The integration of post war Europe was advancing just fine with the Common Market but insensibly the power brokers took over and the people were increasingly ignored, hoodwinked and herded into what the EU has now become. Look at the way Greece is blamed for being Greece when people are starving in Athens and the country is overwhelmed with refugees. It is not a question of Greece and Portugal lagging or lying but simply that their feet don’t fit German boots. The British were promised a referendum on the EU constitutional changes; Cameron was the most ardent advocate and see what happened; obfuscation, half-truths, doublespeak until the debate was closed and the changes were suddenly there.

At a time when desire for a new democracy is an awakening, almost global, aspiration, that is a democracy where the people and the authorities to which they resign their freedoms become closer, Brussels is struggling with all its might to drag European countries in the opposite direction, and they are becoming antipathetic to it. And not just Brussels, most national leaders are equally suspect, which is one reason government scandals are so relished.

Concurrently, the ideology of Western capitalism is under increasingly critical scrutiny for its avarice, greed and the usurious distribution of credit, and since that ideology is fundamental to the Euro the scrutiny chips away at arguments in favour of the currency.

These two factors, the aspiration for a more meaningful democracy and distaste for the excesses of capitalism are like pressure building behind a dam, and the suits in Brussels are quite right to fear the consequences of a breach. However, there is little they can do about it and only their pride obliges them to run around improvising temporary solutions that are actually making it worse; we now have a bizarre situation where the majority of German people do not want to bail out Greece and the majority of Greeks don’t want their money with all its austerity strings attached. Yet it is going to happen anyway. How is that for democracy?

There is doubtless a role for a common currency in those countries that believe striving to make money is a good way to spend one’s brief life on this earth, but they should let the others drop away rather than confine them to shackles and force them to labour like galley slaves.

As for NATO, stuff it!

Well at least someone had fun right :)

But seriously - nothing will really change until we as humans change our way of thinking. Call me a new-age idiot but I believe we're on the verge of a global revolution of thinking. Our society is about to change drastically! :)

But who am I to predict the future ;)

Stuby @ Sonic Vitamins Review

The European experiment has failed and is only artificially being kept alive on a life-support system of taxpayer-funded bailouts.

The euro is now a zombie currency: only the political will of the European nomenklatura keeps it nominally in existence. That is the exact reverse of the proper relationship between a currency and the state: the currency should be the expression of a healthy economy testifying to the legitimacy of the government it represents. Instead, a synthetic European super-state is showing its non-viability and moribundity through the implosion of its currency.

Do you see that smoking slag-heap of smouldering, toxic debt? The polite name for it is the European Central Bank (ECB). It is a landfill site being used by bond investors to dump Greek waste paper and other unwanted garbage. It resembles the back yards of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when the sub-prime time-bomb exploded. Steptoe and Son would turn up their noses at such a tip. As the ECB’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, despairingly confided to Der Spiegel on Monday, Europe’s economy “is in its most difficult situation since World War II or perhaps even since World War I”.

That was an unwarrantedly optimistic assessment of local business marketing. The European economy is in its worst situation since 1789 and the eve of the French Revolution. Indeed, the parallel is uncanny. Jacques Necker, the Vince Cable of his day and similarly the darling of every armchair fiscal reformer in France, was the father and paradigm of all the debt-loving, statist, spendthrift finance ministers of today.

He squandered a fortune on supporting the American War of Independence, the consequence of which was the importation of revolutionary ideas into France; ratcheted up government debt; dispensed largesse to create a dependency culture; insisted on opening the books to the public but cooked them heavily before doing so; and retired to Switzerland when the balloon went up. It is hard to believe Gordon Brown did not have a portrait of him on his office wall or glued up nest to his best ceiling fans. At least Vince Cable did not sire a Madame de Staël, Necker’s daughter wearing her silver necklace.

We live in an age of mass communication: people have noticed that Europe has a few little local difficulties. The US Senate has just voted by a robust majority of 94 to 0 to veto IMF rescue packages for hopeless cases. American legislators are determined that, whoever stumps up their hard-earned cash to keep Zorba in his lifestyle of siesta and ouzo, it is not going to be Joe Public, of Main Street, Peoria. Joe has already been sufficiently mugged by Wall Street hoods to feel that his contribution is more than adequate. As European ideologues throw more and more billions into the bottomless pit of Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish indebtedness, they are running out of stashes of cash to plunder. The IMF is now the final resort and the US Senate has drawn a line in the sand.

The real-life solution to the crisis would have been to let Greece and the other PIG nations default on their debt and restructure it; to return to the drachma, peseta, etc and devalue. The euro was never a real currency: it has failed and the longer the Euro-fanatics delay in recognising that reality the more they will be punished. Germany’s nostalgia for the security of the deutschmark is now palpable to the point of urgency. Angela Merkel, having lost the upper house of the German parliament in recent elections, is now a lame duck. As she says, “if the euro fails, it is not only the currency that fails. Then Europe fails. The idea of European unity fails.”

