Unfortunately, they were not patient enough and jumped the gun.

The incompatibility of countries sharing a single currency goes a lot deeper than mere reforms to achieve the agreed criteria of Eurozone membership. It is cultural.  France for instance will never be able to shift away from its social model and the cradle to grave mentality of the population. Greece is another example where the culture of tax evasion will forever make the country an unreliable partner of the EZ.  The political integration necessary to make the Euro a success, will be to adopt a Teutonic discipline to fiscal rectitude. The Latin members of the Eurozone will never make the grade...Under the Euro and until the financial crisis, your "Teutonic disciple to fiscal rectitude" Germany had an average budget deficit of over 2% - larger than either the "Latin" Portugal or Spain (who ran a surplus). Now struggling Finland ran probably the largest surplus with Ireland, who received one of the largest bailouts, not far behind.  The fiscal positions of Eurozone countries prior to the crisis bear no relation to whether they did or did not have economic problems after it...The leaders of the EU project now see a far greater prize than a United States of Europe on the horizon. The concept of supra-national government, they now see, will assert human rights and 'good enough' economic well being, across not only EU member states but, especially with Obama's support, a far wider field. TTIP is the vehicle by which it will spread well outside countries the EU can reach by its own programs of expansion and bring many US based multi-nationals into the fold of cosy bureaucratic corporatist government that will ensure stability and uniformity, if not actual freedom or democracy. This is the post democracy vision of the EU's leaders: ever widening supra-national government until we have one world government. The eurozone is merely a pilot scheme, a laboratory, and lessons from it will be applied more widely to this end. It's for the greater good.

The Italian energy group Eni has discovered the largest known gas field in the Mediterranean off the Egyptian coast and predicted that the find could help meet Egypt’s gas needs for decades.

Eni said in a statement that the Zohr field, which covers an area of about 60 square miles (100sq km), could hold as much as 30tn cubic feet of gas.  “Zohr is the largest gas discovery ever made in Egypt and in the Mediterranean Sea and could become one of the world’s largest natural-gas finds,” it said, adding that it had full concession rights to the area.  The find follows other significant gas discoveries in the Mediterranean in recent years. They are expected to have a major impact on the region’s economy and potentially offer Europe new supply options, allowing it to reduce its dependence on Russian gas imports. It also represents a major boost for Egypt, where power cuts caused by gas and oil shortages have often fuelled unrest.  Eni said the discovery was at a depth of 1,450 metres (4,757 ft), and that it planned to fast-track development of the site using existing infrastructure. It said yet more gas might be discovered in future drilling.  Eni, which is 30% state-owned, is the biggest foreign oil and gas producer in Africa, where it has significant operations in Libya. In 2011, it made huge finds off Mozambique, with an estimated 85tn cubic feet of gas in place.  It has operated for more than 60 years in Egypt and is one of the main energy producers in the country, with a daily output of 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent.

James Athey from Aberdeen Asset Management, thinks Mario Draghi has managed to pull off a delicate balancing act - warning of the risks ahead for the eurozone, while reaffirming the effectiveness of QE in the real economy six months into the scheme. Once again President Draghi has been forced back onto the high wire to perform a delicate balancing act with his communication to strategy.  On the one hand, he doesn’t want to kill off confidence in the eurozone which has shown remarkable resilience in the face of weakening global sentiment and an increase in volatility. 

But he also needs to acknowledge that downgrades to global growth forecasts, the tightening of financial conditions and falling oil prices make it increasingly unlikely that the ECB will meet its inflation target over the medium term. The central bank has already downgraded its projections for inflation which made it essential that he comfort markets by saying the ECB stands ready to do more if necessary. He didn’t say it outright but there was more than a whiff of ‘whatever it takes’ from the press conference.  “The ECB will probably have to extend their current QE programme but won’t be able, nor would want to, imminently. It took Draghi a great deal of effort to win support to launch QE in the first place, extending it will require time and further a deterioration in the outlook, before we see any action.”

BRUSSELS, 4. Sep, 20:44  The four Visegrad Group states - the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia - reaffirmed Friday (4 September) their opposition to quotas of refugee relocation between EU countries.  "Any proposal leading to [the] introduction of mandatory and permanent quotas as solidarity measures would be unacceptable”, the four prime ministers said in a statement after meeting in Prague.  The communique, which, the PMs say "will serve as a basis for co-ordinated positions" for the upcoming emergency meeting of EU justice and interior ministers on 14 September, as well as an EU summit in mid-October, puts them in direct opposition with Germany and France.  On Thursday, chancellor Angela Merkel and president Francois Hollande called for a "permanent and mandatory mechanism" to relocate asylum seekers in Europe.

The Visegrad countries are also at odds with the European Commission, which pushed for a relocation scheme for 40,000 asylum seekers earlier this year and is currently preparing a proposal for 120,000 more migrants.  Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is set to put forward the initiative on Wednesday (9 September) in his State of the Union address to the European Parliament.

A day after Hungarian PM Viktor Orban met with EU institution leaders in Brussels with no concrete measures taken, his Czech, Polish, and Slovak partners said that "as an expression of their solidarity, [they] stand ready to provide Hungary with further assistance."

The Czech and Slovak interior ministers told reporters they were ready to consider a train corridor for transporting Syrian refugees heading from Hungary to Germany, if Budapest and Berlin agree.

