skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Everyone I know always looks at me like I'm an idiot (I've grown used to it) when I talk about the parallels between today and all that led up to the American Civil War (The War of Northern Aggression, but that's a debate for a different time).
Study history to understand current events. It goes 'round and 'round.
"Never underestimate the impact of supreme court rulings. The plan by a quartet of German professors to freeze the EU bail-out for Greece and block the European Central Bank’s back-door rescue through lax lending has epochal implications.
As I reported in this morning’s story after talking to two of the four, Wilhelm Hankel and Karl Albrecht Schachtschneider, the complaint is primed and ready to go to the Verfassungsgericht (constitutional court) in Karlsrühe days after the rescue mechanism is activated.
I have been scratching my head thinking about precedents and suddenly the light bulb went on: the Dred Scott case, the ruling by the US Supreme Court in 1857 that brought the simmering conflict over slavery out into the open. The [decision] forced resolution one way or another."
Telegraph
"Just reported: Greece will not cut public salaries or there wll be civil war.
There's the gauntlet folks. It means that no "assistance" can actually succeed, because it is not possible to get the fiscal situation under control without significant cuts in public spending.
This, incidentally, is the same problem we have in the US, and why attempts to deal with our fiscal situation at both state and federal levels is going to end up in the same place eventually. The majority of our budget is comprised of handouts of one form or another, whether they be Social Security, Medicare, or public-sector salaries.
The "unified opposition" by public-sector employee unions (just look at what Florida teachers ran when their pension handouts and tenure were threatened) says everything you need to know.
Greece has to be cut loose. The best way to do it is for Germany to walk away from the Euro and return to the Mark for its currency, leaving the rest of Europe to twist in the wind.
I see no other solution. Threats of civil war, which are effectively what the public sector unions here in the US have also threatened repeatedly since 2008 (and to which we have responded by refusing to cut their salaries and benefits) mean that we have the irresistible force meeting the immovable object.
All such governments who refuse to take on these bullies and meet that threat with immediate charges of inciting overthrow of the government by force (in the US this charge is known as seditious conspiracy) will fail.
We have refused to make clear that such threats will result in charges of this sort - and so have other nations such as Greece. Yet unless this is made crystal clear and this sort of approach by these unions is put down immediately all nations beset by this sort of action will fail both politically and economically.
Simply put the artificial support proffered to the financial sector should have never been put forward, but having done so, the public must now bear the cost, here, today, and immediately.
Those are the only choices folks. Greece, and indeed the entire European Union, will ultimately disintegrate (as will America) if this is not done."
Market Ticker
No food to eat, travel restricted and the air unfit to breathe. All from one volcanic eruption. How long can this go before civil unrest begins to occur? And this is potentially just the beginning if the sister of this volcano erupts.
Because of our interconnectedness the world is facing a moment of real destructive possibility. This could trigger world revolution, just as it helped to trigger the French Revolution 200 years ago. We are so tied together across the globe that hardship in Europe will be felt everywhere. Supply chains will be disrupted along with the flow of capital, each a link in a chain that must stay whole for all it's parts to work.
I don't want to sound like some crazy whack job but let history be your guide. This volcano has a history of causing massive societal disruption in Europe. It doesn't take a genius to understand that things have changed a bit since the last time because of globalization. As goes Europe, to some extent, so goes the world.
"One million Britons were stranded abroad last night by the travel paralysis caused by volcanic ash.
The unprecedented air lockdown was extended until at least 1am tomorrow, with Qantas cancelling all flights to Europe until further notice, and the chaos and confusion will drift well into next week.
...Fruit and vegetables including lettuce, grapes, spring onions and asparagus may be missing from many supermarket shelves next week and firms specialising in flying in produce from overseas are also warning of higher prices.
The transport giant Norbert Dentressangle said activity at its perishable air freight handling centre at Heathrow, the UK's largest, was at a standstill.
The result will be a three-day shortfall in the supply of products including prepacked fruit salads and flowers.
It said that while there are enough products on shelves and in warehouses to see stores through the weekend, supermarkets will be 'severely impacted' next week.
...Pilots have reported smelling sulphur dioxide, a gas released by volcanoes, in cockpits, and scientists said traces of volcanic dust on the ground had been found in Sunderland, Sheffield, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Lerwick.
The World Health Organisation said Europeans should try to stay indoors if ash starts falling from the sky.
