The NYT Instructs Germany How To Behave and Save Europe: Spend and Loan More!

Abstract: The New York Times advises Germany to continue to lend to the beggars in the European Union. The best option is for Germany to opt out of this wreckage as the debt levels are so high that many members of the EU cannot recover and must default. It is terminal this time.

When we read politically predisposed essays we are obliged to translate the words into clearly explicable parts so we can obtain a clear and broad view on how and why the statements appear as they do. This requires some background research into the subject matter, the authors and an assessment of the direction by which the political organization that created this missive is directing our attention to. Simplifying this task, we can start out with the provable knowledge that the bankrupt[1] New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[2][3]-- has steadfastly echoed the elements of socialism or world government anywhere and everywhere on this planet for some 7 decades or more.  And, what do we expect today? Anything different?

As for background, we need to merely inspect the basic elements of what happened in Europe since the 1870s to see that Germany is both the growth engine and the most warlike element in the current shaky European Union, which is not so European, certainly not a union but a hurried assemblage of mostly weak sisters who huddle together to prevent another world war. Peace must be sustained at all costs.

To analyze the text, we have to highlight certain words or slogans that define the ultimate fire wall of the political group and these give us the translation we need. Thankfully Maureen Dowd, the Old Red Lady [4][5][6]of the Old Gray Lady, has conveniently provided us with her ‘Unspoken Words Theorem.’ She has the supernatural but politically stimulated facility to hear what is not spoken and provide us with an analysis and we might borrow this method to print herein what is not mentioned in this op-ed today. We can thus extract the exact meaning in a given text.

How to best read my blogs:

[I offer extensive quotes in this blog/essay so that the reader can view the exact language and can be confident that nothing was taken out of context or that nobody was misquoted. The easiest way to take in the salient points is to read the emphatic points in the quotes and then peruse my comments. Comments on my comments are always welcome: ryckki@gmail.com.]

Starting off, we look at the opening salvo from this little piece and highlight the buzz words, slogans and themes:

“Germany’s commitment to the European Union has been central to its postwar rehabilitation and its economic success. For years, Germany played the role in Europe that America so frequently plays globally — the locomotive whose dynamism and demand helps turn around recessions before they deepen into depressions.”

“Now, at the worst possible moment, Germany is turning to nationalist illusions. Europe’s past economic successes are now viewed as German successes. Europe’s current deep problems are everyone else’s except Germany’s. That is neither realistic nor sustainable. But German politicians and commentators are callously and self-destructively feeding these ideas.”[7]-- Germany vs. Europe By the Editorial Staff Published: May 26, 2010 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

The first word here [rehabilitation] is a 60 year old catch word that is daily reiterated to remind us of German militarism dating back to Frederick. The Russians are never mentioned in such a comparative  context even though they murdered 50 million souls since 1917 and dominated most of Europe for half a century with disastrous results. So, we begin with a reproof of previous actions in Europe that really date back some 25 centuries but the payoff is that the political focus is made current for us and stripped bare of any tinsel or spangles.  This word is intercalated with the derogatory terms nationalist illusions that immediately remind us of Fascism.  Fascism bad—Marxism good. The comment about everyone else in the EU cluster is a crude gloss and an unveiled but persnickety condemnation that clearly states that Germany can adjust to many political climates and continue to remain prosperous. This is clearly not the outcome that most liberals and especially their Neo-Marxist brothers in liberalism wanted to see. They wanted Germany to be a common player in this socialist game and not rise above the hated median[8] that exposes the losers from the rest of the pack. The words “callously and self-destructively feeding these ideas” are merely wandering around the central argument of this piece and are avoiding the direct accusation that Germany is the best of the best and they know it.

This tells it all. The rest is comprised of some fluff, threats and other puerile antics that tend to compel this mighty nation into a soft-soap acquiescence to the maudlin standards of socialism, where everybody loses.

Now, for the specifics:

The EU is collapsing from debt derived from the insatiable nostrum that the ‘rich’ can be taxed to create a wonderful society reminiscent of the utopias[9] of the past. [10] The threat is that Germany might leave the EU and that is clearly the best option as the rest of the weak sisters, affectionately known as PIIGS, are hopelessly mired in terminal debt. Germany has some tough decisions to make here and most of them that include staying in the sticky cluster of the EU are not realistic.

