Eurocrash: the commentators diverge
Friday 28 September 2012
However, nothing of the sort was visible yesterday. Like the eurozone, instead of convergence, we were seeing divergence, with two very different views evident in the same paper. And now we haveAmbrose Evans-Pritchard and ZeroHedge at odds over the treatment of Spain by the so-called "AAA club".
If this was such a big deal, though - and anything significantly different from what the players weresaying in June - one might have expected the Spanish press to be all over it. But there is no sign of any great concern. El Pais, for instance, is majoring on the budget, focusing on the €3.9 billion cuts needed to meet the deficit target "required by Brussels".
Likewise the German press concentrates mainly on the budget, although Spiegel doffs its cap in the direction of the "dispute over bank aid".
Ambrose nevertheless gets some support from the Guardian, while ZH accuses AEP of "misreading the balance of power in Europe". Like so many others, runs the ZH narrative, "he was all too eager to swallow the misdirection … at the June 27th Euro-summit". Thus does ZH grandly declare, "the truth is, at least so far, that nothing in Europe has actually changed, with Germany still calling all the shots".
That is not actually what Torsten Reieke thinks, but who is he that he should disagree with the greatZH? He is, after all, only the "head of opinion and analysis" for Handelsblatt.
You do love all these commentators though – all of them so sure of themselves, so knowing and so full of confidence. When us mere mortals are down in the weeds, struggling to work out what is really going on, it is so comforting that there is such a wide range of analysis to choose from.
The only problem is that, for all their confidence, the different analysts can't all be right. And despite everything, the euro survives.
COMMENT THREAD
Richard North 28/09/2012
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