Free Republic

Here is an interesting Gallup poll that came my way today from a friend "BC". The poll was taken last month. It shows European Countries Lead World in Distrust of Banks.   Thirteen percent of Greeks said they had confidence in their country's banks or financial institutions in 2012, leading the nearly all-European list of countries where trust in financial institutions was among the worst in the world last year. Seven European Union countries had trust levels lower than 30%, far below the median 55% across 135 countries. Even in the EU's largest funder of the eurozone bailouts, Germany, fewer than four...

I received still more emails from French and Canadian readers on preserving culture. Since it's a slow news day, let's take a look at them. Olivier writes "Wouldn't a true conservative pay at least some respect to local cultural norms instead of trying to impose some economic diktat from on down?" Talk about getting things ass backwards. It is the social police attempting to impose cultural and economic diktats to preserve the local bookstore and the local farm to the point of absolute absurdity. Email From Canada Reader Mike from Canada writes ... Hi Mish, I totally agree with the...

8 Years Later, Athens Olympic Venues in Decay There's still one group that loves the training pool for athletes at the former Olympic village in Athens' northern fringe. Frogs. They appear to delight in sitting on debris that floats on the half-filled pool's murky waters. The athletes village itself has fared somewhat better, turned into housing for workers. Eight years after the 2004 Athens Games, many of the Olympic venues Greece built at great expense remain abandoned or rarely used. They are the focus of great public anger as the country struggles through a fifth year of recession and nearly...

Nearly 10 years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld provoked outrage by referring to "Old Europe." How dare he, snapped the French and Germans, call us "old" when the utopian European Union was all the rage, the new euro was soaring in value, and the United States was increasingly isolated under the Bush administration! Yet the more things change in Europe, the more they stay the same. The island of Britain usually is, and is not, a part of Europe -- carefully pulling out when things heat up, terrified that it will be pulled back in when things boil over....

Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to veto Germany's demand for a new European fiscal union will define his premiership. More than that, Cameron has raised a banner for patriots everywhere fighting to retain their national independence. With his no vote on fiscal union, Cameron declared to the EU: "British surrenders of sovereignty come to an end here. And Britain will deny Brussels any oversight authority of any national budgets or any right to sanction EU members." The euro-skeptic right is understandably ecstatic. "He Put Britain First," thundered the Daily Mail. "There is now a wonderful opportunity for Britain gradually to...

A key difference between Greece’s fiscal crisis and crises in nations with their own currency is that its citizens’ wealth wouldn’t be destroyed by a devaluation. In the case of Greece, a devaluation could only be achieved by leaving the euro and reviving the drachma at some significant discount to the common currency. But because Greeks hold their savings in euros, their monetary wealth would remain untouched — at least if their bank deposits are secure. This reality may make the prospect of Greece leaving the euro somewhat less frightening to Greeks — and somewhat more likely to occur.