CNN news 2011-10-30
First up, representatives from around the European Union are meeting again in Belgium. They`re trying to come up with a plan to deal with the debt crisis facing the Eurozone. The Eurozone covers the 17 nations that use the euro as their currency.
AZUZ (voice-over): Leaders from all 27 E.U. countries met in Brussels last weekend to talk about possible solutions to this. They`re focused on three main challenges: making Europe`s banks stronger, making a bailout fund more effective, and restructuring Greece`s massive debt.
AZUZ: Fionnuala Sweeney helps us dig a little deeper into this European debt crisis and how it could affect a lot more than just Europe.
FIONNUALA SWEENEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Who`s in crisis? Well, everyone`s in crisis because it`s not just the Eurozone countries, it`s the European Union, and if the European economy down south, then the rest of the world economy goes south, and it`s already in trouble.
It began with really the increase of level of debt of countries, of individuals in countries, of borrowers, from banks and, in Greece`s case, into the countries in the European Union and the Eurozone, the debt became too high to sustain.
Essentially it`s all about Greece at the moment, and it`s flailing debt. There are other countries that are in trouble, too, but really the main architects of the euro and the euro`s recovery are France and Germany, and, of course, the real difficulty here is that they have been deemed to be seen as being slow in trying to get a rescue package for the future for the European Union and the Eurozone specifically.
And the markets haven`t been liking what they`ve seen so far. They say they want an agreement. They say they`re working on it, particularly when it comes to shoring up their capitalization fund for the banks. But the markets have yet to be convinced.
The difficulty for the Eurozone countries is that in order to continue to rail against debt and bail their countries out and have a successful currency, it looks as though there might have to be greater tax and fiscal monetary policy agreement.
And that is something that might not go down with member states, who already believe they`re suffering. And, of course, the other issue is many taxpayers in Germany, for example, are extremely skeptical about putting their hands in their wallets again to bail out any other countries.
The buzzword here is globalization. All our economies are tied and, you know, the subprime mortgage crisis obviously was something that was an international issue. And essentially through globalization, we`re all tied and connected together, and we`re connected together in the common of issue of debt.
It`s essentially all about strengthening the banks and strengthening the European stability funds in order to avert potential future crises like the ones we`ve seen, and that really is where a lot of the discussion and the debate domestically, within individual countries is centered on right now, for example, Germany.
And really it is a question of political will versus the reaction of the markets and whether the markets agree with what the governments finally decide to come up with.
AZUZ (voice-over): The Middle Eastern nation of Yemen is next up today. It`s had the same leader since 1990.
AZUZ: But a lot of people there want President Ali Abdullah Saleh out. They`ve been protesting for months. But there was a demonstration yesterday that was significant.
AZUZ (voice-over): These protesters you see here are Yemeni women. They`re burning their traditional veils and headscarves. That`s very symbolic in a conservative Islamic country like Yemen. The women were speaking out against government forces who have reportedly attacked protesters.
Yemen`s government says it`s not responsible for the violence. Officials blame people who want the president to quit.