Posted on 07/06/2015 11:52:23 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Almost every option facing debt-drenched Greece is bad, but there is only one that will end this Greek tragedy for good. Let Greece go bankrupt. Then let this once-rich nation, hit the restart button to rebuild its economy.
What I’m suggesting for Greece is what might be called the Detroit option. Put Greece under receivership and let these new authorities figure out how to manage the debt and decide who will take a haircut and how big. Pensioners, bondholders, welfare recipients, government workers, the International Monetary Fund, all will have to settle for less — maybe a lot less. It’s tough love, but it’s the only way out. More bailouts and debt extensions will only delay the crash of the socialist Greek economy.
I can already hear the heart palpitations of the Wall Street investors. This option puts them in the fetal position with the thumb in the mouth. They worry about the entire world economy collapsing as creditors flee the sovereign debt of one fiscally bloated nation after another — Spain, Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Portugal. All of them have the same defects: obese welfare states, leaky pension systems and tumbling tax collections.
But every option is worse. For six years the brainiacs at the International Monetary Fund and the European Union have devised one bailout and debt restructuring scheme after another. None of them have worked. They have only saddled the Greek citizens with even more long-term debt that can’t be paid back. Greece is now sitting on $350 billion of debt. It is unpayable and the international monetary experts are deluding themselves into believing that by some magic stroke, this nation of less than 11 million citizens will some time in the future come up with the funds to repay it.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
It will only be a new beginning if they don’t go right back to what they did to get themselves into this mess — overspend. If they do, they will re-live the nightmare over and over again.
With $20 trillion in national debt, close to $200 trillion when unfunded liabilities in entitlement programs are taken into account, can the U.S. be that far behind from Greece?
How does bankruptcy change a lazy society, VERY trained on living off
other people’s money?
Hah! The Greeks just said "NO!" to that. Democracy and the voice of the majority rule!
Next month they will have another referendum declaring the end of mathematics and declare a one-year national holiday, during which everyone will eat well and get a hefty allowance of spending money from the state.
Bankruptcy isn’t the ONLY way.
Revolution is also an option.
So much for borrowing your way to prosperity, don’t tell Boehner, he won’t believe you.
Next month they will have another referendum declaring the end of mathematics and declare a one-year national holiday, during which everyone will eat well and get a hefty allowance of spending money from the state.
How in the hell did you get an advance copy of Speaker Boehner’s budget proposal???
Greece will be forced to liquidate some assets . . . in particular, some beautiful islands.
Just wait until the USA repudiates all that debt to Red China.....
I am fascinated by the assumptions of “lazy” etc. of some of the posters here.
Thatcher predicted the unworkability of the euro from day one.
Merkel is under the false assumption that lending money is a guarantee of repayment. Money is lent and interest is changed to cover the risk of non repayment.
In the USA we have bankruptcy embedded in our constitution.
Brussels is working on the assumption that “ executions will continue until moral improves.”
Goldman Sachs inflated the bonds. Brussels demanded the standard wages be made equal with other EU nations. THEN they are shocked when the Greeks have a “stamp tax” or “boston tea party” moment.
Would not be the first time the European aristocrats pushed taxes too far. (tea anyone?)
How does a revolution, in and of itself, fix anything?
Revolutions destroy, they don’t create. Creation, if it ever occurs, take place after the revolution.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.
You know, nations can do that. There is absolutely nothing obligating any legislative body to follow along with promises made by (and never paid for) previous legislative bodies. There's no constitution anywhere in the world that does that. If it were true, congress could meet once, divvy up all the tax receipts by percentage, and never have to come back again on a budget matter.
Then again, the same is true for any legislative body, even down to the local city. If a city council wishes to promise and pay for certain benefits for employees, that's great. But lacking actual payment for those promises does not obligate any future city council to consider the budget matter, much less actually pay for it.
Tiny difference.
American patriots were not borrowing money from the Brits to have the Boston
Tea Party.
No one forced Greece to borrow money to prop up their lazy, socialist
Society.
This entire fiasco has NEVER been about money. It has been about central control under Germany.
The EU has sought to make a united states of Europe out of nations which have hundreds of years of history with individual identities.
In the American colonies you had a group of people seeking rights under a single british crown.
with a load that demands 180% of GDP to repay it, you essentially have created a slave nation.
I have never seen it published. However, we've got something like $18T in "official" debt and an additional $100T in "unfunded mandates", that is, unfunded pension accounts for public service employees, primarily.
Fact is, the USA takes in about $2.5T in taxes and spends $3.5T, for an annual deficit of $1T. Year after stinking year.
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