Reflections From a Murky Pond

All cultures and peoples have their myths and myth cycles. These myths are actually one of the identifying foundations of those separate cultures and peoples and, by and large, they are both good and necessary. Only upon rare occasions do these myths become damaging.

Sadly, in America, one of our myths has become damaging. It might even be lethal to our nation.

Greek Mythology – It Couldn’t Happen In America

“It can’t happen here,” is a pernicious belief based on a self-serving and self-deluding perversion of American Exceptionalism. It’s a potentially lethally harmful myth.

Not only can what is happening in Greece and Europe happen in America, it is already happening. We just haven’t hit the bottom … yet.

California and many other of the several States are, essentially, as bankrupt as Greece and are being propped up by the federal government, a government that is so deep in debt that it boggles the mind – and they want to keep borrowing more and fight against any reining in of their profligate spending!

What is the scariest is that one thing really can’t happen here in America. The European Union is predicted to collapse very soon but that can’t happen in America; we have laws against secession and breaking the union. As no federal government that I could imagine would reduce itself, any attempt by the states to break the union for their own survival would lead to civil war.

The upcoming 2102 elections may not be the watershed moment but, if we don’t move swiftly, strongly, and sternly towards fiscal responsibility in this election, we will bring that moment closer – assuming it’s not here or already past – and make correcting the problems that much harder.

Tags: 2012 Elections | America | Debt | Debt Ceiling | Deficit | Economics | Economy | Euro | Europe | Greece | Myths | Politics

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2012 at 8:55 am and is filed under 2012 Election, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

I’m not one to pay overly much attention to the various things that spew from the maw of Paul Krugman. The pontifications, ramblings, and rants of a rabidly fanatical Keynesian neo-Socialist who makes his rent working for the filthy rag known as the New York Times aren’t the sorts of things that I, or any other American, normally pay much heed to – except to keep an eye on what our nation’s enemies are thinking or emoting.

Krugman is willfully dead wrong more often than not on causation and dead wrong, again willfully, every time when it comes to remediation

All that being said, Krugman is not an idiot and he is skilled enough to make solidly plausible predictions of future events, especially relatively near-term ones.

Some of us have been talking it over, and here’s what we think the end game looks like:

1. Greek euro exit, very possibly next month.

2. Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors try to move their money to Germany.

3a. Maybe, just possibly, de facto controls, with banks forbidden to transfer deposits out of country and limits on cash withdrawals.

3b. Alternatively, or maybe in tandem, huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing.

4a. Germany has a choice. Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain, plus a drastic revision of strategy basically, to give Spain in particular any hope you need both guarantees on its debt to hold borrowing costs down and a higher eurozone inflation target to make relative price adjustment possible; or:

4b. End of the euro.

And we’re talking about months, not years, for this to play out.

Of course this isn’t exactly rocket science or even one of the more arcane examples of the semi-mystical art form known today as the study of Economics. Both hyperinflation and the end of the Euro in the near future are easy predictions to make in the wake of Greece’s Keynesian meltdown and financial collapse.

NOTE: Krugman’s prediction of a European financial meltdown matches my own and naturally feeds into whatever level of Confirmation Bias that I’m saddled with.

Of course these events will happen and happen soon. They were foreordained from the moment of Greece’s financial implosion under the weight of their Socialist economic policies.

I’ll add though that these event will, in turn, most likely lead to the breaking of the European Union by 2015. They can’t hold together as a government – or meta-government, or whatever they are – without a common currency.

Tags: Debt | Depression | Economics | Economy | EU | Euro | Europe | Finance | Germany | Greece | Keynes | Keynesian Economics | Krugman | New York Times | Recession | Socialism | Spain

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 at 6:50 pm and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.