Warning: Euro Crisis No Longer Financial - Now It's Political, As Well

Originally posted at The Coming Depression blog, The economic implosion of Europe is accelerating. Even while the mainstream media continues to proclaim that the financial crisis in Europe has been “averted”, the economic statistics that are coming out of Europe just continue to get worse.

Millions of people are smart. To truly excel, you need to kick it up a notch. We've all seen smart people lose to clever people. I know I have. (Not that I'm smart. Work with me for a bit.) Years ago I raced motorcycles. I was a decent rider in a slightly-above-average-fish in a small pond kind of way. I won my share of races. But there was one rider I could never beat.

Sudden Debt submits: Just like the premature announcement of Mark Twain's passing into the hereafter, breathless predictions of the euro's death are greatly exaggerated.

The United States on Saturday urged Europe to create a firewall against further contagion from its public debt crisis and banking strains, saying they threatened the global economy."Sovereign and banking stresses in Europe are the most serious risk now confronting the world economy," US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a speech at the IMF and World Bank meetings, according to the prepared text.While commitments from eurozone member nations made to each other in the past 18 months have been "impressive," more needs to be done, he said.

ALL along, it has been clear that sovereign-debt troubles in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal were primarily a political challenge, rather than an economic challenge, for the euro zone as a whole. Insolvency was and remains a serious issue for these smaller peripheral economies, but because they're small there was no question of Europe's ability to handle the mess, only a question of how costs might be shared.

Article written by Prieur du Plessis, editor of the Investment Postcards from Cape Town blog.This post is a guest contribution by Dian Chu, market analyst, trader and author of the EconMatters blog.