Zero Hedge: E.U. financial collapse means that ‘Germany is the de facto leader of Europe for the third time in 100 years’

You think things look bleak in Europe? Whatever you think, it's probably worse than that.

Zero Hedge has a must-read interview posted with Sean Corrigan in which he analyzes the teetering collapse of the E.U. and lays waste to  the tone-deaf machinations of the financial class behind the scenes.

Basically, Europe there's no way to prevent a round of defaults, European banks expect to be bailed out, efforts will be made to spread the pain around, and Germany will have to open up its checkbook to pay for the Club Med states.

And that's when the really bad stuff could happen.

Here are some gems taken from the interview:

"Somewhere along the line, we are going to have to recognise the losses we suffered in the Boom. The question is how unfairly those losses will be distributed, how much worse they will be made by our attempts to avoid them, and whether we will re-equilibrate the value of our outstanding obligations with our ability to generate the income to service and then discharge them."

"Preferentially, this new budgetary rectitude should be brought about, not by raising taxes, but by shrinking the greatly overexpanded scope of the state’s activities – by privatising assets, reducing the deadweight of the various bureaucratic agencies, and by drastically pruning all debilitating and demoralising interventions to a bare minimum of social provision."

For the rest of this sobering and crucial analysis on Europe's impending calamity, click here.