Business, Debt, Economy, Ethics, Federal Reserve Bank, Law, Morality, Private Property
Defaulters or deadbeats? As I’ve explained, “You don’t have a property title in the perceived value of your property. Nobody does.” You do, however, have an obligation to honor a contract. These borrowers think otherwise and are proud of themselves for being thieves.
NPR’s Paul Solman tells the story of some homeowners who have stopped paying their mortgages even though they can still afford them: “‘Strategic Defaulters’ Skip Mortgage Payments as Home Values Tumble.”
Debt, Democracy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Welfare
COMING TO A THEATER NEAR YOU. The excerpt is from “Land of Moussaka, Moochers and Looters,” which you can read on WND.COM:
“The public sector and its syndicates will collapse a country before they accept “austerity measures” – the focus of disaffection among Greece’s gritty street fighters is the requirement that they begin to exercise frugality.
Against the better judgment of the people in member EU states, the Eurocrats have committed to rescuing the profligate Greeks. The International Monetary Fund (for which Americans are liable, too) will assist. In exchange, the slackers striking out on city streets and against their compatriots will have to watch their public-sector wages slashed, pensions cut, pay frozen. And, horrors, Greeks will have to live with ‘liberalized labor laws,’ in other words, allow some economic freedoms to the few workers who carry the welfariat. …
The defaulting Dionysians, on the other hand, are fueled with the righteousness of the wronged. From the janitor to the journalist, they blame their politicians who, in exchange for power, only gave the demos what they demanded at the time. …
The Grecian wilding is a minor event compared to the events that’ll unfold should China quit funding our federal behemoth’s bacchanalia, and the Moody’s credit-rating agency downgrades U.S. Treasuries to junk bond status, befitting a banana republic.” …
The complete column is “Land of Moussaka, Moochers and Looters,” now on WND.COM.
Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.
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Update (May Eighth): Pat Buchanan on the Greek welfariat:
“… consider what brought Greece to where she is – running a deficit of 14 percent of gross domestic product with a debt approaching 100 percent, with Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Great Britain not that far behind.
All of Europe adopted universal health care. All voted in a shorter workweek, a higher minimum wage, greater job security, earlier retirements and munificent pensions.
As the cradle-to-grave welfare states rose, an ever-increasing share of the labor force left the private sector for the security of the public sector.
Tax-consumers, the beneficiaries of the welfare states and the bureaucrats that ran them, grew in number, as taxpayers declined as a share of the labor force. Though Greece was far from the most productive nation in Europe, Athens led the parade. …
And America is not all that far behind.
While the federal deficit is not 14 percent of GDP, it was 10 percent in 2009 and may reach 11 percent in 2010. Trillion-dollar deficits are projected through the decade, bringing the public debt – held by citizens, companies, foreign governments and sovereign wealth funds – close to 100 percent of GD
And the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and federal pensions rival those of Western Europe.
States like California and New York, larger than Greece, look a lot like Greece. Were it not for the scores of billions dished out to them by Obama’s stimulus, some of these states would have come close to the brink New York City went over in 1975.
Many of these states are today laying off teachers, letting felons out of prison and looking hard at the salaries and pensions of civil servants. While the temptation is great for Washington to bail them out again, the United States government itself has now begun to attract the concerned notice of holders of U.S.debt.” …
[SNIP]
Keynesians still manage to surprise me. Fox News’ Neil Cavuto helped disseminate ignorance and immorality when he entertained an “economist,” or just a shyster, who advanced anti-gravity claims: austerity measures were the wrong thing for Greece. National bankruptcy could never happen in the US, because we have a printing press with which to create prosperity. Just like that.
By that logic, why work? Why produce? Why not just print magic money at that paper Pantheon, and hand it out to Americans who can then sit idle on the beaches?
The world’s central bankers, entrusted as they are with keeping themselves in style and their politician friends in power, would very much like to be able to access YOUR wallet. Feel like saving Greece? Bailing out Portugal? The EU’s Uncle Jean-Claude Trichet has a plan: Let’s centralize political spending—incur debt in unison and inflate our way out of the pit. Let the serfs suffer.
“The President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, told Forbes that global governance is extremely necessary if we want to prevent another financial crisis. In his prepared printed and spoken remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations, Trichet emphasized that politicians, economists, and financiers must work across the Atlantic and collaborate on methods to create an international set of standards. It is his belief that through global governance, the resiliency of the global financial system can be assured, noting that ultimately it was governments’ use of taxpayer’s money, equivalent to around 25% of GDP on both sides of the Atlantic, that prevented another catastrophic great depression from occurring.” …
Business, Debt, Democracy, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Political Economy, Uncategorized
LAWRENCE SUMMERS, director of the White House’s National Economic Politburo, says “[m]istakes on Wall Street in the mortgage area led to the subprime bubble that led to houses appreciating, that led to the situation where millions of people got loans that they were no longer able to service and faced foreclosure.”
Credit errors made on Wall Street brought financial institutions to the brink of insolvency that left no choice but to commit taxpayer funds.
Summers has the podium and the power. He does not have to be honest about the exuberance on Wall Street being part of a creative response to crippling legislation. He could come clean, but he does not have to.
And if he wishes to remain in office, he dare not admit to the force that propels the banks and the bandits in office. In the words of Bob Higgs:
“[T]he American people have little interest in liberty. Instead, they want the impossible: home ownership for those who cannot afford homes, credit for those who are not creditworthy, old-age pensions for those who have not saved, health care for those who make no attempt to keep themselves healthy, and college educations for those who lack the wit to finish high school. Moreover, they want it now, and they want somebody else to pay for it.” …