The English have a different view:

“The European financial crisis may look and smell rather different to the American banking crisis of a couple of years ago, but strip away the details – the breakdown of the euro, the crumbling of the Spanish banking system to take just two – and what you are left with is the next leg of a global financial crisis. Politicians temporarily "solved" the sub-prime crisis of 2007 and 2008 by nationalising billions of pounds' worth of bank debt. While this helped reinject a little confidence into markets, the real upshot was merely to transfer that debt on to public-sector balance sheets.”[11]-- Is Europe heading for a meltdown? By Edmund Conway, Telegraph.  This financial crisis is worse than the sub-prime crash of 2008 because the sums are so much bigger and it is governments that are in dire straits. Edmund Conway explains the dangers [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

That is what we just did. We took in massive  debt in the form of ‘affordable housing’[12] from people with little or no credit or jobs and tucked it into the government’s dust bins known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to rot and then tried to make up the lost  action  in the GDP rate with more debt. The only real difference in the short term is that the U.S. can handle this for a few years but the EU has exceeded the elastic limit of debt stress and will soon snap. You cannot spend[13] your way out of debt.[14] We need to watch California[15][16][17]and the EU collapse to learn the hard lessons about debt and ignorance in governance.

Now, ‘reasons’ why they should help out the Greeks and other beggars:

“After a rough stretch following reunification, Germany took the tough decisions necessary to restore its competitiveness and revive growth. As a result, it is doing far better than the rest of Europe, with a low fiscal deficit and strong export surpluses. But its export-dependent economy would sputter if European consumers — its main customers — could no longer afford to buy its goods. German banks lent billions to Greece and other troubled European countries. If things don’t turn around quickly, those loans may have to be written down.”— Germany vs. Europe

Now, for the missing parts supplied by the Unheard Words Theorem:

The reunification process was a pathology from the old Soviet system. It was a disgrace to the world that reflects the obvious defects of a command economy and the NYT must not broach the subject too closely because that is that is what they want for the entire EU and the US as well. The lefties see loot here ripe for the plunder so they play on mistakes made by Germany dating back to a dozen decades or so they play upon the misplaced and unjustifiable guilt of the Germans.  They always know how to spend your money better than you can. We know that the German banks lent money to the hapless Greeks and other socialist losers but the threat that those loans may have to be written down is not valid unless you believe that [1] this may not happen again because of more prudent spending but if it did then the banks will have to write off much more debt and [2] flicking some alms into a bottomless pit like Greece or Spain will bring some rewards if even limited to those select countries. There is little hope that the PIIGS can recover from this without a series of massive sovereign defaults.[18]

Now, we place blame on the winners in the usual Marxian style. Germany is at fault for not putting the losers in the stocks and whacking their behinds:

 “Europe’s most-troubled economies today — Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy — bear plenty of responsibility for this mess. They spent lavishly during the bubble. They failed to reform their rigid and inefficient labor markets and to contain their increasingly uncompetitive wage costs. The rest of Europe, including Germany, should have demanded adjustments earlier, but didn’t.”— Germany vs. Europe

A reading of the EU treaty does not give any nation any meaningful control over another sovereign state. Further, there is no way to control Greece’s spending other than by browbeating coupled with the threat of pulling back all financial support for these idiots. Their whole country is swamped by Marxist unions who demand cushy jobs, early retirement, tax loopholes and do not want to work.

Germany should pay for this:

 “With devaluation not an option for euro members, Europe’s high-deficit countries have been forced into steep tax increases and deep spending cuts to bring their soaring deficits under control and calm the bond markets. Necessary as they are, these cuts also run a very high risk of plunging the Continent into deep recession this year unless Germany offsets them with aggressive stimulus of its own. We hope Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will remind German officials of that on his visit to Berlin on Thursday.”— Germany vs. Europe

The devaluation comment line merely highlights the preposterous notion that a slapstick collection of countries can share a common currency given the dissimilar attitudes and work ethics of their members. The combination of steep tax increases and deep spending cuts will only ensure that their GDPs will drop like rocks. The EU is already in deep recession because of their foolish debt. It is unclear how Germany would offset anything that might secure some aggressive stimulus of their own. Germany has done its best under her own conditions and that works well. The rest of the EU members have not.  All this growth madness fails to persuade because there is no investment capital at hand here—only some liquidity for the banks of the fallen. Who would invest in Greece with their taxes and confiscatory mentality for foreigners?

