Yes, Arianna, We Have No Bananas
The unfortunate Greeks, as it turns out, were not selling their jewelry to send their children to school, as Mrs. Huffington claims her mother did; in fact, they weren’t having many children at all. They were borrowing wildly from the rest of the world to live the good life. The average Greek owns six properties due to emigration and depopulation, because whoever is left inherited whatever there was to inherit. A large part of the population lives by renting or selling these properties to tourists (for payment in cash, or wire transfer to Lichtenstein). Taxi drivers take three-month vacations. A third of the economy is off the books. Corruption is endemic.
Greece well may default on its debt; the parties that favor cooperating with the European Community’s bailout-and-austerity plan did not get enough votes to form a government in last week’s election, and its political system presently is in chaos. If Greece does default, the result will be a vastly devalued currency, and a massive reduction of wealth for all Greeks. When Greek land and labor have become cheap enough, money will flow back in and pick up the bargains. And the Greeks will endure an economic dark age, a horrible example for feckless and spendthrift countries. Talented and educated Greeks (like Mrs. Huffington) will emigrate, and adverse selection will leave a rump population to gnaw on the bare bone of resentment. Infertility will hollow out the remaining population, and eventually turn Greece into a beachhead for impecunious North Africans seeking entry into Europe. At present fertility, the working-age population of Greece will fall by half over the present century.
If America is foolish enough to return politicians of Mrs. Huffington’s ilk in November, something similar will happen to us.
The problem for liberals like Ms. Huffington is that they truly do not understand how wealth is created.
For her, just like Obama, they see the process like this:
1)Borrow money.
2)Invest in industries that need constant government subsidies, such as wind and solar power or high speed rail.
3)Profit!
No dahling, for Ariana, it was:
1) Marry a rich guy named Huffington who failed to buy his way into the Senate
2) Divorce said rich guy when he came out of the closet and get half his earnings
3) Sucker liberals to work for her for free while she made millions on them
Anyone can do it, see?
Medea was a Greek mother too. It has always baffled me how Ariana Huffington achieved any degree of repute or credibility as a commentator.
She is an expert at networking. She was prominent in the Cambridge Union, which helped her get a job on the BBC. She became the girlfriend of British journalist Bernard Levin when she was 21 and he was 42. She remained his girlfriend for nine years. He provided her many useful contacts, which helped her get launched as a columnist (e.g., National Review) and commentator. She married Michael Huffington, heir to a natural gas fortune, in 1986.
Not to mention that she got Andrew Breitbart to set up her present operation.
Do the Greeks have a word for someone who is good only at using the talents of others to his own advantage?
“Whore” comes to mind, though I don’t like lowering the otherwise high standard of the commentary here.
“Whore” comes to mind…
What’s the Greek word for “politician?”
In fairness to them, I must say, all they do is promise to give us what we insist on. It’s the inevitable cost that starts the resentment.
How about frustrated nymphomaniac?
Screwing everything in sight without satisfaction. But, the pay is damn good.
You boys behave.
πόρνη, πουτάνα
Admitting my ignorance, may I ask for a transliteration into the Latin alphabet? Thank you in advance, P Jay.
Πουτάνα (whore) is not the same as Πολιτκός (politician).
porne, poutana
Arianna obviously got her start as a hetaira to Mr. Levin. But she is no Aspasia.
Well…the word must be….”pimp”?
“Networking”
Is that what they call it today?
I love it when Spengler’s fangs, to quote the late, great Kage Baker,
“go from a hint of danger to an open suggestion.”
Mr. Spengler:
The dangers of a formal Greek default are obvious, but has not Greece already crossed the Rubicon in this matter? There has already been a restructuring of privatley owned Greek debt and Greek bond holders have had to accept a loss of 75% of the value of their bonds. Should Greece default on the rest and ultimately be forced to leave the Euro and go back to the Drachma, I agree it would be bad, (Greek savings would get wiped out for one thing); but at this point, could one make an arguement that default, if carried out properly, might be the least bad option? Consider:
1. The roots of Greek problems are many, but I would include a government environment that discourages trade and investment, high taxes, high regulation, and pensions promised without assets to back them up, among other things. These structural problems need to change or nothing will help in the long run.