The European experiment has failed and is only artificially being kept alive on a life-support system of taxpayer-funded bailouts.

The euro is now a zombie currency: only the political will of the European nomenklatura keeps it nominally in existence. That is the exact reverse of the proper relationship between a currency and the state: the currency should be the expression of a healthy economy testifying to the legitimacy of the government it represents. Instead, a synthetic European super-state is showing its non-viability and moribundity through the implosion of its currency.

Do you see that smoking slag-heap of smouldering, toxic debt? The polite name for it is the European Central Bank (ECB). It is a landfill site being used by bond investors to dump Greek waste paper and other unwanted garbage. It resembles the back yards of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when the sub-prime time-bomb exploded. Steptoe and Son would turn up their noses at such a tip. As the ECB’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, despairingly confided to Der Spiegel on Monday, Europe’s economy “is in its most difficult situation since World War II or perhaps even since World War I”.

That was an unwarrantedly optimistic assessment of local business marketing. The European economy is in its worst situation since 1789 and the eve of the French Revolution. Indeed, the parallel is uncanny. Jacques Necker, the Vince Cable of his day and similarly the darling of every armchair fiscal reformer in France, was the father and paradigm of all the debt-loving, statist, spendthrift finance ministers of today.

He squandered a fortune on supporting the American War of Independence, the consequence of which was the importation of revolutionary ideas into France; ratcheted up government debt; dispensed largesse to create a dependency culture; insisted on opening the books to the public but cooked them heavily before doing so; and retired to Switzerland when the balloon went up. It is hard to believe Gordon Brown did not have a portrait of him on his office wall or glued up nest to his best ceiling fans. At least Vince Cable did not sire a Madame de Staël, Necker’s daughter wearing her silver necklace.

We live in an age of mass communication: people have noticed that Europe has a few little local difficulties. The US Senate has just voted by a robust majority of 94 to 0 to veto IMF rescue packages for hopeless cases. American legislators are determined that, whoever stumps up their hard-earned cash to keep Zorba in his lifestyle of siesta and ouzo, it is not going to be Joe Public, of Main Street, Peoria. Joe has already been sufficiently mugged by Wall Street hoods to feel that his contribution is more than adequate. As European ideologues throw more and more billions into the bottomless pit of Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish indebtedness, they are running out of stashes of cash to plunder. The IMF is now the final resort and the US Senate has drawn a line in the sand.

The real-life solution to the crisis would have been to let Greece and the other PIG nations default on their debt and restructure it; to return to the drachma, peseta, etc and devalue. The euro was never a real currency: it has failed and the longer the Euro-fanatics delay in recognising that reality the more they will be punished. Germany’s nostalgia for the security of the deutschmark is now palpable to the point of urgency. Angela Merkel, having lost the upper house of the German parliament in recent elections, is now a lame duck. As she says, “if the euro fails, it is not only the currency that fails. Then Europe fails. The idea of European unity fails.”

The European experiment has failed and is only artificially being kept alive on a life-support system of taxpayer-funded bailouts.

The euro is now a zombie currency: only the political will of the European nomenklatura keeps it nominally in existence. That is the exact reverse of the proper relationship between a currency and the state: the currency should be the expression of a healthy economy testifying to the legitimacy of the government it represents. Instead, a synthetic European super-state is showing its non-viability and moribundity through the implosion of its currency.

Do you see that smoking slag-heap of smouldering, toxic debt? The polite name for it is the European Central Bank (ECB). It is a landfill site being used by bond investors to dump Greek waste paper and other unwanted garbage. It resembles the back yards of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when the sub-prime time-bomb exploded. Steptoe and Son would turn up their noses at such a tip. As the ECB’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, despairingly confided to Der Spiegel on Monday, Europe’s economy “is in its most difficult situation since World War II or perhaps even since World War I”.

That was an unwarrantedly optimistic assessment of local business marketing. The European economy is in its worst situation since 1789 and the eve of the French Revolution. Indeed, the parallel is uncanny. Jacques Necker, the Vince Cable of his day and similarly the darling of every armchair fiscal reformer in France, was the father and paradigm of all the debt-loving, statist, spendthrift finance ministers of today.

He squandered a fortune on supporting the American War of Independence, the consequence of which was the importation of revolutionary ideas into France; ratcheted up government debt; dispensed largesse to create a dependency culture; insisted on opening the books to the public but cooked them heavily before doing so; and retired to Switzerland when the balloon went up. It is hard to believe Gordon Brown did not have a portrait of him on his office wall or glued up nest to his best ceiling fans. At least Vince Cable did not sire a Madame de Staël, Necker’s daughter wearing her silver necklace.

We live in an age of mass communication: people have noticed that Europe has a few little local difficulties. The US Senate has just voted by a robust majority of 94 to 0 to veto IMF rescue packages for hopeless cases. American legislators are determined that, whoever stumps up their hard-earned cash to keep Zorba in his lifestyle of siesta and ouzo, it is not going to be Joe Public, of Main Street, Peoria. Joe has already been sufficiently mugged by Wall Street hoods to feel that his contribution is more than adequate. As European ideologues throw more and more billions into the bottomless pit of Greek, Spanish, Portuguese and Irish indebtedness, they are running out of stashes of cash to plunder. The IMF is now the final resort and the US Senate has drawn a line in the sand.