Germany’s direction to date:

“Instead of committing to more spending, Germany is now preparing a multiyear program of deep spending cuts. Given its troubled history, we can understand its fear of deficit spending and inflation. But right now more German austerity will likely cripple Europe’s nascent recovery and Germany’s own prosperity. That is another hard truth that Mrs. Merkel needs to tell her party and her country”— Germany vs. Europe

This is standard liberal socialism or worse. Let the winner sacrifice everything earned from prudent handling of their economy and assets and hope that this booty will do some good for the losers in the meanwhile. It is okay if everybody is broke but there can be no winner in this. This is identical to the hackneyed concept of ‘tax the rich’ and ‘spread it around a bit’ mentality of the left.  We all know that the begging and taunts will continue and even if the Germans put up more loans and other alms the process will continue in a downward loop like a dead buzzard falling from the sky. Abandon hope when you listen to socialists.

As usual, the NYT advises thrusting money[19] toward the ‘poor,’ a process that is incessant and will continue to guide their every analysis and also ever jot and tittle on every page of their protoMarxian screeds and crass  pleas for alms. For the left, they always identify wealth in any location and demand that that be spent on their social programs or themes.

Germany must opt out of the EU and let the weak sisters stew in their own rot and circumstance. There is no hope for socialism.

rycK

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

 The New York Times Advises: Plan B: Skip College. They Missed Plans A, C and D.

The bankrupt New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1][2]-- has many heroic and phenomenal accomplishments, mostly bestowed upon themselves with much pomp and circumstance and with a necessary due diligence to carefully avoid their earlier mistakes in journalism and thinking. Their noisiest fans are Marxists. Barrowing their hackneyed theme on the comments about the shrunken remains of Marxism the “…idea was correct, and still is, but people didn’t carry out the dream successfully and we really need to try again.” This is an ongoing essay in tautology. The word education is more properly translated as propaganda by those dedicated leftists who believe they have some solutions to the world’s problems almost utterly caused by the crass evils capitalism. Today, they embark on a new and wonderful change in education.

Education, as an institution, or more properly called a scamish job mill for the semi competent worker, occupies the central star in the galaxy of social programs for the left. Who could be against education or ejukashon[3] as it might be more colloquially pronounced in places like California.[4][5][6] This notion is the topic of an interesting op-ed by Jacques Steinberg in the Times. The central theme is that education is required for some jobs but not necessarily all and that we need some alternatives to our current system, as always. This is Plan B. This is also a very stale essay.

Jacques Steinberg begins with our lesson for today:

“The idea that four years of higher education will translate into a better job, higher earnings and a happier life — a refrain sure to be repeated this month at graduation ceremonies across the country — has been pounded into the heads of schoolchildren, parents and educators. But there’s an underside to that conventional wisdom. Perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor’s degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years, according to the latest projections from the Department of Education. (The figures don’t include transfer students, who aren’t tracked.)”[7]--Plan B: Skip College By Jacques Steinberg Published: May 14, 2010 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

As an echo here, we also note that about half those who attempt to graduate from high school also share this very disappointing metric in many schools around the nation and almost always in the major cities. I wonder if there is some connection. This prompts us to wonder if some of these are the same people. But, that question is not so politically correct so we need to follow the theme here and behave. This observation is not exactly new or even unpredictable so there must be some agenda that will advance the causes of unionized teachers or administrators.