Ponzi markets and asset bubbles blown by central bank money printing in collusion with their oligarch accomplices are imploding under the weight of their own fraud and fictitious valuations. It is beautiful to behold... In the eurozone, shadow ratings already signaled red flags in the late 2000s in Greece and the other countries on the periphery. More recently, Ireland and Spain may deserve to be upgraded, following fiscal consolidation and reforms. Greece, however, remains a mess. Even with substantial reform to improve its growth potential, it will never be able to repay its sovereign debt and needs substantial relief.  An assessment of sovereign risk that is systematic and data-driven could help to spot the risks that changing global headwinds imply. To that extent, it provides exactly what the world needs now: an approach that removes the need to rely on the ad hoc and slow-moving approach of ratings agencies and the noisy and volatile signals coming from markets....The market is slowly eating itself. If you look at dividend cover trends companies are eating their own future to maintain dividend payments and keep share prices up...probably because that's usually what their management get rewarded on.  And the average dividend yields are heavily influenced by commodity companies, miners etc, who are taking a real hammering... Chinese stock market investors, many of whom are a newly formed middle class, are borrowing to invest. Same with UK house buyers. Most are hopelessly naïve and all are over-leveraged and indebted. Yet should the bubble pop we're all collectively screwed. So governments have little choice but to keep the bubbles inflated for as long as possible. The fact such bubbles should never have been allowed to form in the first place seems neither here nor there.... Its truly ridiculous.

The slowdown in China sent shockwaves on the commodity markets. The Bloomberg Global Commodity Index, which measures the evolution of 22 commodities, reached levels that have never been reached since the beginning of this century. The price of oil is the best barometer of the growth of the global economy, as this commodity fuels almost every industry and manufacturing sector of the global markets. The price of oil has dropped by more than half in a year, now getting closer to 40 dollars / barrel on the US market.   Also, the price of iron ore, an essential commodity for the Chinese foundries and the construction sector, has reached 56 dollars a ton, from 140 dollars a ton in January 2014.   The crisis of investing in resources - In the context of the decline of the price of oil and metals, many mining projects which have major loans have been taken out for are now in the red, and investors may never get profits from them...the most affected are the American exploitations of shale gas.  As the needs for refinancing in the sector are increasing, in the future there is the risk of quick contagion.  The domino effect - The pillars of the world's economy are beginning to fall. China is weakening, and the emerging markets that have consumed such huge volumes of commodities are being affected by the weakening of currencies. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the BRICS which seemed that they were going to uphold the growth of the world's economy, are now in "disarray".  Central banks are quickly losing control.  The stock market in China has already crashed, and a real disaster was avoided only through the government's intervention, which bought billions of shares. In Greece, the markets are having problems, amid the turbulences in the country. In the currency sector, investors have flocked to the Swiss franc in the beginning of the year, but the quantitative easing of 1,100 billion Euros announced by the Central Bank (ECB) has devalued the Euro, causing the Swiss National Bank to drop peg it had imposed four years ago on the EUR/CHF exchange rate.

ATHENS, Greece - Greece's president asked the main opposition party Friday to try to form a new government, a day after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resigned and called an early election next month to deal with a governing party rebellion over Greece's third bailout deal.  The opposition has few chances of uniting and forming a government, meaning that after more than five years of a worsening financial crisis, Greece is headed for its fifth national election in six years. Tsipras is widely tipped to win the vote, though if he fails to secure an outright majority he could have to seek a new coalition that could hamper his ability to govern.

Hardline lawmakers in Tsipras' radical left Syriza party announced Friday they were splitting from the party and forming their own anti-austerity movement, which becomes the third largest group in Parliament. Outgoing government officials say the likeliest election date is Sept. 20, just eight months after Tsipras was elected on promises to fight creditor-demanded spending cuts and tax hikes, terms he later agreed to in order to secure Greece a third bailout and keep it from falling out of the euro.  It will be the third time this year that Greeks vote, after January elections and a July 5 referendum Tsipras called urging voters to reject reforms that creditors were proposing during the bailout negotiations. Greece's European creditors did not appear dismayed by Tsipras' move, which was widely expected. "The step by Prime Minister Tsipras isn't surprising" considering he has lost his majority in parliament, said Steffen Seibert, spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The bailout program is a program that was agreed with the Hellenic republic ... and it will be valid through election dates." German Finance Ministry spokesman Juerg Weissgerber said that if there were delays in implementation of the bailout agreement due to the elections, "then it would mean that the next payments are delayed too." Funds from Greece's new three-year, 86 billion euro ($95 billion) bailout are being disbursed in batches following reviews of the country's progress on implementing reforms. The first installment was released Thursday so Athens could meet a debt repayment to the European Central Bank, and a first review is expected in October. On Friday, President Prokopis Pavlopoulos met conservative New Democracy party head Evangelos Meimarakis and asked him to try to form a government. Meimarakis has three days to seek coalition partners, after which the third largest party in Parliament would a chance for a further three days at most.

The third largest party is now the new movement formed by the 25 lawmakers who split from Syriza Friday. The group, named Popular Unity, will be led by former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis.

Meimarakis also met with the speaker of Parliament to seek her contribution in trying to cobble together a government and avoid early elections.

However, it is unlikely that Meimarakis or the new party will be able to form a government. At that point, Parliament will be dissolved and a caretaker government appointed to lead the country to early elections within a month.

Announcing his resignation in a televised address Thursday, Tsipras said he secured the best deal possible when he agreed to the new bailout from other eurozone countries to save Greece from a disastrous euro exit.