Another idea I am entertaining: The Usual Suspects

So I am not the only one with the cheesy movie references in the economics & finance world after all: I have been seeing a lot references to the European peripheral countries with sovereign debt problems as The Usual Suspects in the last few weeks. Here's how I would assign the countries, making use of shameless stereotyping based on their appearances:

But the zillion dollar question that many are avoiding is who Roger "Verbal" Kint is. In retrospect, this amounts to asking who Keyser Soze is. You might argue there is no Keyser Soze, but you know about the devil's greatest trick...

I would argue that Keyse Soze does exist, and he is Germany. Just like Keyser, with record growth, he is the least likely suspect, but I would argue Germany is the real reason of the intra-European imbalances that bankrupted Club Med (Ireland is a bit more complicated).

I am planning on doing a column on that, either for the Daily News or Forbes, for whom I have not written for a long time, but if I don't, I will do a post explaining my reasoning in detail. In the meantime, note that my identification is not so far away from Keyser's supposed roots...