Then, a key metric shines brightly and illuminates this article:

“For college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even more stark: 80 percent will probably never get a bachelor’s degree or even a two-year associate’s degree.”--Plan B: Skip College By Jacques Steinberg

Bingo! But, how can this be? And, now for the central but unaddressed question here: why did we ever think that those on the bottom tail of the Bell Curve [below IQ = 100] would ever be able to handle college? Does IQ have anything to do with this? This is currently the thinking in Plan A and it works in advanced education only for those with IQs greater than about 110.  I think we already knew that and it is called the education gap. [8]  This gap is the difference between average test scores of white and blacks or 100- 85 for a 15 point difference [one standard deviation]. These 15 IQ points have even been acknowledged by the New York Times.[9] This gap was first noticed about 1905. [10] There is nothing new here so this article is at best a pot boiler.

“Among those calling for such alternatives are the economists Richard K. Vedder of Ohio University and Robert I. Lerman of American University, the political scientist Charles Murray, and James E. Rosenbaum, an education professor at Northwestern. They would steer some students toward intensive, short-term vocational and career training, through expanded high school programs and corporate apprenticeships.”--Plan B: Skip College By Jacques Steinberg

The Bell Curve, one of whose authors is mentioned in the paragraph above, debunks this phony theory of equality with numerous—nay millions—of examples.[11] The notion of a bell curve, and particularly if such a curve or curves are compiled from race-sorted data, is outlawed by the left in all conversations and thinking. Whites and Asians mostly rank in a median value of 100-102 but blacks and some Hispanics rank lower with a median at about  IQ=85. The existence of such a social monster as cognitively weighted standardized testing violates the ultimate basis of the political concept of equality.[12][13] Never mind that half of any population has to be in the bottom half--this is still unfair. Socialism depends upon such nostrums as equality and many far leftist governments have solved this problem by a simple extermination of the cognitive elite an example demonstrated to the world by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge political party in Cambodia.[14] To kill off the top tail of the Bell Curve in a given society actually does yield equality in a warped sense. But, this does make political sense in leftist terms.

The article trundles forward even reviewing the German testing system [Plan A] that divides and steers most of the students into college versus a vocational educational system. But, from the lower tail[15] of the Bell Curve we get this response:

“Peggy Williams, a counselor at a high school in suburban New York City with a student body that is mostly black or Hispanic, understands the argument for erring on the side of pushing more students toward college.

“If we’re telling kids, ‘You can’t cut the mustard, you shouldn’t go to college or university,’ then we’re shortchanging them from experiencing an environment in which they might grow,” she said.”--Plan B: Skip College By Jacques Steinberg

No, we are not. This is the standard political whine we hear from those who cannot compete in our society for many assorted reasons. The German testing tuition system of Arbitur[16] [ the "Begabtenprüfung" or "test of aptitude"] actually is a Plan A  and it works very well in  Finland too. If there was some charge to finish high school by the left then this comment might make sense, but it only calls for more spending on ‘education’ and wasting that money.  This essay runs off into the social swamps here with comments like this:

““It’s not just about the economic return,” he said. “Some college, whether you complete it or not, contributes to aesthetic appreciation, better health and better voting behavior.””—[comment quote by Morton Schapiro] in Plan B: Skip College By Jacques Steinberg

At this point, I am tempted to suggest that much of our latent ‘education’ is mere propaganda. The assembly of propaganda pieces[17][18][19][20][21] and other blends of disinformation are designed to sway the reader with some guarantee of money, justice or, more appropriately: the notion that justice will claw-back some of the ill-gotten money or hides of evil doers and capitalists.  Victims must be identified, praised and the wrongdoers punished, at best, with higher taxes or more legislation. This article by Steinberg skirts around the raw edges of this but really misses the defined opportunity espoused by President Obama:

Here, Obama theorizes of ways to avoid the Bell Curve:

“Standardized testing is stuck in the crossfire in the debate over accountability, and Obama has stepped up to take aim. He says that too often standardized tests fail to provide valuable or timely feedback. Meanwhile, “creativity has been drained from classrooms, as too many teachers are forced to teach to fill-in-the-bubble tests,” Obama says. He doesn’t go so far as to say he’ll drop testing completely; it should be one of the “tools that we use to make sure our children are learning. It just can’t dominate the curriculum to an extent where we are pushing aside those things that will actually allow children to improve and accurately assess the quality of the teaching that is taking place in the classroom.” How does he plan to revamp testing? “I will provide funds for states to implement a broader range of assessments that can evaluate higher-order skills, including students’ abilities to use technology, conduct research, engage in scientific investigation, solve problems, present and defend their ideas,” says Obama.[22]

Education must sometimes be only propaganda.