The real-life solution to the crisis would have been to let Greece and the other PIG nations default on their debt and restructure it; to return to the drachma, peseta, etc and devalue. The euro was never a real currency: it has failed and the longer the Euro-fanatics delay in recognising that reality the more they will be punished. Germany’s nostalgia for the security of the deutschmark is now palpable to the point of urgency. Angela Merkel, having lost the upper house of the German parliament in recent elections, is now a lame duck. As she says, “if the euro fails, it is not only the currency that fails. Then Europe fails. The idea of European unity fails.”

'Zorba in his lifestyle of siesta and ouzo' is neither fair nor accurate. Greece has little industry and was essentially a land of subsistence farmers. That is farmers who worked to support their own unit, and a bit more to trade for things they could not grow or make, and then a bit more again for the proverbial rainy day. Such a way of life demands extremely hard work and the application of a wide range of skills. Is it any wonder they have a healthy residual distrust for those, be it Church or State, who demand a share of their labour It was only some 50 years ago that the government, suborned by ideology, destroyed their way of life in favour of larger farming units. That has been tried in Haiti, Russia, China etc. etc. and it always comes home to roost since it dispossesses the people and in time deprives them of their skills, their pride, and the coherent rhythms of their life. This process of dispossession went hand in hand with a policy of asset stripping where the reserves of the dispossessed were used up, assets regarded as superfluous sold off, and saving replaced by credit until there was no longer any cushion and bad times became ten times worse leaving the people only the choice between starvation and revolution. The Euro is, alas, but a symptom of a much greater malaise.

Excellent analysis, is was worth posting 3 times so more people see it. But I wonder why no one is copying the what Reagan did in the 1980's, which turned out to be the most successful economic recovery in the history of the world. Here's what he did...

President Reagan campaigned on an explicitly articulated, four-point economic program to reverse this slow motion collapse of the American economy:

1. Cut tax rates to restore incentives for economic growth, which was implemented first with a reduction in the top income tax rate of 70% down to 50%, and then a 25% across-the-board reduction in income tax rates for everyone. The 1986 tax reform then reduced tax rates further, leaving just two rates, 28% and 15%.

2. Spending reductions, including a $31 billion cut in spending in 1981, close to 5% of the federal budget then, or the equivalent of about $175 billion in spending cuts for the year today. In constant dollars, nondefense discretionary spending declined by 14.4% from 1981 to 1982, and by 16.8% from 1981 to 1983. Moreover, in constant dollars, this nondefense discretionary spending never returned to its 1981 level for the rest of Reagan’s two terms! Even with the Reagan defense buildup, which won the Cold War without firing a shot, total federal spending declined from a high of 23.5% of GDP in 1983 to 21.3% in 1988 and 21.2% in 1989. That’s a real reduction in the size of government relative to the economy of 10%.

3. Anti-inflation monetary policy restraining money supply growth compared to demand, to maintain a stronger, more stable dollar value.

4. Deregulation, which saved consumers an estimated $100 billion per year in lower prices. Reagan’s first executive order, in fact, eliminated price controls on oil and natural gas. Production soared, and aided by a strong dollar the price of oil declined by more than 50%.

These economic policies amounted to the most successful economic experiment in world history. The Reagan recovery started in official records in November 1982, and lasted 92 months without a recession until July 1990, when the tax increases of the 1990 budget deal killed it. This set a new record for the longest peacetime expansion ever, the previous high in peacetime being 58 months.

During this seven-year recovery, the economy grew by almost one-third, the equivalent of adding the entire economy of West Germany, the third-largest in the world at the time, to the U.S. economy. In 1984 alone real economic growth boomed by 6.8%, the highest in 50 years. Nearly 20 million new jobs were created during the recovery, increasing U.S. civilian employment by almost 20%. Unemployment fell to 5.3% by 1989.

The shocking rise in inflation during the Nixon and Carter years was reversed. Astoundingly, inflation from 1980 was reduced by more than half by 1982, to 6.2%. It was cut in half again for 1983, to 3.2%, never to be heard from again until recently. The contractionary, tight-money policies needed to kill this inflation inexorably created the steep recession of 1981 to 1982, which is why Reagan did not suffer politically catastrophic blame for that recession.

Real per-capita disposable income increased by 18% from 1982 to 1989, meaning the American standard of living increased by almost 20% in just seven years. The poverty rate declined every year from 1984 to 1989, dropping by one-sixth from its peak. The stock market more than tripled in value from 1980 to 1990, a larger increase than in any previous decade.

source: http://blogs.forbes.com/peterferrara/2011/05/05/reaganomics-vs-obamanomics-facts-and-figures/

- Isabel De Los Rios

I would also like to know why it is that our governments are not copying what Reagan did in the 80's.

Steve from dietandnutrition101