Posts by Angus Robertson
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Hard News: European Horror Stories, in reply to BenWilson,
This was about the only thing that the Allies really learned that was of any use from that war - that throttling a country to death does not lead to peace, and that building it up rapidly is the very best way to gain a powerful and loyal ally. If only the Germans themselves could have learned from any of these lessons.
Then it comes down to how do you fix a broken economy?
Do institute painful austerity conditions upon investment, like the West Germans did to East Germany in the 1990s? A method that succeeded to such an extent that a combined Germany is now being hailed as the potential saviour of Europe.
Or
Do you get German taxpayers to give $billions to multi-national banksters to pay off Greeks debts, so that the Greeks can continue to live a marvellous lifestyle? A lifestyle that has resulted in them being so broke it mimics losing a World War.
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Hard News: European Horror Stories, in reply to Stephen R,
+ 1
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It's an option that is very much worth considering. You don't present any reasonable argument why not.
The Germans really don't like it, their existential beliefs equate high inflation with very very bad things happening.
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Hard News: European Horror Stories, in reply to Russell Brown,
If you want to be surprised about private debt check out the total debt/GDP ratio on zero hedge and look at the UK compared to anyone.
Bonus points - NZ, thank goodness we don't have any banks.
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Since the Germans can't pay, the money to finance Giovanni's socially progressive wonderful future would have to come from somewhereelse.
China, Brazil and India are possibilities, but even an Italian communist might balk at the counter-intuitiveness of having some peasent in the Amazonian rainforest pay more tax so a Greek hairdresser can retire at 45.
The Gulf Arabs have lots of petrodollars and there are quite a few muslims in Europe so that could work, but socially progressive might be off their agenda.
The eurozone could monetise their debt (print lots of money) and then in a few years we can have essays looking at the tracking of 10,000 euro notes near to the Swiss border. Probably much of southern Europe (Giovanni included) is angling for this print lots of money option, but the Germans have very deep cultural misgivings about it.
Austerity seems preferable to all of those.
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As unfathomable as the European debt crisis can seem, one clear moral narrative has never been far from the surface: the feckless Greeks had it coming. Their explosion of debt-fuelled public spending, their workshy, tax-dodging ways got them where they are and they're just going to have to wear the consequences.
That narrative is totally correct.
The source of most of the bailout funding is, of course, the German taxpayer...
The average German taxpayer can't afford to bail out the Greeks and expect to have any sort of retirement pension payments from the German government when she retires.
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No that thing that makes intuitive sense does so because it is sensible.
But this ... conveniently overlooks the imbalances that this conduct causes elsewhere in the system, as well as that the strategy works – to a point – precisely because of these imbalances.
Unfortunately that point to which the system "works" can be seen (with hindsight) as being 2008. At which point the system ground to a halt. As opposed to:
If everyone behaved like Germany, overall economic activity would grind to a halt.
Really? It might I suppose, but it hasn't actually been tried so we don't know for sure.
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Hard News: Can we get an adult up in here?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Quite - and let me draw an analogy here. I'm working at the dining room table with the ranchslider open. If I go to the toilet and come back to discover someone passing by opportunistically hooked off with my laptop, does my poor security somehow mitigate or even justify that I got burgled?
If you'd been using your laptop to clandestinely obtain data on the neighbourhood kids (who you suspected were messing up floral borders) and then your laptop was stolen by one of those kids. When the contents of your laptop gets published along with the credit card details of all the people who have been paying you to spy on those kids (and others), are you really the aggrieved party?
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Srsly? Is this our image of a feminist heroine? To be strong she has to be infallible, and standing up to her ankles in intestines?
To be a hero the protagonist has make the heroic sacrifice. In an action flick the first and most easily performed sacrifice is to lose most of their humanity.
Your character doesn't count as a strong female character because they're "not really a woman".
Not really a man* though either, something more akin to an avenging angel - inhuman.
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Have you seen the Maggie Thatcher movie?