We all know that affirmative action is a tacit admission of the failure of ‘education’ to equip each of our citizens with an equivalent set of mental and entrepreneurial skills and opportunities so they can compete. Cognitive equality is an oxymoron. There is no way you can give standardized tests and ensure that everybody gets the average test grade with nobody getting a higher or a lower test result. Or, even the more absurd notion that everybody can score above the median. The much maligned book The Bell Curve[23], sometimes accused of actually causing the ‘problem’ of cognitive distribution in the US, actually states the blunt facts about our societies and the distribution of mental skills. This salient fact that half the people who take the standardized test will score below the median is the rallying point for ‘change’ in ‘education.’[24] That is not fair. Society must be equalized.[25] Thus propaganda must replace education. The Bell Curve correctly predicts what groups [NOT individuals] will probably pass high school, college and who will excel in the work place—and who will not—but strictly on a group basis. It doesn’t work for individuals. This fact commits millions to menial jobs for lack of certain skills but is casus belli for the political left.[26] Politically, then, about half the populations of various minorities and the white majority are candidates for political exploitation based only on their intrinsic skills. This works well politically and that is where about 50% of the votes are derived.[27]

So, in nearly all of the 14,000 school districts across the land there are no school systems where blacks routinely score higher than whites on standardized tests with roughly 50:50 population ratios. These tests have been stringently rewritten to expunge the ‘white bias’ and ‘be fair’ and when re-administered have produced the same results; A15 point deficiency is nearly always observed. If the 15 point gap was a myth then we would expect to see about half the school districts showing blacks proportionately populating the upper half of the academic population and we observe essentially none of this. Money is not the solution as the Washington, D.C, school system spends the most money on their students and have probably the worst academic record in America.[28] Money is clearly not the answer.[29] The lefties tacitly admit (without saying it directly) that affirmative action is absolutely necessary for many minorities to compete in our society. They either don’t have the cognitive skills or refuse to use them, or a combination of both. The use of race-norming was used to disguise this gap. [30][31] This worked by sorting test scores by race, forming two averages, taking the difference and adding that difference to the black test scores.[32][33] This is now illegal. Such a practice, while being wholly alien to decency is a grand example of the left’s ability to sanction intellectual dishonesty. This is a characteristic of the liberal progressive where decency, truth, mendacity and other desirable human attributes are cast aside for political gain. You can be a liar, thief, a pervert or anything else like Bill and Hillary Clinton and welcome warm applause from the far left.

Push Plan B and get “something.”

“Nonetheless, Professor Rosenbaum said, high school counselors and teachers are not doing enough to alert students unlikely to earn a college degree to the perilous road ahead.

“I’m not saying don’t get the B.A,” he said. “I’m saying, let’s get them some intervening credentials, some intervening milestones. Then, if they want to go further in their education, they can.””--Plan B: Skip College By Jacques Steinberg

The Politics:

“Still, by urging that some students be directed away from four-year colleges, academics like Professor Lerman are touching a third rail of the education system. At the very least, they could be accused of lowering expectations for some students. Some critics go further, suggesting that the approach amounts to educational redlining, since many of the students who drop out of college are black or non-white Hispanics.””--Plan B: Skip College By Jacques Steinberg

Again, the minorities cannot compete on equal terms and this truncates their meager chances.

This pathetic pathway is apparently Plan B.  Plan A, from testing, excludes more than 3/4 of our society from benefiting from a legitimate B.A. or B. S. or  higher. College is only for a few. Path B, mumbled to death in this article is nothing but affirmative action reboiled and offered with some new excuses for failure preemptively supplied. Liberalism insists on equal outcomes in any arena but mostly for jobs. [34] This is a tangled form of Incrementalism (Muddling Through, Disjointed Incrementalism, Incremental Planning).[35]

Plan C, in my view, and an advance over Plan B  would be some system whereby businesses would set up education systems of their own and teach, perhaps in a year or less, the skills needed for jobs in that business for that level. This could be accomplished by corporations cooperatively sponsoring various schools nationwide. They could decide what [if anything] could be done with partial college training or partial high school work in an individual case before entry. The school could monitor the diligence of the students and filter out those who do not have the determination to succeed. Note that it is the cognitive skill base that is the most important determinant for academic learning and that can easily be detected by extensive testing of candidate students. But, that is also an ethnic filter in several cases. Therein lays a massive political barrier. Plan C would tailor employees with a focused education to fit various job descriptions and hence abusing the notion of equality or equal outcomes.

