Ireland's tumbling PMI illustrates disaster of EU Bail Outs!

The Irish Times this morning, reports the worlwide fall (excluding the USA) in the Purchasing Managers' Confidence index, being particularly bad in Ireland, as follows:

In Ireland, the output reading fell from 52.6 to 48.7, while the new orders index declined from 52.9 to 48.7. Panellists reported declining demand, particularly in the domestic market, as being behind the decline in the new orders index.
Falling new orders led firms to transfer spare resources to complete outstanding business. Consequently, backlogs of work decreased sharply, and at the fastest pace since October 2009.
The drop in new orders also led to job losses for the second consecutive month, with the rate of decline accelerating at the fastest pace in nine months
Input-buying decreased at a solid rate, with the reduction mainly reflecting the decline in new work. The fall in purchasing was the sharpest since February 2010.

This weekend and the early days of next week will be another fascinating period for the EU, as those who purport to lead it, struggle to make sense of the many disparate threads of complete nonsense, muddled thinking and mixed objectives now accumulated.

It will be a little bit like trying to splice back together the two ends of a steel wire rope, which have become severely mangled and mutilated while parting, in the faint hope that such a splice will withstand more strain than that which caused the original break!

This morning the 17 Euro Group Finance Ministers, on a conference telephone call, will be asked to commit their taxpayers to throwing a further 12 billion euros down the drain which Greece has clearly become. Should that commitment be successfully obtained, they will then need to commit to a further package, totalling some 85 to 125 billion euros in a second bail out for Greece, in the certain knowledge that the first, so obviously having failed and not yet complete, will never achieve its supposed objectives, other than keeping the euro together for an extra thirteen months!

The IMF, having already stated its rules will not allow it to contribute to the last tranche of Greek financing under the last bail out, must therefore formulate a new policy under their new head, who is widely reported to be innumerate.

Jean-Claude Trichet at the over-committed ECB, is reported by the EU fanatical and financed EurActiv, (themselves surprisingly sceptical over the outlook,) as follows:

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, who has repeatedly warned the EU against triggering a credit event or downgrade of Greek debt to default, took a cautious line on the French proposal in testimony in the European Parliament.
At this stage we have not yet [got] a position [...] we are very alert but I cannot give you a precise judgement on what is going on. There are several concepts being examined," he said.

In considering the most likely outcome, surely the world and the market's attention from early next week, and Tuesday will be critical here when Wall Street re-opens, is not which banks now hold Greek debt, but which financial institutions are insuring those bonds and holding the credit default swaps which seem ever more likely to soon fall due for payment!