It is a transfer of tax money. The EFSF is a glorified (and, more importantly, legalised) pyramid scam, where the peripheral countries are loaded with ever increasing volumes of debt, at unpayable interest rates and subject to conditionalities that virtually guarantee that their ability to pay will be reduced. Lending money to a pyramid scam is the same thing as transferring that money, because you're never gonna see it again.

It's just that the beneficiaries are the German banks, not the Mediterranean countries.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.