Monday's Top 10 with NZ Mint: Euro meltdown report; Greek protestors throw yoghurt; Greek coup talk grows; Soros eyes euro breakup; Cartoons galore; Dilbert

Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 1 pm in association with NZ Mint.

I'll pop the extras into the comment stream. See all previous Top 10s here.

I welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.

It's all Greek and European to me today.

Euro meltdown part 1 - Reuters reports Ireland's Finance Minister saying there are bigger worries with Spain and the large European economies now than with the likes of Ireland and Greece.

He's saying, essentially, that the contagion has moved on.

This is all getting a bit ugly.

It means anyone thinking of making a big business or borrowing committment over the next week or two should take a wary look or two at Greece and Europe before making a decision.

Remember, a European 'Lehman style' crisis makes it more difficult and expensive for New Zealand to roll over its foreign debt. That makes our banks more nervous etc etc.

Investors pushed Irish and Portuguese borrowing costs to fresh euro-era highs last week amid uncertainty over how Greece can avoid default but contagion concerns have heaped pressure on Spanish and Italian yields.

"The European authorities are more worried about countries like Spain than they are about Ireland and Portugal," Michael Noonan told state broadcaster RTE.

"The authorities that I have spoken to believe they can prevent contagion spreading to Ireland and Portugal but they have some concerns about the bigger European countries, and they are going to draw the line there."

Euro meltdown part 2 - The NYTimes reports China's Wen Jiabao is reassuring the Europeans that he would be very happy to help Europe by lending it more money.

The Chinese are desperate to avoid the disintegration of the one real alternative to the US dollar as a reserve currency.

Mr. Wen said China is a long-term investor in the European sovereign debt market and has purchased euro-denominated bonds in the past several years in amounts he described as “not small.”

“China will consistently support Europe and the euro,” he said after a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “Europe’s debt crisis is expanding,” Mr. Wen said. “Trust is more important than currency and gold and now, during the debt crisis, we again bring trust to Europe.”

Euro meltdown part 3 - BBC reports Greece's Deputy Prime Minister Thodor Pangalos has warned it may be difficult for the government pass the specific reforms needed to get the next rounds of a bailout package needed to forestall default.

In an interview published on Sunday, the deputy prime minister, Theodor Pangalos, was optimistic about winning the first round of general votes on tax and spending targets and the creation of a privatisation agency.

But he was more cautious about whether the government could get passed further legislation on individual budget measures and the privatisation of specific state assets.

Mr Pangalos said: "I think the package of short and medium-term measures with which we basically hope to establish the framework to undertake reforms will be approved without difficulty."

But he said approval of specific laws to bring in fiscal reforms and privatisations of public companies may be more difficult: "That's where we may have problems. I don't know whether some of our members of parliament will vote against it. It's possible."

Euro meltdown  part 4 - Bloomberg reports George Soros saying it's inevitable that a Euro exit mechanism will have to be created to allow the likes of Greece and others to exit the Euro.

“We are on the verge of an economic collapse which starts, let’s say, in Greece, but it could easily spread,” Soros, 80, said at a panel discussion in Vienna today on whether liberal democracy is at risk in Europe. “The financial system remains extremely vulnerable.”

“I think most of us actually agree that” Europe’s crisis “is actually centered around the euro,” said Soros. “It’s a kind of financial crisis that is really developing. It’s foreseen. Most people realize it. It’s still developing. The authorities are actually engaged in buying time. And yet time is working against them,” he said.

Euro meltdown part 5 - WSJ explains here why the Germans are very grumpy about bailing out the Greeks again. The Germans are natural savers, while the rest of Europe aren't. This problem is at the heart of the stresses in a Euro zone where they share the same currency but not the same fiscal policy or savings habits.

Germans' deep-seated economic caution has roots in the ruinous wars and inflation of the last century. Many of today's Germans are as frugal as ever, on average saving 11.5% of their incomes in 2010, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That compares with a savings rate of 5.7% in the U.S. last year.

In Ireland, one of the euro-zone countries that is getting a bailout, the average savings rate last year was 11.1%, near that of Germany—but the rate only rose after the shock of the global financial crisis, and follows years of much lower saving. Meanwhile, in Greece, residents on average spent 12% more than they earned in 2008, the latest year for which data is available from the OECD.

"Risk-averse Germans are concerned about the problematic economic behavior of some of their neighboring countries," says Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, a professor at Münster University, who studies consumer habits. That, he says, explains many Germans' growing nostalgia for their beloved former national currency, the Deutsche mark.

Euro meltdown part 6 - Irwin Stelzer writes here at WSJ about the real problems in the global financial system. Investors don't trust the banking system and Europe is mired in too much debt.

Here's Stelzer:

What we have come to call the Greek crisis is, first, an international banking crisis. Like Lehman Brothers, Greece is definitely not too big to fail. It is too interconnected to fail, too interconnected to the international banking system, too interconnected to the political ambitions of those who have spent decades replacing the system of nation states with a united Europe.

Many of Germany's under-capitalized banks would be hard hit if they were forced to recognize that their books are in good part works of fiction, with IOUs of Greece and its banks and businesses recorded at values that have no relation to their true worth.

German banks are not alone in their predicament: The rating agencies are already expressing concern about the exposure of three French banks and some 29 Italian banks, and the governor of the Bank of England has called the problems of overly indebted euro-zone countries the "most serious and immediate risk" to the U.K. financial sector. It is also obvious that we have no clear idea of the exposure of U.S. money-market funds to Greece's insolvency, or of insurers—remember AIG, anyone? That's why $51 billion has been pulled out of those funds in recent weeks by nervous investors, why America's banks have become reluctant to lend to their European counterparts, and why the Fed is asking U.S. banks about their exposure, including credit default swaps written on European banks.

Euro meltdown part 7 - Talk is growing within the Greek military about a coup if the parliament presses ahead with more austerity measures and a capitulation to European bankers.

They have form. There was a coup in Greece in 1967. This link is to a barely intelligible Google translation of a Greek website.

Here's Business Insider with what the CIA is starting to think about.

Due to the increasing severity of the problem, and the ongoing resistance to additional support, the Central Intelligence Agency has now issued a report warning on how worsening Greek unrest could bring rise to even a military coup.

According to Turkey’s Daily News & Economic Review:

“According to he CIA report, ongoing street protests in crisis-hit Greece could turn into escalated violence and a rebellion and the Greek government could lose control, said Bild. The newspaper said the CIA report talks of a possible military coup if the situation becomes more serious and uncontrolled.

Euro meltdown part 8 - Reuters reports trading in the shares of two Italian banks was briefly suspended on Friday after a slump in their shares.

Ugliness.

Factors included speculation that imminent stress test results may highlight capital shortfalls at Italian lenders, a European central banker saying the euro zone debt crisis was not over, German comments on a possible sovereign debt rollover, and a Moody's downgrade threat on Italian banks.

One Milan analyst, who asked not to be named, said macroeconomic factors were the main driver, as well as the threat of a credit rating downgrade by Moody's.

9. Austrians and Gold - Bill Still talks here about a meeting he had with a member of the US Congress about monetary policy reform and the push for a new gold standard.

He also talks about the way Icelandic people are rejecting the prescriptions of bankers to bail out the banks. He says Ireland's people should do the same. HT Andrewj

10. Totally Jon Stewart video about Greece - Athenian youth throw yoghurt. Stewart works out US debt is just as bad as Greek debt....