Japan to buy euro debt, Portugal resists bailout

[Ghost Dog]

Source: Reuters

TOKYO/LISBON (Reuters) – Japan pledged on Tuesday to buy euro zone bonds this month in a show of support for Europe's struggle with a seething debt crisis as Portugal wrestled to fend off market and peer pressure to seek a bailout.

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"We are seeking to avoid this possibility," Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos told TSF radio. "We are doing our work. Clearly, Europe is not doing its work to guarantee the stability of the euro."

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Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said Tokyo was considering using its euro reserves to buy about 20 percent of the AAA-rated bonds to be jointly issued by the euro zone to raise funds to support Ireland.

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Japan's offer comes days after China renewed its commitment to buy Spanish debt and analysts said it reflected both Tokyo's concern about the impact of the crisis on its export-reliant economy and an effort to reassert itself on the global stage.

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Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110111/bs_nm/us_eurozone

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One wonders why somehow all eurozone debt could not be administered jointly and centrally as eurobond 'Euro-debt'.

[Heywood J]

1. Because that would resemble packing suspect mortgages

in with sound ones. People buying the resulting security would have no idea what they were getting. No doubt the countries with ridiculous debt/deficit-to-GDP ratios are getting AAA ratings - so did subprime mortgages.

[JackRiddler]

2. Incorrect.

Ratings agencies served their clients -- and screwed the public -- by conferring fraudulent AAA ratings on packaged mortgage junk, thus enabling the scam.

That is not the case with national debt ratings. The same mafia who perpetrated the mortgage crime are happy to issue "accurate" ratings on national debt, especially since nations don't pay the bills for Moody's and the rest. (I put that in quotes because even when a rating is accurate, "accuracy" per se means nothing to these people. All that matters is their own profit.)

Moody's Prepares Financial Terror Attacks on US and World - Time to Shut Them Down

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7922092&mesg_id=7922092

Let the record show that Wall Street went bankrupt before the United States.

And they were "bailed out" - meaning the Treasury was privatized on their behalf.

This in turn contributed trillions in debt directly and indirectly to the likely eventual bankruptcy of the United States.

Moody's lied to hide the first bankruptcy - that of Wall Street - until it became obvious. Thus they were complicit in burdening the United States with additional trillions in debt.

If now they should "tell the truth" about the prospective second bankruptcy, that of the United States, which their lie helped to cause, they are only heaping an even greater burden on Wall Street's savior, the United States, which will as a result of the downgrade be forced to pay even more in interest to the predators on Wall Street.

Very opportunistic "truth-telling," this. They lie when it suits them and they tell truth when it suits them.

[DetlefK]

3. Because the EU consists of sovereign nations and there is no mechanism to enforce austerity.

The value of the eurobonds as a whole would decrease, when single countries had the freedom to enact unsound economic policies.

Merkel and Sarkozy have a proposal that countries with too much debt temporarily loose their vote in the EU-council. Maybe it will be enacted in the months and years to come.

[willing dwarf]

5. Austerity?

When the banks are dictating the terms to governments as they did in Ireland, really forcing them to declare that Irish banks would honor 100% of all international investment-- the result is citizens of the country are being obliged to pay back for the banks themselves. It's taxation without representation. The banks have a stranglehold on these small countries and the people have no choice.

Last month when the ice and snow fell in Ireland there was no money to even put cinders on the roads. The whole country came to a standstill because all of the money has gone to pay off the banks. The term "austerity" is an utter fig leaf for what's going on there.

[txlibdem]

6. Good posts. Keep telling the truth!

Thanks for your posts on this topic. I've been feeling like the "lone stranger" here on DU sometimes as I try to bring to light the many falsehoods and pure fantasy being passed off as truth pertaining to the global Capitalist Ponzi Scheme.

Capitalism is a cancer.

[willing dwarf]

4. International banking is all a ponzi scheme

And how long is the good faith of the people going to prop it up? Japan props up the Euro, who props up Japan?