2. The recent elections in Greece do seem to show Greeks do not like the auterity programs Germans insist on for more aid, and do not intend to abide by them in any event. Greeks who think they can continue to draw on the resources of German taxpayers have no motivation to change anything, especially if they think Greece leaving the Euro would be more painful to Germany than to them.
3. The problems with default are many, but if Greece does default would there not be an opportunity to start fresh? The government could formally renounce its debts and obligations, sunset exisitng taxes and regualtions and then create a tax and regualtion regieme to attract investment and business. Pensions could be re-negotiated based on what the government could actually afford and a cultural and business environment created to favor family growth.
I do not underestimate the difficulty, but a lot of the damage has aready been done. Perhaps the better question now is, what is the least painful way to stop the bleeding and start healing?
On a related note, if Greece continues to be rewarded for her spendthrift ways, will not Spain, Italy and Portugal expect the same?
Apparently, out of all the PIIGS countries, only Ireland has decided on fiscal responsibility – no matter how badly it hurts.
The new Portuguese government is doing a pretty good job. I met some of them recently in Lisbon and was impressed.
You forgot one of the most important parts of all this…the Greek people are the laziest people in Europe. Not only will they NOT hold to the agreements made but they will spur on even worse economic problems because of their lack of work ethics. Heck, their lack of ethics altogether!! A people who lack ethics will not mind defaulting on debt over and over again or screwing those who try to help them out of a jam. Wait and see. Any measure taken to prop them up is just a stalling tactic. They WILL fall and fall hard. Just a matter of time.
Something similar is already happening to us: California. Your colleague, VDH, has painted a rather similar portrait of California in describing the urban-rural divide that will define California’s future for decades to come.
Mr. Goldman:
You really should send this post, or an article or letter based on it, to the Times.
Gene
She is who we thought she was but on Mothers Day we should play pretend along with her.
Greece has had a birthrate under 2 since 1980? Seems like the Greeks have already made their choice, sui-genocide. It’s not so much default as it is you aren’t going to get anything back as the Greeks aren’t creating wealth anymore.
It’s a shame they can’t “invest” in solar energy, wind energy, etc., since they have plenty of sun and offshore wind. Too bad for them “invest” really means “get Congress to fork over taxpayer money to politically connected Democratic billionaires”. If Ariana really believes in the alternative energy biz, she’ll put some of her fortune into it in Greece. Waiting… waiting …
If America is foolish enough to return politicians of Mrs. Huffington’s ilk in November, something similar will happen to us.
And it may well be foolish enough. Remember, wishy-washy Moderate Mitt brought the limits of background and belief, and now he faces not just Obama, but also the nearly all of the media, the classroom, the unions, the NGOs, the clergy (less the evangelicals), the foundations, the bureaucrats, the judges…
And, if it’s a squeaker, the socialists will surely prevail cuz all truly closse elections go to them. Hell, there’s even word that the taxpayer-funded anti-American outfit ACORN had an Ivy League lawyer give them counsel on how to register voters. Forget his name, but it musta been ok, cuz no ruckus has been raised about that tawdry scene. Unsurprisingly, Mitt is Mum on that, too. Why, just today his wife called Michelle “lovely.” But, Michelle was the Racial Discrimination Chief at Northwestern Healthsystems in Chicago. Got paid $350K a year to lead that outfit’s racial discrimination program. What’s lovely about that?
f only the Greeks still troubled to have children, Mrs. Huffington’s sentiments would have more resonance. Greek fertility (number of children per female) fell to only 1.28 in 2005, the rock bottom of the European pile.
There’s an easy solution to their fertility shortfall: import millions of Moslems. They are an industrious and inventive folk; I know this cuz Prez Barack said so in his speech in Cairo.
They’re already doing that (importing the Muslims)..not good for pig farmers like us!
Mr. Goldman, would you please define how wealth is created?
By providing Goods or Services at an economical rate that the populus needs or wants. ie – Capitalism
vs what the President believes in – Socialism
any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
Examples:
GM Chrysler Student Loan Healthcare Oil & Gas EPA Banking
The difference between Castro and Obama is a hat and a beard…
you make wealth by setting up a business and providing a product that others want to buy.
