get back into the streets

Today's Wall Street Journal has on its front page a long article entitled "Life after the Euro," where its authors note that more and more, the Central banks of Euro or non-Euro countries are preparing for either the exit of different countries from the Eurozone or its implosion.


This follows recent news that multinational companies based in London are all making contingency plans as well, to see the impact of possible devaluations after a return to national currencies, etc.

Central banks, says the WSJ, are preparing to print national currencies. Ireland is looking for further printing capabilities than its own. Non-Euro countries like Switzerland are looking for other currencies to which to peg their currencies as reference.

The WSJ reports that JP Morgan, in a report issued yesterday is already advising its clients to hedge against a possibility of implosion of the Eurozone. 

Of course, the possibilities of such an event, according to this report, are only 20%, but, says the WSJ, the fact that these contingency plans are on shows that the possibility is increasingly on people's minds.

Along the same lines, yesterday's Le Monde has a two-page spread analysing the worst-case scenario for the Eurozone and comparing the curves of the crisis in 1929 through 1933, to today's crisis running from 2008 to 2012. 

They are actually not so different, except that the 1933 curve ends with the nomination of Hitler to power, but also the beginning of the Roosevelt era and the adoption of the Glass-Steagall law and Roosevelt's elimination of the gold standard. 

The corresponding space for the 2012 curve is left empty, with no discussion about Glass- Steagall...