Now the big one: Spain. Ironically, Spain is too big to fail and too big to bailout. The EU AAA rescue fund of 440 billion euros + the IMF extended fund of US$500 billions which amounts to US$ 1 trillion would not be enough. Saving Spain is 7 times Ireland.

The creditors, the banks who made those loans don’t want to take the losses. Hey who does? The governments are trying all their mighty to paper it over, to act tough with austerity measures (how’s that working in Greece?) in the hopes that they can solve this problem by wrecking their own existence – which in turn won’t be of much help to the banks – won’t it?

Now looters are not always the one you would think. Some European governments are getting creative in getting their hands on some fresh money. Ireland for one had to use their own pension fund to bailout themselves: they are putting 17.5 billion euros of their National Pension Reserve Fund on the line as part of the 85 billions bailout package. Even with this act of good will from Ireland taxpayers, the term for the EU-IMF credit line is not cheap: 5.8% and many think that Ireland won’t be able to repay. Now isn’t that great. Hungary and France are also moving in on long term assets like pension funds to fill short term deficits. Well what can we say – all these bailouts are costly and someone has to pay for it.

They were 100 000 Irish people manifesting in Dublin icy streets yesterday. Wonder how long this thing can go on before somebody, somewhere gets really angry.

Meanwhile in Austria, they confirmed they are withholding 190 billions euros – their tranche in the Greek Rescue Fund – because they want to see how Greece can come up with the money through taxes. Greece was not able to demonstrate that it was able to do this. Big surprise here. Now on to the next defector: Finland is now opposed to the Irish rescue. Finland does not have a banking system on life support so it does not appreciate subsidizing reckless spending and debt in other EU countries. Of course those are small countries but it is indicative that all is not well in the kingdom (of Denmark!).

When Greece went almost bust in May – they got a $150B US bailout. The talk now for Ireland and Portugal are in the range of $160B US. The US was on the hook for 20% through the IMF for that deal (+ Fed swaps line). With the new guys in town (read the Tea Party) – I wonder how rescuing Europe will be welcomed this time.