Then you hire people to produce that product, and they too are able to support their families from the business.
In the socialist model, you spend half your time following regulations, and the government buys votes by giving money to the poor who are unemployed or underemployed. The government workers get rich because they hire their relatives to work for them, and in third world countries, the government employees can get even richer, since regulations and paperwork often require a small gift to disappear.
Wealth is created by ideas. You have an idea, you recognize a need for something. You go to work to create something which did not exist, before you applied your effort. Whether you are simply gathering that which already exists (e.g., mining, lumbering, oil-drilling), or adding value to something which does (e.g., refining).
Understand that wealth is not created by labor itself. It is created by the application of labor… to an idea.
This is where the Marxists get it all wrong. They see the labor produce things. They see the product made. They think labor creates the wealth. So, they call on the workers to unite, to “take back the wealth they created”. They are wrong.
If laborers knew how to create wealth, they’d be wealthy. Wealthy people create the wealth, because they know how. It is a skill-set.
Animals do not create wealth. They do not create something of value from nothing. Only man does that, a creature with the power of thought, the ability of ideas, the ability to conceive of that which does not yet exist.
Wealth is created between the ears. It is done by the hands, but it starts with, and is guided by, the mind. Wealth comes from ideas.
Take some sand.
Melt it into glass.
Make a bowl out of the glass.
You have created wealth.
In a capitalist economy I can trade my bowls for other things I need such as food or tools.
In a social welfare state you take a portion of my bowls in exchange for nothing because you can and I make do with the rest. The more popular my bowls are the more you take.
One of my physics professors characterized the second law of thermodynamics as, “it takes energy to create order and it takes energy to maintain order”. From the thermodynamics point of view, wealth is a measure of a society’s creative free energy. Wealth is not a stack of $100 bills and gold coins in Scrooge McDuck’s warehouse sized money vault. Wealth is a measure of a society’s ability to “do things”.
All wealth creation starts with resource extraction. A man has $500. He can spend it on a flat screen TV, then stay home and watch football; wealth has been used-up. Or he can take that money, buy a chainsaw, go out to the woods, do some logging, sell that timber to a mill and have more money than he started with; wealth has been created. Workers at the mill can take that timber and turn it into lumber then sell that lumber at a profit to some homebuilders; more wealth has been created. Those builders in turn, hire carpenters, plumbers, electricians, roofers, and etc. to build houses, which are then sold at a profit; more wealth has been created.
The common thread in wealth creation is that at each step of the process, individuals, by their labor, add value to the original commodity. That original $500 invested in a chainsaw has turned a tree into a home for a family to live in. Order has been created where none was before. Investment + labor = more wealth.
Wealth creation might be defined as the grouping of like-minded people for the purpose of playing and winning at the game of take-away.
Typical crypto-commie claptrap. All economics is comprised of a finite sum so if someone gains wealth, someone else loses it.
Why anyone takes Keynesian/Socialist economists seriously anymore defies logic.
It might be, by those who know nothing about the subject.
Wealth is nothing more than owning or having the ability to create or manufacture a product or service at reasonable cost or trade that others want (or need).
Greece depopulated once before, upon accepting the reality of her decline in ancient times. By the first century AD there were a fraction of her former population left, and Roman historians walking the sparsely inhabited land saw that young people were still not inclined to have children.
The reason Greeks are still Greeks seems to be that no one really finds the geography attractove enough to take it.
– her ex-husband’s attempt to run for the U.S. Senate or her own attempt to run for Governor, both in California. Try a change luck in Greece, perhaps.
One datum that Californians are not THAT dumb is that Ms. Huffington only got 0.55% of the vote in the 2003 governor recall election. I will grant that she withdrew a few days earlier.
David,
you are so right but in Europe also there are no politicians who are willing to understand anything of this stuff
Argentina is still not a picture of a healthy, lawful (government or otherwise) economy. It’s the left wing’s answer to Chile, and it fails. Krugman is responsible for much of this rhetoric, not Huffington; it’s more widespread than it ought to be, and he is someone who should know better.