Plan D, my plan, is to focus the spending on education only on effective path ways. If students cannot pass standardized exams in their first year in high school then they would be offered some vocational training such as works in Germany. We have a society with a job spectrum of cognitive and other essential skills and agreeing with some of the comments above in this article college is not required for all cases. We should be careful to not give ‘education’ more praise than it deserves from the government point of view. The voting comment above [better voting behavior] refers to the use of political propaganda flatly defined as ‘education’ when it is not. There is no reason to bluntly limit the educational level of any person if they are qualified in cognitive terms to continue on. But, there is also no need to overeducate persons for which no job exists at that level. It is even worse to manufacture jobs. We have a form of bell curve in our job categories in our country and the most efficient way to fill them is to provide enough education for the individual to succeed at that level. If better jobs appear and there is a need for greater skills then some extra education would obviously be required for some and that level should be made competitive and determined by standardized testing along with the wishes of the student and the job giver in concert. Everyone should attain the highest level they can for their job. This fails as standardized testing magnifies the bell curves intrinsic to our society.

But, any plan other than B, and particularly one in which there is minimal student testing and certainly no teacher credential testing, will be blocked by the left based on their warped equal outcomes mantra. Nobody knows better than the left what a failure our system is in places like California, and particularly exemplified by cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Los Angeles, Philly, Atlanta and New Orleans—all liberal bastions of government and ‘education.’

In our current political atmosphere there is no hope for Plans A, C or D.  Plan B is just a mumbler’s paradise where more money can be wasted for political reasons. That will maintain ‘equality’ for all. There is the place where new jobs for the left will appear to ‘solve’ a problem that insolulable. This means job security for many at our expense.  And, they wonder why many jobs disappear here and reappear overseas. This will continue.  Companies in the US routinely import people to fill job slots that cannot be filled. The equal outcomes nostrum just dumbs down America and that is one of the left’s best accomplishments.

rycK

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

Friedman of the NYT Mumbles about Greece’s Newest Odyssey: The Path to Marxist Revolution is at Hand.

Abstract: Thomas Friedman of the NYT meets with a member of the Papandreou Dynasty for fish and feta cheese and is properly enchanted by the predictions that Greece will ‘reform’ and ‘change’ their society. The bond holders and vigilantes are suitably cast as greedy capitalist demons by the use of hackneyed anti-capitalist phrases from a dedicated socialist. Papandreou promises what Greece cannot deliver even if every Greek cast off their socialist garb and returned to realism. The rescue package for Greece only services the debt for a short while and there is no capital in this bundle that is necessary to grow the economy. Thus, the plan is a farce to begin with.  We are urged to believe that a new Odysseus emerges to save their country from financial oblivion. A new King Leonidas of Sparta will revisit a modern Battle of Thermopylae fought hand to hand in the bond arena. Friedman is properly enchanted by this promise. This will end in failure and revolution.

The word tautological[1] would be so obscure if not for political propaganda machines like the New York Times that pursue single-objective themes. Their writers[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and staff[12] thrash about in some ideological contest to see if any might wax noble enough to match the elegant essays and airy enlightenment of their honored Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty.[13]He enchanted them with a certain literary mantle of invincibility and indelible fame in the 1930s when the Times published his leftist-sanctioned political lies and received uncultivated acclaim from the depression-era masses who could now openly celebrate the leadership of Josef Stalin while he happily murdered millions. Uncle Joe was for the people.

