“The Italians, the Spaniards, the Greeks, we all have been living in happy land, spending what we did not have,” said George Economou, a Greek shipping magnate, contemplating his country’s economic troubles and others’ from his spacious boardroom. “It was a fantasy world.”
For some of the countries on the periphery of the 16-member euro currency zone ”” Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain ”” this debt-fired dream of endless consumption has turned into the rudest of nightmares, raising the risk that a euro country may be forced to declare bankruptcy or abandon the currency.
The Euro has been worth from $1.50 in August to $1.24 in October and now $1.27. It started at about $ 1.20 and for a while was at par with the dollar.