Austerity should always mean a confiscatory tax on the rich, never dishonoring loans. The world’s financial system is endangered by the shock of default, not by Goldman Sachs being forced to share just a little of their massive wealth. Greece and the EU are no strangers to greed; there are still a lot of tycoons to take down before the common people are punished.
Let the underground economy live, to let the people live. The health of a nation is more important than a few rich individuals. The Greek spring is only a matter of time at this rate, if income inequality isn’t addressed. Not just within Greece, but between Germany and Greece. The EU is a false union and will soon be exposed as such, if the Northern Europeans don’t stop their protectionism.
It’s apparently never about spending, is it? It’s about income inequality. If I can’t dunk a basketball, am I entitled to some of Michael Jordan’s money in the name of income inequality? By sheer random chance, he has assets and qualities that I do not have, so, in the interest of fairness, I either get some of his earnings, or we simply cut down all the basketball hoops in the country to make things more “fair”.
Garbage. Nauseating, self-indulgent, childish, laughable – garbage. The people who support massive gov’t overhang are the same people who struggle with such complex notions as “net income” and “operating revenues” and “tax and spend”. Greece is in trouble because of its spending, not because of its revenues, nor because of how much money a “tycoon” makes. It really is that simple.
In the US, we are on the same glide path as Greece, which is yet another statistical data point proving that if you can vote yourself money from a public trough, at least half the country will line up every couple of years to get themselves something for almost nothing – and we seem to have annual harvests of politicians that show up in DC and state capitols willing to continue the re-distribution regime for their own personal political and financial benefit.
When you’re in a car, speeding towards a cliff, you want to stomp on the brakes, not the accelerator.
Last I checked, it’s the rich who are getting bailed out at the expense of ordinary citizens. Do you really find the wealthy Greeks and Goldman Sachs bankers to be innocent victims of all of this?
Spending control is an entirely separate issue. Problems happen when a well connected elite can manipulate everyone else with their leverage. They should be taxed to a fair size and the money burned, not even spent, to stop their central banking inflation; kill two birds with one stone. In other words, reduce the deficit and debt first, then start bailing out the middle class, just for once. Bill Clinton style.
When you’re about to slam your car into a gate, you speed up to break through if it’s too late to hit the breaks. Greece must reach a new dawn, or get stuck with the Golden Dawn.
If you don’t like the tax code that’s thing. But stop with this greedy bankers nonsense. They are doing nothing against the law. In fact MOST banks refused the bailouts only to be forced into them BY obama because he didn’t want the insolvant ones to be known.
Blame your government and the tax codes that they vote on, but stop this puitive revenge against successful people nonsense or they are going to leave the country just like that facebook guy did.
Tax the rich? Sure, but wealth and investment capitol will fly like a frightened flock of birds so better be quick about it.
Wealth has the advantage of mobility. The shnooks who are stuck to the ground will find themselves with nothing when the money runs out.
And when you got money,
You got a lots of friends
Crowdin’ ’round your door
When the money’s gone
And all you’re spendin’ ends
They won’t be ’round any more
No, no, no more
And rich relations
May give you
A crust of bread and such
You can help yourself
But don’t take too much
Mama may have
And your papa may have
But God bless’ the child
That’s got his own
That’s got his own
Arianna … I think that you are a worthwhile person; and I admire you for your tenacity. I loic U a lot!!!!!
Here’s a question; maybe off-topic. Why have the Europeans, particularly the Greeks, decided to stop having children? It is due to the expense of rising them in an urban society where there is no long term economic benefit? It seems unnatural and really calls for an explanation.
I don’t know if there is any one answer. This is more likely the result of individuals and couples making decisions for themselves that collectively result in a low birthrate. Here is some speculation about what some of those individual reasons might be in no particular order:
1. Lack of confidence about the future – bringing a child into the world is partly an act of faith in the future. How many times have you heard someone say, “I don’t want to bring a child into this messed up world”?
2. Inability to conceive. I recall hearing years ago that about 1 out of 5 American couples are unable to have children of their own and suspect the numbers are similar overseas.
3. The high cost of raising a child – I’ve read this is one of the biggest reasons behind the low birthrate in Japan and could also be a factor in other countries.
