Eurozone solution

After fudging its own ERM/Euro rules up to 2001, imposing no controls on its incontinent members or its bankers’ profligacy, insulting Eurosceptics as “anti-European”, and dismissing the 2008 banking crisis as largely “an Anglo-Saxon problem”, the single currency eurozone is now reaching a climax.

When debtors default on their mortgage, the property securing that mortgage is repossessed by the creditor. Can Euroland not devise a similar solution to defaults by nation states? Even under the chaotic methods which appear to pass for government accounting in Greece, it should be possible to identify the expenditures for which these massive loans were used.

No doubt much was frittered away in riotous living but surely some of it is covered by substantial tangible assets with continuing value?

As with a normal mortgage default, the ownership of such assets could be transferred to the creditors, on something akin to a sale-and-leaseback over 40 or 50 years (or UK/Hong Kong pre-1997) which would go some way to offsetting the worthless loans on their books.

The debtor states would then have several decades to get their houses in order, to redeem the loan capital and ultimately repossess the assets. If such asset values fall short, then other assets should be included rather than expecting northern taxpayers to rescue them again.

John Birkett

Horseleys Park

St Andrews