. Since yuan cannot get greater value, it is euro and dollar that have to drop. Notwithstanding is also the fact that the legislation of banks has been about 10 years behind, and much of the problems are related to that. However, I don't see how the country being the bank could possible be in worse position than the country that is loaning.

EDIT: Clarification, now that the crisis has boiled over, I can't see how the country being the bank could possibly get in worse position that the country that is loaning.