4. Selfishness – face it, raising a child is hard work and some people just don’t want to make the sacrifaces.
No doubt there a many other reasons and together, they add up to a low birthrate.
Plus …
Infant and child mortality rates have plummeted, so more children live to adulthood.
Urban families living in compact apartments and small homes don’t want or need lots of kids.
Fewer and fewer families are agrarian, where more children mean more hands to do essential chores.
More children can effectively lower the overall standard of living for the family.
When both parents work outside the home, they may choose to restrict the number of children for economic and sanity reasons.
Plus, the ‘me’ generation that does not propagate probably fears that should it have kids, they will be equally or more selfish towards supporting the older generation as the ‘me’ generation has been by remaining barren.
The lush government pensions are postulated on a birthrate greater than two, but like Arianna, the ‘me’ generation thinks math is hard and prefers sensual pursuits.
Mainly: willfully ignorantly turning duties over to the gov’t for which gov’t was not designed, specifically: caring for the elderly, and providing a ‘safety net’ (ever-expanding, naturally) for food/housing, education, etc. If a society declines to foolishly use gov’t to such things, then incentives will remain in place to continue to have reasonably large families. Societies that choose to use gov’t for things it was not designed for deserve what they get.
Many folks have exchanged having children for dogs etc. Trust me: no matter how much you claim to have ‘adopted’ a dog i/o owning it, it’s not even going to visit you in the nursing home, let alone pick a good one for you.
The only good thing about this is as follows: most of those who adhere to ‘progressive’ ideals have two children at most, often only one ‘designer child’ at 39. Many of us who are a bit more reality-based have more. My 3 older sibs, atheists all, have only two children amongst them, both grown women with no prospects for reproducing. I have 4 myself. In general children tend to hold the worldview their parents maintain. Guess who’s going to win the grandchild wars?
I am always amazed at the facile reasoning of those who support the notion of how clearly irrational it is to have children. Dirty little expensive creatures those children who prevent civilized living. May those folks live long enough to realize how stupid they were.
Just one point about those enlightened classes who eschew the raising of children. Those who have the intelligence not to have children will live in a world with people who did not have the same reasoned insights into life. When mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and engineers fail to have children, the knowledge that they have created will be a set of hieroglyphs for those left over.
I’d assumed the low fertility rate amongst is partly due to Greek women being disgusted by the seemingly high number of fat, hairy, chain wearing Greek dude’s wearing their banana hammocks in EVERY country and situation thought possible when on holiday.
Seriously, I liken the Greek’s love of the banana hammock with the old slogan for the American Express card, ‘Don’t leave home without it’.
Mr. Goldman has addressed both questions in his two published works:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Civilizations-Die-Islam-Dying/dp/159698273X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336942569&sr=1-1 –see esp. chs. 8, 9 11
and http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-End-World-Just/dp/1614122024/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336942569&sr=1-3 — Part I (chs. 1-5) deals with this explicitly; ch. 2 is subtitled “Why Europe Chooses Extinction”
There is not one single answer to the question as you indicate, but if you want to identify the most important reasons you have to look at the correlations.
The single strongest correlation is educated, literate women = lower birthrates. You can speculate on the reason for that, but that is the strongest correlation everywhere in the world, even in the Muslim world.
That is not justifying not educating women, but it is still the reality of fertility. Societies where women are educated have less children, the higher the average level of education, the less the number of children. It holds in every culture and society.
Surely the near universal access to, and elite promotion of, birth control has a lot to do with the decline in fertility? Only in Islamic countries is birth control (and abortion) officially denounced.
It’s generational free riding, based on Bismarckian social pensions. “Why should I go to the trouble and expense of raising children to support me in my dotage when someone else’s children can be forced to do it at no cost to me. Supremely rational.
BobVa17, I wondered the same and asked this of some of the people we met a while back on a trip to Europe. What I found was that, while they tend to be very proud of their past and their history, that they have a bleak view of their future. So they tend to have fewer children based on this view, which seems to become a reinforcing mechanism to this loop. I don’t know if this is a complete answer; I have to believe that the decline in Christian belief has a role in this too.
The commodity boom has brought growth to the economies of Chile, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, and even Paraguay. Chavez of Venezuela has booted this opportunity.