Duranty refined propagandistic processes for the NYT and attained a higher and loftier status than ordinary propagandists rising well above the stature of Eugene Debs. He labored with pencil and paper like those busy workers who must pound upon their rusty anvils to hammer out narrow ideological snippets of propaganda and thus turn or twist any news event into some new and pressing validation for bugger government. He was able to summon a retreat from prejudice against Marxist monsters [or now, the new Islamo-Fascists[14]] and prattle on endlessly about the undying splendor of higher taxes and authoritarian controls.[15] Most pedestrian-level keyboard plunkers on the Times’ staff cannot show us even an inkling of this lost literary art as they cannot synthesize even a modicum of the  original political magic of the Duranty Essence because of their manifold ineptitudes and transparent sophistry of their contributions, but they try. They really need more political training.

Today, one of their rank-and-file scribblers relates his wonderful experience having lunch with Greece’s current leader George Papandreou, who is one his way out the political door because he dares to defy the unions and promises to cut government spending. Friedman is properly tantalized at the pomp and circumstance of this epic union with majesty. He fawns with obsequiousness.

How to best read my blogs:

[I offer extensive quotes in this blog/essay so that the reader can view the exact language and can be confident that nothing was taken out of context or that nobody was misquoted. The easiest way to take in the salient points is to read the emphatic points in the quotes and then peruse my comments. Comments on my comments are always welcome: ryckki@gmail.com.]

We begin this interview:

“For a man whose country’s wobbly finances have kept the world on edge for months, the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, evinces an Obama-Zen-like calm. He is just back from meeting fellow European Union leaders, who decided to try to stave off a Greek meltdown and an E.U. crackup with a show of overwhelming force — committing nearly $1 trillion to support the economy of any ailing member state.”[16]-- Greece’s Newest Odyssey By Thomas L. Friedman Op-Ed Columnist Published: May 11, 2010 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Other than name dropping, this fantasy is simply a crass form of oblique praise for another leftist. Obama has no calm—all he shows is impatience and anger.  There is no calm in Europe if you read the authoritative sources in Germany and England. This is a financial crisis.[17] This new rescue money is wasted and everybody knows it.  But, the pomp and pretense continue. The NYT attempts to help out in the propagandistic sense. Friedman hears his master’s voice.

Entire system must change:

“But over a lunch of Greek salad and grilled fish, Papandreou makes clear that he knows that the deal with the E.U. was not your garden-variety bailout-for-budget-cuts. No, if you really look closely at what it will take for Greece to mend its economy, this is actually a bailout-for-a-revolution. Greece’s entire economic and political system will have to change for Greeks to deliver their side of this bargain.”--Greece’s Newest Odyssey 

Friedman mangles his words here in some attempt to place this disaster into some kind of workable context. The revolution is at hand.  We should be keyed into the historical fact that the current guy in charge in Athens is a son and grandson of former Greek prime ministers. Greece is in terrible financial, social and economic troubles.[18] They even lied about their debt to get into the European Union from which they milk much sop.  They tried to hide their massive debts after that. Their military budget is a state secret. Their deficit spending is now exceeding 12.7% of GDP. But, this time the Papandreou Dynasty will be put to the ultimate test: avoiding a Marxist revolution.  The politically correct approach is for him to join in the party.

Friedman must feint wonder and show astonishment over the prospect of a favorable outcome for this madness and he does.

““Papandreou says he is ready and so, too, he insists, is his country: “People are saying to me, ‘change this country — go ahead and change it.’ People realize that it needs change. You don’t want to miss this opportunity.”” -- Greece’s Newest Odyssey 

Any ring of the Obama promises of ‘change’ here?? Parrots in a chorus on an undersized wooden pedestal? This is a lie. The Marxist unions do not want change unless you use the Obama definition of that world and that means more debt and more social programs.

The Evil Ones are identified

“Sitting in a rooftop restaurant with a view of the Acropolis, I ask Papandreou to put on his safari hat and tell me what it was like to be hunted by the electronic bond herd for six months.”--Greece’s Newest Odyssey 

Friedman fawns. Greece has a long history of defaults we learn from Kenneth Rogoff.[19] Kenneth is coauthor with Carmen Reinhart of the new book This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. [20] Here is a link to a transcript of an interesting interview on sovereign defaults.[21] Friedman is being set up with this  lecture on the evil bond vigilantes who watch sovereign bonds and sell when they are about to become worthless from default.  He must then scurry back to his keyboard and encourage everybody to hate bond holders as in the Chrysler and GM bankruptcy cases: Give most of the booty to the unions! This austerity view, capitalist in all variants, is unacceptable to liberals, leftists and Marxists so Friedman is playing the part of stooge here.[22]

The Nasty Ones are identified and defamed!

