Playing Tennis While Markets Burn

CNBC.com ^ | , 9 Aug 2011 | Catherine Boyle

[P.O.E.]

August is famously the month when most of Europe hits the beach. Markets are quiet, parliaments are closed, and very little happens.

However, this year is rather different, with an escalating crisis in the euro zone, bond yields rising scarily high and plenty to keep policy makers busy.

So, you may well ask, where are Europe's leaders?

They appear to be keener to sample theme park rides while holidaying in the US than the rollercoaster of another debt crisis.

British Prime Minister David Cameron had to return from his vacation on Monday night, after less than two weeks of failing to tip waitresses in Italy, as parts of London erupted in rioting.

His Finance Minister George Osborne has been snapped on a rollercoaster in California.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is off on her usual summer break of a two-week hiking holiday in the Tirol Alps – hopefully still within mobile phone reception as Germany will probably be key to solving the crisis.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy headed off to the French Riviera with his pregnant wife Carla Bruni.

José Manuel Barroso is taking some sun in his native Portugal, although his spokeswoman insists that he is working from his vacation.

In contrast, Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero canceled a planned trip to a nature reserve in southern Spain as yields on the country's debt shot up. His Italian equivalent Silvio Berlusconi has abandoned his usual trip to his Sardinian holiday villa, allegedly the scene of "bunga bunga" parties.

Europe's economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn cut short his vacation too.

[P.O.E.]

To be fair, I should search CNBC.com for comparable articles on Obama's MIA status over the past weekend.

[martin_fierro]

His Italian equivalent Silvio Berlusconi has abandoned his usual trip to his Sardinian holiday villa, allegedly the scene of "bunga bunga" parties.

Do I want to know ... ? Naaah.

[Explorer89]

Trust me, you want to know. An under-aged Moroccan prostitute named Ruby figured prominently. They played “American Idol” with the girls, and rated them.

[AndyJackson]

The reason you want to know is because you want to see how much wealth has been ripped off by the elite. This isn't class jealousy. Want to know why we are short the next two trillion? It is because we have become a corrupt nation and a corrupt world. The people who are doing the ripping off aren't producing. These are the Salks and Flemmings or even the Carnegies building steel to build America and the world. The only thing these guys are building is luxury playboy pads in the Carribean and Mediterranean. It is nice work if you can get it. It's a great life if you can get it. But wake up Americans. Every $5b that paid to Fannie and Freddie every intervention in the stock and bond market is just paying for more and more and more corruption, more domination by an "elite" who don't know how to do anything except collude with other elites to rip off the world.

Don't blame Obama. "They" posted a job and he applied as the most qualified stoolie to keep the whole charade going. He has done what he was selected to do. Yeah it's ruining the US, but then whose fault is that?