I think that the commodity boom has resulted from the the advent of low cost manufacturing — brought on by impoved technology as well as China’s emphasis on exports.
Before I might bring my shirt to the taylor to sow on a button, now I just throw it out.
Before I might buy one single 3/4″ end wrench. Now I buy the entire set from Home Depot for next to nothing. Likewise I can buy a chain saw, although I rarely need one.
Low cost manufacturing has fueled the commodity boom. China buys the copper, lumber, steel from the 3rd world, buttressing their governments and subsidizing their bad economic habits. Meanwhile the work that requires a strong back has long ago left the United States.
I am not saying if it is good or bad, just that it happened.
Great article. Goldman always has something interesting to say.
Well they think they have found out why the sheep flocks are declining.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/05/12/article-0-130E6329000005DC-855_964x726.jpg
Because of the escalating price of clothing I purchased a Brother $60.00 computerized 10 stich sewing machine…..Hecho en China. I can now sew on buttons, sew button holes, hem pants, patch and repair, and save money on gas by not traveling to the store.
Rich getting bailed out? I note that the MSCI European Financial Equities Index peaked at 140 in May of 2007 and is now trading around 40, a decline of more than 70%. Bankers are paid in bank stock. They might deserve to do worse, but it’s hard to argue that they are doing well.
Relative strength is what counts here. The banks have shrunk, but they can bully declining nations better than ever now. Tax and repay austerity is the cross, and it is quite a cross to carry, but it is would save Greece. The EU’s bailout and conditions are the vampire’s fangs. It looks like Southern Europe will have to learn German and Arabic in the future!
Tho’ I haven’t heard or seen her for a long time, I found every utterance that came out of Arianna’s mouth about on the level of her “solution” for Greece.
A Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson-Lee kind of stupid.
Profound.
“PREACHING TO THE CHOIR” comes to mind, Mr. Goldman.
Liberals/Democrats are doing their best to stigmatize the sciences as “VOODOO”.
A PhD in “Visceral Magnitude” from Hahvahd shall become the coveted degree.
David P. Goldman.
The Greeks will default whether they want to or not. As the taxes are increased, the official economy will consist of just government employees and the underground economy create it’s own form of money. The government will run out of things to sell and fail to make more and more bond payments. This is what happens when your credit dries up.
They are better off defaulting and dropping out of the EU. As much as I dislike Huffington, I have to admit that the sooner that they drop the Euro the sooner they can recover and start to live their own earnings.
“But Argentina’s default was followed by a few short months of economic crisis…” well if you count, according to Gonzalo Lira and other people who experienced that horror firsthand, dumpster diving by M.D.s as just a few months of economic crisis, then yes.
But horror aside, per the commenter above, isn’t what’s happening to Greece just a slow motion version of what happened to Argentina anyway? And aren’t olives and olive oil/feta useful commodities? Doesn’t Greece also have a piece of the gas reserves off of Greece? Didn’t one of the ‘extremist’ party leaders actually say Greece should rely on trade partners Israel and Russia instead (the Greeks could actually become highly educated, cheap back office labor, even by Moscow standards — think of the gruntwork that a Sukhoi or a Kaspersky Labs may require). Seems like much of the horror about a Greek total default, like the Economist’s suddenly getting horrified at an Israeli air campaign against Iran, will be about the fact that Russia will immensely profit from both. Fanatical Russophobes like Edward Lucas being about as predictable as anti-Semites, in that respect…
David said Greece should be made an example of as a byword and horror to other nations, to use Book of Jeremiah type language about the destruction of Jerusalem. Well that’s done, mission accomplished. Now to quote the world’s most famous Jew, it’s better for the eye to be plucked out or the limb to be cut off than the whole Greek body to be cast into Hell.
This is a point I keep making over and over. Default is inevitable, the Germans know this and that’s why I believe Jim Willie when he says the Bundesbank, Deutsche Bank et al simply want to keep the Greeks on the hook long enough for an orderly exit out of the euro to a the (Scandinavia, Netherlands-included) EuroMark while the French gather the scraps for the low-rent euro, or euro-franc (Belgium included with the PIIGS). That’s what this whole stupid charade of not having a 100% default on euro-denominated debt until the pennies get snapped up in New Drachmae is really about.
