http://articles.ocregister.com/2011-05-30/news/29605690_1_single-currency-interest-rates-financial-crisis
For all you Community Studies majors at UC Santa Cruz (America's Wackiest University), Greece is a country in Europe-or at least on the fringes. The rest of the EU-that's European Union-for all you UCSCCS majors- has been bailing Greece out economically to keep it from sinking into the Adriatic while Greeks riot in the streets. The problem is that after centuries of breaking glasses, the country is broke, which makes it a burden on countries like Germany, who have continued to use their glasses for drinking beer.
As Samuelson ably points out much better than I (because I have no idea what I am talking about), the great Euro, much like Irvine's Great Park, has been a huge bust. You see, the Europeans have this grand idea that they must all be one and one for all. That's why they now use one currency, the Euro, with multi-national words, pictures and doo-dads plastered all over the bills. Next, they are eliminating their borders, so Moroccans, Tunisians, Bosnians, Turks and Russians can only worry about getting into one country before crossing into other countries to bother other peoples, you see.
Ultimately, it is up to the EU and their Grande Parliament in Strasbourg-that's in France (UCSCCS)-to come up with some sort of a solution. Problem is there is only one sane person in that body, a Brit no less by the name of Nigel Farage,who is a regular contributor (of sorts) on Fousesquawk. (He doesn't know it, but he is.)
I think that in the end, it will be up to us Americans to come up with a solution to Europe's currency crisis and come up with a subsitute currency to replace the Euro..........
I got it!
We can call it the Weener!!
"Nein! Weiner!"
"No! Weener!"
"Wurstel!"
"Non! Weeneur!"
Today's exchange rate:
1.45 W=$1.00
Here is an idea. Obama should send ACORN to Greece, to help them organize.
ReplyDeleteSquid
They'd fit right in with the mob, wouldn't they?
ReplyDeleteYou're veering toward a bit of gratuitous xenophobia Gary, although the Euro is indeed not a very well thought out currency, which is coming back to haunt Europe.
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting and conveniently overlooked fact that after years in which a conservative government went deeply into debt, in the same profligate manner as the Reagan, Bush and Bush administrations, they dumped is all onto an incoming socialist majority to fix with an austerity program. The hypocrisy of it all...
Samuelson, by the way, is a hard-headed liberal economist, which is a concept UCSCCS majors will have trouble comprehending.
Check your figures again Siarlys and use the government database on spending, debt, etc. and you will see the beginning of all the bad stats begin in 2006. That just happens to be when the Democrats took contrlol of congress. You will want to still blame Bush of course but he was also the President 2001-2006 when the figures were very good.
ReplyDeleteDo it yourself because I'm not going to spend any time on it. You aren't worth it.
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I already know MY figures Miggie...
ReplyDelete...now what the hell do YOU mean by "the bad stats"???
Show us your numbers, put them in a timeline, provide a context. "Rattle your spines, Halemtat."
Until then, you're just spouting insinuations. (Maybe the school you got your degree from didn't teach you big words like that. For Miggie and all the UCSC Community Studies majors who are learning the same style of thought and rhetoric, in-sin-u-a-tion means to hint indirectly, deviously, or by subtle manipulation.)
P.S. IF "the bad stats" started in 2006, the Democrats who were elected in 2006 didn't take office until 2007, and didn't really have much impact on the budget until 2008. Even your aim is bad.
As I wrote, Siarlys, you aren't worth making a case to. Use whatever economic figures you think are important, go to the government website, and see when the country went off the cliff. If it wasn't 2006, it was 2007, or could be as late as 2008 but the Democrats were firmly ensconced in Congress then.
ReplyDeleteAlso try arguing with this:
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/obama-303356-percent-budget.html
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Miggie, you not only display pompous arrogance blended with deliberate ignorance, but you pose as your defense an article which in no way contradicts the figures I presented.
ReplyDeleteCome up with an alternate figure for:
The national debt in 2000
The national debt in 2008
The national debt in 2010
Then present authority for why and how your figure is more accurate than those I presented.
Until you can do that, don't pretend to have an argument any thinking or even perceptive person need take seriously. Your pretensions to intellectual superiority are sadly misplaced.
OK, Siarlys, let's use national debt as an indication of bad stats. The government published figures are at
ReplyDeletehttp://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm
A glance will show that it went up from 5,674,178,209,886.86 at 9/30/00 to 13,561,621,030,891.70 at 9/30/10
A one minute spread sheet application will show that it went up 2.3% from '00 to '01. In no year from '00 to '07 did it go up more than 8.9% and between '06 and '07 it went up 5.9%. In the next three years, under Democrats and Obama, it went up year over year, 11.3%, 18.8%, and 13.9% respectively. (!) And these percentages were based on even higher base numbers each year so the number of actual dollars are very much worse.
Yeah, I know. It was all Bush's fault and Obama is really a small government, low tax guy but the genius was faced with a crises that was unimaginable when he came in to office. That's the DNC tune and you dance to it. But the facts and figures show that there has been an unprecedented spending spree with NOTHING to show for it. Obama's economic policies are ass-backwards.
Facts are stubborn things and cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
BTW, you have the website so don't expect me to do this for you any more.
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Miggie, you haven't contradicted any facts I presented. You have made my case for me.
ReplyDeleteThe only new perspective you have offered is to measure the percentage increase in the size of the debt from year to year.
I have no issue with that. The fact remains, over George Bush's term in office, he more than double the debt. That means Obama increased it 40% from the time he took office, which does not add up to "responsible for most of it."
Trying to parse how much it went up on a percentage basis from year to year is missing the forest because you have your nose pressed against the nearest tree.
Don't forget, Clinton, whatever his predeliction for interns, was paying the debt DOWN, a process Bush reversed in the name of "giving the surplus back to the people." That is sort of like falling three months behind on your house payment, then when you get a raise, blowing it on a vacation to Hawaii. How do you people manage to call yourselves "fiscal conservatives" with a straight face?
Siarlys, I guess the plain math is not clear to you. The national debt went up from $5,674,178,209,866 at 9/30/00 (Geo Bush with Republican congress) to $8,506,973,899,215 at 9/30/06 (Geo Bush with Democratic congress start) or a total of $2,832,795,689,328 in SIX Years.
ReplyDeleteIn the last TWO years of Geo. Bush, with a Democratic congress the national debt went up another $1,517,750,997,697.
In the next TWO years of Obama, with a Democratic congress, the national debt went up ANOTHER $3,536,898,133,979!!!
That's 2.8 trillion increase in SIX years under Bush and the Replicans to a 5.0 trillion increase in FOUR years with a Democratic congress under Bush and Obama, and with the vast majority of it coming under Obama.
If that doesn't spell out the enormity of the increase in the national debt in the relatively short time of Obama and since the Democratic congress than you are the walking definition of innumercy.... mathematical illiteracy.
It is more a consequence of ideology that dies hard, regardless of the evidence.
As Bertrand Russell described such people, "...wherever he goes, he is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day."
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