Eurozone Strains Intensify as ‘Massive Shock’ Looms!

• Eurozone strains intensify as ‘massive shock’ looms! 
  By Agence France-Presse, via http://www.rawstory.com/
  Eurozone tensions have intensified after grim news on the economic outlook and as investors sought safety in Germany on growing doubts over Greece’s future in the currency union.
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  Shortly after an EU summit failed to produce a remedy, a May survey of eurozone business confidence on Thursday showed the sharpest monthly fall for nearly three years while the data for Germany was the worst for six months and a survey in France, the poorest for 37 months.
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  European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the EU was at “a crucial moment in its history” and that the debt crisis has demonstrated the EU’s weaknesses. “The process of European integration needs a courageous jump in political imagination to survive,” he said, adding that while growth was a priority, “there is no sustainable growth without ordered public accounts.”
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  ECB governing council member Ewald Nowotny warned of a “massive shock” of unknown consequences if Greece should stumble back to the drachma and cautioned against taking the possibility too lightly.
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  “I believe the fate of Europe is too important to now carry out thoughtless experiments,” Nowotny, an Austrian, said in words aimed squarely at Germany’s Bundesbank which claimed a Greek euro exit would be manageable.
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  Amid the strain, the euro slumped to a 22-month dollar low of $1.2516, but Europe’s stock markets staged a technical bounce after heavy losses on Wednesday despite a slew of bad news on the economy.
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  Italian Premier Mario Monti, in televised comments Thursday, said Europe had been wrong in recent years to insist on “a too-rapid adjustment” from Athens. The kind of profound cultural and political changes involved “require a generation” to carry out, he said.
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  Nevertheless Monti encouraged Greece to honour its agreements, while at the same time urging its partners to avoid “diktats”, in a clear allusion to Germany.
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