Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

You mean Greece? The place where paying taxes is merely a suggestion?

The European Union is an economic powerhouse, much in the same way that the U.S. is an economic powerhouse (it's a ~$15 trillion economy, compared to the U.S. ~$14 trillion economy). The difference is that the EU is made up of a group of sovereign nations, whereas the U.S. is made up of a union of states under a single nation.

Talking about the Euro crumbling can in many ways draw parallels to discussions on the crumbling U.S. dollar.

A currency's value is a reflection of an economy's stability. Clearly, neither the U.S. nor the EU are all that stable compared to what is normally expected of them. What both are facing are unprecedented and nearly unmitigated disasters. What is often the case in situations such as these is either failure or change. The status quo is difficult to maintain when it's the thing responsible for the disaster on one hand and otherwise responsible for instability in response to outside forces on the other.

The EU will be okay. How well it fares ultimately and what sorts of changes that will occur will be largely dependent on the actions taken by each member state.

Greece needs a major reform regarding how it collects and spends tax dollars. There are other problems as well.

I'm not sure what went wrong in Ireland, but over the last ten years or so, they've been doing well economically. Whatever it was that knocked them on their ass should hopefully be contained/rectified in order to get the nation back on track.

As for the others, I really don't know what's wrong with them. But if hard lessons are learned and meaningful change is made, then the EU can very well return to a more stable economic environment.

However, there are also problems on the macro level in terms of how the union regulates itself across the board. I think this is where the interesting stories lie. How the union goes forward in light of the lapse in stability will greatly determine its ability to avoid such a situation in the future.