Tagged: bailout RSS

  • 5:51 PM on May 25, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: bailout,   

    John Clarke and Bryan Dawe calculate the cost of the European debt crisis (very funny).

     
  • 1:40 PM on May 25, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: bailout   

    On European bailouts: “they’re gonna need a bigger boat”

     
  • 7:29 PM on May 12, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: bailout   

    The European Union has agreed to print, borrow, or invent $1 trillion billion Euros in order to not just bail out Greece, but to keep itself from imploding. Greece owes $400 billion, Portugal owes $175 billion, Italy, owes $2 trillion, and Spain, $820 billion. The EU is doing this from a weak position, as it has yet to recover from the 2007, subprime mortgage problems. Seeing the riots in Greece, knowing how the French strike at the drop of a hat if they are asked to give up anything, well this should be a good indication of how unwilling the people of socialistic countries are when it comes to saving their economies. What we have seen is only the beginning of the undoing of the EU. It’s a small picture of the US as it slowly moves toward Socialism.

     
    • Teresa Lo 8:38 PM on May 12, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I’m sure people in the U.S. will not easily give up their unfunded “entitlements” either. They also want to buy houses with almost no down payment, hence Fanny and Freddie, prompting some to say that the U.S. spends like a socialist nation while taxing like a capitalist nation. This won’t work either. Wouldn’t it be ironic if it turns out that there is more low-hanging fruit to pick in Europe (to help sort out the deficits) than in the U.S.?

      • Robert G. 10:28 PM on May 12, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        The next thing you know there will be a law against being a giraffe, who works to get the higher fruit. But I suppose it’s natural to believe that those who work hard have an implied “social contract” to support what your father called the lazy dogs.

        Robert

        • Teresa Lo 1:11 AM on May 13, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          That’s right. It all comes back to the question of what to do with the poor. Eventually all the money flows to the few, so it’s either revolution or in a system where every citizen has one vote, there is a trilemma, isn’t there?

          • Robert G. 9:41 PM on May 13, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

            “That’s right. It all comes back to the question of what to do with the poor”. You have made this comment a number of times in the past and I ask, who you are referring to as the Poor”? Are the poor, people without possessions or wealth, the homeless and the needy? Or are they the culturally poor lacking sufficient money to live at a standard considered comfortable or normal in a society. The word “poor” is such a generic term that can mean so many things. When you have been to Soweto, Rwanda, the Congo, or South Central Los Angeles, we are talking about poverty-stricken, penniless, money-less, impoverishment, then we are talking about poor in a cultural environment. No amount of votes will assist them in their impoverishment. It’s my sense that you are really talking about a government/cultural structured environment that will enable these people to improve the conditions they exist in and break the chains of poverty. These poor need tools and conditions to improve their conditions by governments who are truly interested in their plight. I don’t believe that any form of trilemma will assist these people short of a cultural program engendered by a benevolent government. Voting sounds nice, but when you the real plight of very poor people you see a different need. Revolutions are not carried out by poor people.

            • Teresa Lo 1:31 AM on May 14, 2010 Permalink

              For discussion, The Poor can be defined as those benefiting from the creeping “socialism” as you perceive it.

              Wouldn’t a “cultural program engendered by a benevolent government” be seen as big government takeover and/or enlarging the welfare state (or even social engineering)?

              What I said is this: we have seen that economic life is game that tends to concentrate all the money in a few hands over time. Even if all the players started out equal, the number of have-nots will eventually swamp out the haves if the game is played long enough.

              Since have-nots are entitled to vote in a democracy, we have to expect them to vote in their self-interest by electing politicians who promise to give them more, hence the results look more and more like “socialism” to you.

        • Teresa Lo 2:18 AM on May 14, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          Here, this is interesting: The Twilight of the Welfare State?

    • Teresa Lo 2:08 PM on May 13, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      James Galbraith offers another take on U.S. deficits.

    • Teresa Lo 2:20 PM on May 13, 2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      By the way, things are not exactly going well in China either as wage share decreases 22 years in a row.

  • wiinky 11:41 PM on May 11, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: bailout   

    If you run out of to things to worry, have a look at this playful WSJ site.

    State budget gaps. A fun interactive map, with sortable table columns ( click column titles to sort )

     
  • Teresa Lo 1:42 PM on May 10, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: bailout,   

    Eurozone Bailout a “Desperate Measure”? 

    Hans Redeker is frequently interviewed on Bloomberg. He went on CNBC minutes after the announcement last night, pointing out some details that seem to have gone by the wayside in the midst of today’s market rebound.



    The move so far reminds me of the horse trading that went on before the first TARP vote back in September 2008.

     
  • Teresa Lo 10:39 PM on May 9, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: bailout   

    From Awful to Shocked 

    I made a comment that the European rescue package needed to be $700 billion, not $70. And they have delivered:

    E.U. Details $957 Billion Rescue Package
    In an extraordinary session that lasted into the early morning hours, finance ministers from the European Union agreed on a deal that would provide $560 billion in new loans and $76 billion under an existing lending program. Elena Salgado, the Spanish finance minister, who announced the deal, also said the International Monetary Fund was prepared to give up to $321 billion separately.

    Officials are hoping the size of the program — a total of $957 billion — will signal a “shock and awe” commitment that will be viewed in the same vein as the $700 billion package the United States government provided to help its own ailing financial institutions in 2008. The package represented an audacious step for a union that had been criticized for acting tentatively, and without consensus, in the face of a mounting crisis.

    Underscoring the urgency of the situation, President Obama spoke to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, on Sunday about the need for decisive action to restore investor confidence. And in a sign of the spreading anxiety, the United States Federal Reserve, along with the European Central Bank and the central banks of Canada, Britain and Switzerland, announced the re-establishment of instruments known as swap lines through January 2011. The swaps are intended to help ease pressure on the euro, whose value against the dollar has fallen as fearful investors have bought up dollars.

    Many thanks to U.S. taxpayers for doing their part via the IMF, de facto admission that the problem was too big for Europa.

     
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