European Scientists Make a Case For a Return To the Moon

Kicking greece out won't help spain, italy, ireland, portugal etc.

Kicking out countries that can't cut it would sure help the rest. I think the mistake here was attempting full integration with weak economies and societies. If they had stopped at dropping most trade barriers, they wouldn't have a problem with Greece. But integrating all those disparate societies together just didn't work.

Lets say you have a business with 100k in debt. At high interest. And the bank wants its money. Are you going to slash inventory, and reduce operating hours in the hopes of getting a positive balance? The bank won't go along with that plan and will foreclose on you because you can't make the money back. If you go to them and say "look, with 20k more I can expand into these new markets that will make me money I might actually be able to pay you back properly" they might go for it. They all need to spend, to get people working and spending, to create private spending to supply the demand they should have.

Now, if the bank is pretty stupid, sure they might go with plan B, "doubling down" on a bad investment in you. You have high interest rates because you are a huge risk. Adding another 20k of debt onto that risk is throwing good money after bad.

Let me introduce a variation of plan A. You tell the bank that you can't pay them back. You're going to slash inventory and reduce operating hours in the hopes of getting a positive balance. Now, they can foreclose on your business and get cents on the dollar. Or they can forgive a significant fraction of the loan, own a good sized, but non-controlling piece of the business and get a better return overall. Their choice.

They choose right? Then you trim the business and you have less debt weighing you down. Good position for when the recovery happens. They choose wrong? Then you walk away from the business and let the bank foreclose on it. That's a real plan.

The eurozone needs a political union or a trans-national social insurance system (say health care, pensions, education and defence, they already have agriculture) if it wants to remain a currency union.

Suuuure. I think the problem here is the erroneous assumption that political unions, trans-nationa social insurance, etc has positive value. This mess wouldn't exist if these things really were beneficial.

Sure, kicking all of the countries out of the Euro except france germany and the benelux countries would work. That's whats going to happen because of austerity anyway.

Your definition of stupid and mine vary. It depends how credible the plan is. If you have nothing to take of value, or if your business plan is good it could be worth more investment. If your plan is "I'm going to take 20k and buy gold" well... the bank could buy gold itself. It doesn't need you.

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