It’s sort of like David’s irrational loathing of Ron Paul. He and the PJMers can loathe Paul’s foreign policy all they want, but the ZIRP central banking game is coming to an end sooner or later. Hell, even the Israelis know it! One can foresee an interim when the most fanatical advocates of American Empire can act like the characters in Downfall, and scream at all the Americans who’ve betrayed them by piling into gold, commodities, or fleeing the country, or who were unworthy of the noble mission of occupying Iraq and Afghanistan to kingdome come (I do NOT put David in this group, simply due to his having neocon friends). It still won’t matter!
Paul/Schiff/Faber/Zerohedge et al saying we’re printing ourselves into oblivion is just the flip side of the coin of David saying the West is demographically and financially exhausted, and can no longer count on cheap money from foreigners. Whether the Chinese or Bernanke supplies the currency makes a difference, but the former was just the prelude to the latter. All the fulminating Tweets and Cointelpro wannabe ism I see all around fingering gun owning prepper types as ‘wreckers’ who are ‘secretly neo-Confederate racists’ won’t matter.
If Mittens doesn’t succeed in a radical turnaround of making the dollar a petro-currency, backed by Bakken, Midwestern and Rocky Mountain crude, then say hello to GCC gold dinars, freely convertible Yuan, the New petro-Ruble and the new Euromark as your global reserve currencies. As David ought to know, if the U.S. continues to flush its currency down the toilet, an economic Rappallo is only a matter of time.
What’s a ZIRP central banking game? I haven’t heard of that acronym before.
Zero Interest Rate Policy.
The Feds attempt to keep this economy’s engine primed. They simply cannot have deflation.
Anyway, if you’re predicting invaders David (and since it’s a long way to swim from Tunisia to Greece), my money is on upper middle class Russians moving in to buy the condos at bargain basement prices the Germans have dumped on the market in Athens and the islands, the Teutons being no longer welcome thanks to the machinations of their banksters.
Think what’s happened in Prague (where the first wave was British, German and American during the 1990s but now the Russians have moved in) on a bigger scale. Hell, at those prices even Ukrainians and Belarussians of means may be shopping. All of which of course with the flag of St. Andrew and St. Nicholas icons at the Pireaus with the Admiral Chelyabenko the anti-Russia lobby/old fart Cold Warriors are gonna hate. But you heard it here first. Presumably we should keep the Greeks in the euro just to avoid this geopolitically baneful outcome.
As Stanislav Mishin loves to say, “only blood” and Gazprom (actually Schlumberger or TransOcean/Statoil) drilling off Cyprus can save Greece.
So, if I play my cards right I can buy Greece in a few years. Hmmm
You can probably buy some good, cheap property in Greece in a few years.
– American families I know have already bought property in Italy on the Adriatic.
Beware the Greeks, when they bear gifts.
… and adverse selection will leave a rump population to gnaw on the bare bone of resentment.
Spengler debunks Ms. Huffington’s fantastic statement by reconciling it with the facts. Proving her comparison fallacious with a simple comparo of relative natural resources. When it comes to political economy, it’s amazing what can be accomplished by insisting that all relevant facts be accounted for. Facts, factors, acknowledged records, proof, reality… if only work was done all the time like what he just did to her stupid argument.
We’d be less stupid as a society if we just made it a standard practice to check into all the claimed facts and put an honest test to them. There are so many fake facts flying around these days it’s hard to tell the real ones.
Greece has the same problems today that it had when Polybius wept about it in his history of the fall of Carthage. Bad economy, low birth rates, lack of moral fortitude, and inattention to religion outside of it’s public displays. Athens is a giant slum. They’ve been through dark ages before. They’re headed for another.
Here’s a great example of a fake fact:
Clinton put the Community Reinvestment Act into force, making banks extend loans to people who didn’t really qualify for them. That’s a fact. Forget all that stuff about Rev Al and Rev Jesse on TV all the time bemoaning alleged red lining. That’s a fact, too, but the two facts don’t even need to have a causal connection. Banks lived under the constant threat of enormous fines and, worse, the spectre of bad publicity. Barney & Chris were in command, some black dude made $200 million peddling the influnce (he’d served as prez of Fannie or Freddie, forget which), knowing that the Good Faith of the taxpayer was behind a gazillion toxic loans, Wall Street went ahead and started packaging loans into mortgage backed securities. Many said there would be a bubble crash, that economy would tank, and sure enough it did. Costing the country and its citizens very big.
