At this time - we're in a dramatic crisis - euro bonds are precisely the wrong answer. They lead us into a debt union, not a stability union. Each country has to take its own steps to reduce its debt.
I don't want euro bonds that serve to mutualize the entire debt of the countries in the euro zone. That can only work in the longer-term. I want euro bonds to be used to finance targeted investments in future-oriented growth projects. It isn't the same thing. Let's call them 'project bonds' instead of euro bonds.
Look, the president is elected to lead and to face the country's biggest challenges. The country's biggest challenge domestically speaking, no doubt about it, is a debt crisis, and I'm really hoping that he is going to give us a budget that tackles this debt crisis.
I hope that the United States would cooperate with the partners to reduce its debt. The debt is a problem. The debt is with you, but unfortunately, the debt is not only with you but with us and with the rest of the world because we all, one way or another, are dependent on the dollar.
Thanks to the euro, our pockets will soon hold solid evidence of a European identity. We need to build on this, and make the euro more than a currency and Europe more than a territory... In the next six months, we will talk a lot about political union, and rightly so. Political union is inseparable from economic union. Stronger growth and Euorpean integration are related issues. In both areas we will take concrete steps forward.
In my min,d there is arguably a greater risk of a default on the debt of a U.S. state than there is on the debt of a euro-area member. I consider it unthinkable that a euro-area country would default.
This debt crisis coming to our country. The wall and tidal wave of debt that is befalling our nation. Medicare and Social Security go bankrupt within ten years, we have a debt that is looming so high that in the last year of President Obama's budget just the interest payments on our debt is $916 billion dollars.
You know the most important thing the Americans did for Iraq apart from liberating the country from Saddam was helping Iraq reduce its debt. The United States worked very hard to reduce 80 percent of Iraqi debt.
The Mexican debt crisis, Latin American debt crisis, the crises of the 1990s, the Wall Street stock market crash, and other events should have reminded us, and did remind us, that financial instability remains a concern, remains a problem.
The union of lakes--the union of lands-- The union of States none can sever-- The union of hearts--the union of hands-- And the flag of our Union for ever!
Italy may well be the main problem. It has benefited most from the euro by having been able to get the euro interest rate instead of what otherwise would have been its own. That would be much higher because Italy has been accumulating so much debt. In the past, Italy has inflated away its debt. The virtue of the euro is that Italy can't do it alone. A tight ECB policy wouldn't permit that to happen again.
Basically, Herman van Rompuy wants the European Union to become a debt union, which may be acceptable to some of the southern countries who are effectively bust. To the northern countries, it is not.
The moment a large investor doesn't believe a government will pay back its debt when it says it will, a crisis of confidence could develop. Investors have scant patience for the years of good governance - politically fraught fiscal restructuring, austerity and debt rescheduling - it takes to defuse a sovereign-debt crisis.
An example of good debt is the debt on the apartment houses I own. That debt is good only as long as there are tenants to pay my mortgages. If tenants stop paying their rent, my good debt turns into bad debt.
If we keep kicking the can down the road, if we follow the president's lead or if we pass the Senate budget, then we will have a debt crisis. Then everybody gets hurt. You know who gets hurt first and the worst in a debt crisis? The poor, the elderly. That's what we're trying to prevent from happening.
The European Union is a union of the extreme center. It's a banker's union. You see how they operate in country after country, appointing technocrats to take over and run countries for long periods. They did it in Greece; they did it in Italy; they considered it in other parts of Europe.
As a European Union member state, as a country committed throughout all its history to the fight for the values that I have made my own, as the fifth world power, as a country that has marked my life and European Union houses part of European Union, France can act if it wishes to do so.