“Stocks, Oil Drop on Bailout Skepticism.” Are you surprised? Last Sunday the cry went round cyberspace: “A trillion dollars! We need it now, today, before the markets open Monday. Otherwise, Armageddon is at hand.”
Now where have you heard that song before?
Oh, right: from the One We’ve Been Waiting For last July: “I need $800 billion and I need it now, today.” That, in essence, was what President O. said last summer. It was the same with the so-called health care reform bill — Don’t read it, for God’s sake, just sign on the dotted line, now, today: you have to pass it, as N. Pelosi said, so you can find out what’s in it. Yes, really, she did say that.
All part of the strategy Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels called Obama’s “shock and awe statism.” And you have to hand it to these guys, there’s been plenty of shock — possibly somewhat less awe — to go around.
So now the Europeans are taking a page from the Obama playbook. Greece teeters on the abyss, the bond markets swoon, and it’s panic time all around.
Who are these people we’ve elected to “lead” us?
Keep that question in the back of your mind as you accompany Mr. Micawber on his trip to Greece. Like Mr. Micawber, Angela Merkel and Prime Minister George Papandreou are hoping that “something will turn up.” Like him, they expect it hourly. But, unlike Mr. Micawber, they have thus far failed to take on board that central bit of economic wisdom he imparted to young David Copperfield:
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the God of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and in short you are for ever floored.
“For ever floored” — not a good thing. The Europeans scramble and put together $1 trillion dollars in loan guarantees (including $50 billion or so from Uncle Sam, i.e., from you, Dear Reader) and the markets gyrated wildly upward. For a day. Monday, Monday: can’t trust that day, as the Mamas and Papas observed. For Tuesday came and, guess what, $1 trillion wasn’t enough!
What would be enough? As my friend Bill Voegeli puts it in his new book about America’s welfare state, the answer is nothing. The maw is always open. The appetite limitless. When it comes to government subsidy, the answer is Never Enough.
Prediction is so much better than debate. Events resolve the question and no amount of palaver can obscure that resolution.
Something to ponder, a long history of “moderation” leads to a series of unavoidably radical responses.
Especially agree with the “moderation” point. The Third Way is a lie because in the end the Third Way always leads in one direction: Left.
The third way always led to the same place, just a bit slower.
Don’t forget that this is the Europe that has been discussing whether its citizens have a right to a foreign vacation.
Greece is just the warm up act for what we will be seeing in Spain, Italy and elsewhere. It is quite clear that Euro-socialism is going over the waterfall log by log and the elite classes simply scratch their heads and ask “How could this happen?” As has been said in another context – “A trillion here and a trillion there. Soon you’re talking about real money.”
Of course what is so jaw-droppingly amazing is that our present administration seems so eager to emulate all of this. You would think that having a preview of the coming crack-up would give pause and offer the chance for sober reflection. No such luck. This is the model the Obama administration wants to emulate because it promises continuous power to an elite cadre of “the best and the brightest” and the permanent triumph of a left-wing political class. It doesn’t matter if the ship of state goes over the falls as long as they can be in charge when it happens.
It’s worse than that.
The Won and his Obamamaniacs are convinced that The Day When Socialism Will Be Proven Right is Just Around The Corner, and they fully intend to push America as far in that direction as they can, so as to hasten The Day.
In short, they are so blinded by ideology and faith that they refuse to accept any contrary evidence.
Or Dear Leader has the worldview of a better dressed “don’twannabeacareerpilot…”
“stay in your seats, be quiet. They have met our demands; we are heading back to the airport…”
or not.
November 2010…throw them all out of the cockpit.
“For ever floored” like Uriah Heep,
caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Greece could be more than a horrid example; It is small
enough to be saved by a Tough-Love Intervention carried
out by the EU. Everybody knows what changes need to be
made, and that the Greek government, and people, will
never make them until they are utterly humbled.
If the Greeks could see Adam Smith’s invisible hand, it would be giving them the finger.
Beware of Greeks demanding gifts.
As Margaret Thatcher so eloquently said, “The problem with socialism, is that eventually you run out of other peoples money!”
Yet socialists fail to understand this fundamental flaw. They usually cannot bear reducing spending, so they aim to borrow or tax more of other people’s money in order to maintain their utopian dreams alive.
In terms of taxes, they would do well to listen to another former British PM: “We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle” – Winston Churchill.
What really makes me mad is that I will be working until I’m 68 or 70 to help a bunch of Greeks retire at 50 or 55. You know, the socialists are great at looking around and demanding money from those of us working and earning good incomes (“because it’s fair”) but never seem to look around and demand the effort from those who won’t work. I’m sure I will also end up working until I’m 68 or 70 to pay for some of those California unionized government employees who retire at 55.
US should refuse to pay into the Greek bailout and we need to vote out any congressmen who even consider bailing out California, NY, NJ, Michigan etc.
Predicting something is no test of anything. If you can predict time and time again and always be right that is something different. I’m not sure that spending money on welfare is at the root of the problem. In Sweden, the ultimate in welfarism, they leave the productive apparatus alone. It’s free market in production and welfarism in distribution. It seems to be working. In Greece half the work force is engaged in the government sector. Our government’s heavy hand in directing the economy seems most likely to be the cause of our problems.