A spokesman said the microscopic ash was potentially dangerous because inhaled particles can reach the lungs and cause respiratory problems. There is a heightened risk for those with asthma and respiratory diseases.
And while airlines are re-booking and refunding customers, critics accused insurance firms of dragging their feet in deciding whether they would compensate travellers or invoke catchall 'Act of God' clauses to escape a pay-out."
Daily Mail
Watch Europe, and in particular Greece. The European Union is structured, in many ways, just like the good ol' USA. It is comprised of a group of sovereign states organized under a central governmental authority. And just like the US, many of these sovereign states are broke.
Before becoming part of the EU these states had more options in time of emergency because they had their own currency and their own printing presses. Now, just as here in America, they are controlled by a central bank that issues a common currency. Their options are limited to selling bonds, raising taxes, cutting services and asking for handouts.
Since raising taxes or cutting services runs the very real risk of social disorder the real options are reduced to bonds and handouts. As their economies become weaker they are forced to offer higher yields on their bonds to attract buyers which only increases the risk of collapse because they won't be able to pay back the bonds without tax increases or cuts in services.
So, here in America, just as in Europe, the states are going to run to the central government (bankers) and demand to be bailed out. The central governments are in no better shape than the sovereign states but they do have printing presses. So they'll print more money, creating more debt. And in the end they'll give that money to the states, for a price. The price will be the sovereignty of the states.
Never let a good emergency go to waste.
Because the citizens have become so enslaved to the government they can't make the hard decisions necessary to retain their freedom. Slashing government programs will allow the states to avoid bondage to the central governments. All of the "safety nets" that have been put in place are going to cause the ultimate collapse of our society. Families and communities are where charity starts and where it should stay.
To defend our state sovereignty and our personal freedom we must do the hard things. We must become responsible for ourselves and our communities. We can no longer redistribute wealth from those that have to those that need unless it is done through free will acts of charity. Government long ago exceeded it's rightful authority in creating a socialist welfare state and it must be returned to it's true function. If we don't make these hard choices we will collapse.
We'll collapse into the welcoming arms of an all caring and all powerful central government. It will pull the strings and we'll do the dance. We will return to what has been the natural state of government for all of human history, up until the last 240 years of the American experiment. And if we fall back, we will never climb out of the hole again.
"With unemployment still at a severe high, a majority of states have drained their jobless benefit funds, forcing them to borrow billions from the federal government to help out-of-work Americans.
A total of 33 states and the Virgin Islands have depleted their funds and borrowed more than $38.7 billion to provide a safety net, according to a report released Thursday by the National Employment Law Project. Four others are at the brink of insolvency."
CNN
"Give people their money. It's the rallying cry of lawmakers around the country pushing back against states that are delaying tax refunds to shore up their budgets.
Holding on to the refunds allows states to use the money for other purposes, earn interest on it or simply wait until there's enough cash to cover the checks. But the cost can be an unhappy public.
"It's not the state's money, it's the people's money," said Missouri Rep. Jason Smith, R-Salem. "It's money they've overpaid to the state, and they deserve to get their money back in a prompt time."
MSNBC
"The aftermath of the financial crisis is poised to bring a simmering fiscal problem in industrial economies to the boiling point", said the Swiss-based bank for central bankers -- the oldest and most venerable of the world's financial watchdogs. Drastic austerity measures will be needed to head off a compound interest spiral, if it is not already too late for some.
..."The question is when markets will start putting pressure on governments, not if. When will investors start demanding a much higher compensation for holding increasingly large amounts of public debt? In some countries, unstable debt dynamics -- in which higher debt levels lead to higher interest rates, which then lead to even higher debt levels -- are already clearly on the horizon."
Telegraph
"California, New York and other states are showing many of the same signs of debt overload that recently took Greece to the brink -- budgets that will not balance, accounting that masks debt, the use of derivatives to plug holes, and armies of retired public workers who are counting on benefits that are proving harder and harder to pay.
...Some economists fear the states have a potentially bigger problem than their recession-induced budget woes. If investors become reluctant to buy the states' debt, the result could be a credit squeeze, not entirely different from the financial strains in Europe, where markets were reluctant to refinance billions in Greek debt.
"If we ran into a situation where one state got into trouble, they'd be bailed out six ways from Tuesday," said Kenneth S. Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard and a former research director of the International Monetary Fund. "But if we have a situation where there's slow growth, and a bunch of cities and states are on the edge, like in Europe, we will have trouble."
Yahoo Finance
Posts