But Joe Sixpack on the street thinks it all happened cuz of Wall Street greed. Hell, there’s even a fancy federal commission report that sez that. The ones who got off easy in the big official report and the minds of the electorate were Bill and Revs Al and Jesse, Bernie & Chris, the whole gang.
That’s a fake fact. A very important one. A big railroad tie of a fraud that is influencing historical events rat now. Put together, fake facts like this one and many others comprise a Fictive Reality. And that’s for real.
Having read any number of books on the Classical Greeks, I’m amazed that Greeks have reproduced this long, if you know what I mean.
Among other advantages, Argentina still had its historical peso. Un-pegging from the dollar did not mean the country had to create a brand-new currency. In Greece, the historical drachma is … well, history. Exiting the Euro will necessarily mean the creation of a new currency, a junk currency.
Besides, when Argentina defaulted, the world was not in the mother of all recessions and Obama was not POTUS.
What the heck happened to Greece in the 1980-1990 time slot? They went from comfortably above replacement to substantially below replacement fertility in just 10 years. They dropped .36% in the first 5, and another .43% in the 5 years after that. Something really significant happened to Greek society in the late 80′s. What was it?
“But Argentina’s default was followed by a few short months of economic crisis and then many years of steady economic growth — ”
This is either bald mendacity or breathtaking ignorance.
Ask someone from Argentina who was there about a “few short months of economic crisis”. I literally almost just threw up reading that.
Someone is pushing this as a meme; this is not the first time Argentina as come up recently in regards to “they said they sky would fall if we did X in Argentina, but look how great things turned out!”
I have a suspicion that the Huffington Post is secretly owned by Rush Limbaugh and he just uses it to create more publicity for himself. they seem to follow him so much its just not natural. I smell a rat!
I’d like to repeat a prediction I made many months ago in Spengler’s comment section – Greek vacations should be very inexpensive for those with hard currency. Properties too although there should be an additional discount for the risk of future government controls on foreign ownership.
12, 31:
The current Greeks are not the ancient Dorians/Ionians. I don’t remember all the details from Gibbon, but I believe they are Slavs who occupied the sparsely settled land in the 5th-century or so.
I’m sorry! I cannot allow you to continue to traduce the Greek people. The folks I know are hard working, and pius. They work long hours in there businesses. They volunteer in their Church and in the community. Any town benefits from having a Greek population.
Those are the ones who left. No-one works harder, or is more successful, than Greek immigrants. The ones who stayed are a different ilk.
Just ask any of those hard working Greek Americans how they feel about their countrymen back home. They are ashamed! Check out this hilarious video clip with Tina Fey on SNL. Click on the video and see her in the last minute of the video.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/really-snls-weekend-update-reunion-with-seth-amy-tina/
You need to ask Stassinopoulos-Huffington three questions
1 Has she any unpaid debts in Europe? Has she ever been sued for not paying up?
2 Did she write the books that bear her name? Would her claim stand up to analyses by computer experts in the attribution of authorship?
3 What class of degree did she get when she graduated in economics?
Mr. Goldman,
On a different but somewhat related topic: Are there any books on economics which you would suggest to a layperson as myself? I don’t think I was well instructed in the one economics course I took as an undergraduate, and I really would like to get up to speed to the extent I am able (for instance, I’d like to be able to understand columns like yours which deal with economic issues better). Thanks
Try Robert Mundell, Man and Economics.
re: basics to advanced economics.
Sal Khan does well with the basics and then some. See his section of lectures on Finance and Economics at:
http://www.khanacademy.org
To get a quick introduction to what he’s about listen to three of his talks (in this order if your time is limited): (1) His “GEL” talk, (2) Talk to MIT Club of Northern California, and (3) Khan Academy Vision and Social Return. You will find these listed in the “Talks and Interviews” section.