“EU’s Financial Hurricane Is About to Hit”

“EU’s Financial Hurricane Is About to Hit,” read a sobering headline in this week’s Times.  This week something critical happened in reaction to leaked information that the EU would allow Greece to redeem some of their bonds at their current financial status—50% less than their original worth.  The news scared Italian investors with the notion that the same could happen to them.  The result?  Italian bonds immediately dropped to 70% and 80% of their value.  For a small nation, this would be of little concern, but Italy holds an unusually high amount of bonds—third in the world behind the U.S. and Japan.  All this translates into the reality that Italy’s financial crisis is much more acute than originally thought.

According to experts, “For if the flow of money out of the Italian bond market accelerates through the summer, the crisis could spin out of control, causing a break-up of the euro as early as September or October, the ‘financial hurricane season’ when serious financial disruptions generally occur” (Times, July 13, 2011).  The resulting call is for the rapid formation of a Eurozone-wide financial union, or possibly an EU-wide union that would include nations like Britain who are not part of the Euro.  It also sounds like the September-October period may be the deadline.

Students of Bible Prophecy understand that there must eventually be a strong financial union between certain nations and kingdoms in Europe for the creation of the Beast power to occur (Revelation 17:12-13).  Just who will be part of this union is a big question that may be answered sooner than many may have anticipated.