CNN 2011-10-30（在线收听） |
First up, representatives from around the European Union are meeting again in Belgium. They're trying to come up with a plan to deal with the debt crisis facing the Euro zone. The Euro zone covers the 17 nations that use the Euro as their currency. Leaders from all 27 EU countries met in Brussels last weekend to talk about possible solutions to this. They're focused on three challenges, making Europe's banks stronger, making a bailout fund more effective and restructuring Greece's massive debt. F.S helps us dig a little deeper into this Euro zone debt crisis. And how it could affect a lot more than just Europe. Who's in crisis? Well, everyone is in crisis because it's not just the Euro zone countries, it's the European Union. And if Europe economy goes south, and the rest of the world economy goes south, and it's already in trouble. It began with really the increase of level of debt of countries, of individuals in countries, of borrowers from banks. And in Greece case into the countries in the European Union and Euro zone. The debt became too high to sustain.
Essentially it's all about Greece at the moment, and it's failing debt. There are other countries that are in trouble too, but really the main architects of the Euro, and the Euro's recovery are France and Germany. Of course, the real difficulty here is that they have been deemed to be seen as being slow in trying to get a rescue package for the future, for the European Union and the Euro zone specifically. And the markets haven't been liking what they're seeing so far. They say they want an agreement, they say they're working on it. Particularly, when it comes to shoring up, the capitalization fund for the banks, but the markets have yet to be convinced.
The difficulty for the Euro countries is that in order to continue to rail against debt and bail their countries out, and have a successful currency. It looks as though that might have to be greater tax on fiscal monetary policy agreement. And that is something that might not go down with member states, who already believed they're suffering. And of course, the other issue is many taxpayers in Germany for example are extremely skeptical about putting their hands in the wallets again to bail out any other countries.
The buzzword is globalization. All our economies are tied. And you know, the subprime mortgage crisis obviously was something that was an international issue. And essentially, though globalization, we're all tied and connected together, we're connected together in the common issue of debt.
It's essentially about strengthening the banks and strengthening the European stability funds in order to avert potential future crises like the ones we've seen. And that really is where a lot of the discussion and the debate domestically within individual countries is centered on right now, for example, Germany. And really it is a question of political will versus the reaction of the markets, and whether markets agree with what the governments finally decide to come up with.
The Middle Eastern nation of Yemen is next up today. It's had the same leaders since 1990. But a lot of people there want Ali Abudala Sarha out. They've been protesting for months, but there was demonstration yesterday that was significant. These protesters you see here are Yemeni women, they are burning their traditional veils and head scarves. That's very symbolic in a conservative Islamic country like Yemen. The women were speaking out against government forces who've reportedly attacked protesters. Yemen's government says it's not responsible for the violence Officials blame people who want the president to quit. |
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