Comments on: Greece: The Canary in the U.S. Coal Mine?

By: European Leaders Debate Severe Options for Accord | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:53:04 +0000

[...] “Greece: The Canary in the U.S. Coal Mine?” by Steven Horwitz [...]

By: J

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 22:45:50 +0000

‘Thank you’

By: J

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 22:43:21 +0000

After studying, living and breathing Romanian Dog Culture
from afar, “I’ve rediscovered the importance of breath, musical movements, etcetra.

It’s like an In-Flight Swiss Air ‘ad’ for ‘relief’”, ya know ?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 22:37:07 +0000

After living, breathing and studying Romanian dogs from afar,
I’m reliving the breathe and movement connections intertwined, kind of like the importance of a Swiss Air In-Flight Infomercial, ya know?, & good music, of course.. .

By: Nancy Kosling

Nancy Kosling — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 01:55:28 +0000

I tried to explain the Greece economic problems today to a friend as we discused the newspaper articles about it. If you have ever seen a domino display set up-ended and someone flicks the first one over and it continues to knock over the next and the next. Greece’s economy will still toppel because they have not stayed within their own GPA, then other European countries in the Euro money consort will fall, then Great Britian, Ireland, Iceland with Canada and the US in a tie will fall too. All will fall down. I have no idea where NZ and Austrailia will be in this economic mess. It is unknown how far down China and Japan will hit bottom. Political leaders have plundered the US treasury and the economy for personal gain and grand ideas. I would call them ignorant egomaniacs. The only winners will be the international bankers and their private armies. Government politicians think there is such a thing as a free ride by hiding irresponsible actions from those who have to pay for them. Then take their money and run. Not so, silly men, not so. If you think the Nazi-hunters were relentless, just wait until your planned human suffers look for you too.

By: Greece: The Canary in the U.S. Coal Mine? | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty « salemfarmsupply

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:53:17 +0000

[...] Greece: The Canary in the U.S. Coal Mine? | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty. [...]

By: Richard W. Fulmer

Richard W. Fulmer — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:03:34 +0000

Paul Krugman believes that what debtor nations need most is the ability to print more paper currency in order to pay off their debts (and, in the process, cheat their creditors). Austrian economists believe that a better solution is to increase the domestic production of goods and services. Increased production will come only from additional private savings and investment. These, in turn, can best be promoted through cuts in both taxes (which reduce private savings) and government spending (which crowds out private investment), and by reducing or eliminating regulations that retard business creation and growth.

Austerity measures that call for cutting government spending and raising taxes only get it half right, as do Keynesians who call for cutting taxes and raising government spending.

By: Philip Frommholz

Philip Frommholz — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:58:20 +0000

I understand that 1-2 trillion dollars is sitting on the sidelines held by US corporations due to fear and insecurity, lack of faith, in the governments fiscal policies. If the govt demonstrated a conscientious plan to deal with the deficits, reduce taxes, and make an attempt to rein in irresponsible spending business would whole heartedly respond with investment. Over control and under delivery always producess the opposite result than is intended.
Delete

By: Peter Manousakos

Peter Manousakos — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:07:58 +0000

I don’t know why I bother sometimes. I came to the realization that if personal happiness is my ultimate goal, then I’ll have to accept the fact that the world refuses to embrace the promise of austerity. I don’t even think of it as austerity. I think it’s a terrible word for what we have to do as individuals and as a society. If communities can band together to get the state out of their way, and we see this expand to hundreds and then thousands of communities, then change will happen. In the meantime my friends, profit from the stupidity and poor judgement of your governments and fellow citizens. You owe you family and friends more than you owe a society bent on self-destruction. Practice charity, empowerment of those in hardship but DO NOT fall into the trap that the ‘state’ is laying out for itself and you. Peace and Prosperity to us all!

By: deanmyrick

deanmyrick — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:46:11 +0000

I am in agreement with this article. I will add something I wrote to some friends today concerning the current economic climate:

At the G20 meeting in Toronto last week all of the European leaders came to the conclusion that they have to cut benefits and spending to keep them from all going the way of Greece (heavily indebted and near bankruptcy). Instead of our president agreeing with them, he told them that we need to increase borrowing for more stimulus spending. Needless to say, the european leaders went away from the meeting extremely shocked at his position. Now there are rumors that the European Union may stop pegging the value of the euro to the dollar. You may ask why that matters. That matters for the following reasons.

1. That would very likely lead to a downgrade of the United States international credit rating by Moody’s.
2. It would also very likely result in the Chinese no longer pegging their currency, the yuan, to the dollar.
3. This will almost assuredly result in the dollar going into a free-fall because the dollar would no longer be the international currency that it is. Right now, banks all over the world prop it up because all other major currencies are tied to it’s value. With nothing tied to it’s value, there is no need to prop it up (in fact, it would be stupid for them to do that).

Since the dollar is not tied to the value of anything else (like say, gold) it’s only value is the faith that people put into it (for example, other countries pegging the value of their currency to it). It’s current actual value is 4 cents on the dollar.

When that faith is gone, and I think that is quickly happening on the world economic stage, the dollar could drop like a rock. That would mean that our debt and it’s interest would skyrocket and inflation would go through the roof. Other countries would stop lending us money to finance our massive spending. A possible result of this would be severe cuts in our social welfare spending. That would probably result in civil unrest like what we saw in Greece, but on a much more massive scale.

I hope and pray that I am wrong. I am not trying to be an alarmist. The only way I can see this possibly being avoided would be through some quick and very serious spending cuts across the board on our part showing the rest of the world that we are serious about getting our economic house in order. I am not saying this for political reasons, but, I believe a fiscally conservative take-over of Congress would also help because other countries would know that fiscal conservatives are much more likely to put a stop to our runaway train of spending.