“Comparing bond players to some kind of living beasts may be unfair to beasts, he suggests. These markets “are not even human anymore. Some of these things are computerized, and they just go into automatic mode” when they see a hint of trouble.” -- Greece’s Newest Odyssey 

Paying off your debts is so ‘western’ and so unnecessary we learn from this.

“The only way for Greece to end this uncertainty was with an unprecedented commitment by the European Union to backstop Greek debts and with an unprecedented commitment by Greece to put its economy on a strict diet — set by the International Monetary Fund — with quarterly budget targets that Athens has to meet to receive additional support.” -- Greece’s Newest Odyssey 

And they whine and whine and whine. Friedman gobbles down some feta cheese bit as he hears this:

 “The cabinet has already approved increasing the average retirement age for public sector workers from 61 to 65. Average public sector wages have been cut 20 percent, and pensions by 10 percent. The value-added tax was raised from 19 percent to 23 percent, and there’s been an excise tax increase of about 30 percent on gas, alcohol and tobacco. The number of municipalities is proposed to shrink from 1,000 to 400 and public-owned companies from 6,000 to 2,000 to save money and red tape. So far, the deficit is down 40 percent from last year.” -- Greece’s Newest Odyssey 

Way too much…….

“That will only happen, he argues, if there is a sense of “justice” — Greeks want to see big tax cheaters and corrupt officials prosecuted — and if the people feel their leaders have a vision. “We need to give this country a dream — where we are going,” so the sacrifices make sense.” -- Greece’s Newest Odyssey 

He has a dream. There is so much political slang flying around at this luncheon it must be difficult to concentrate on the fish. The unions will not tolerate this.[23] George Papandreou is head of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) party. He is only slightly right of the Maoist Marxist party coalition.[24][25] He has no chance to survive in office. He must play the game and mooch as much money as he can before the social eruption.

But, Friedman is properly enchanted by these promises with predictions and such about the outcome of a state that is dominated by leftist labor unions.

Friedman plays the part of wonder and awe at the prospects of all this:

 “Can Greece have a civic revolution? The odds are long, but you won’t need to consult the I.M.F. to determine the answer. Just watch Greek young people. In six months, if you see them migrating, then short Greece. If you see them sticking it out here, though, it means they think there is something worth staying for, and you might even want to buy a Greek bond or two.” -- Greece’s Newest Odyssey 

Like they do as they escape hostile work and business environments like California and New York??  Where else can they go? Young Greeks have an astronomical unemployment rate probably exceeding 30% or more and their future has been sold out to the evil capitalist bond holders. This is an unworkable disaster and the net effect of this is that wealth will flow from Germany and France into this cesspool of Marxian socialism. They have NO CHANCE of recovering and will default. The rest of Europe knows this but want to pretend.

My predictions: The Greeks have accomplished what Lenin wanted and that is the ‘workers’ control the country. But, as any socialist can tell you, they will spend every dollar or euro [or both] they can get their hands on and then reject the debt as illegal, immoral or belonging to somebody else using the Argentinean parlance. The current bail-out is phony because it ONLY shoves liquidity into the failed Greek banks and there is nary a speck of capital to grow the economy of this place. The ONLY way out of this is to cut government way down to size and get corporate ownership back in the hands of competent capitalists so they can generate profits that can be taxed at a reasonable rate.  That is a futile list.

This will end in disaster.

rycK

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

The Babbling Brooks of the NYT Babbles About the Limits of Policy in Governance of Minorities. We Must Preserve their Social Capital.

Abstract: David Brooks attempts to sort out some of our ethnic differences and finds that some attributes, both negative and positive, seem to follow members of a distinct culture across the globe and that their generations seem to share a similar outcome as those who spawned them.  Apparently slavery is the cause of the inability for black minorities to assimilate in the US because certain social bonds were broken and lost. He probes several ethnic compartments in our society [white and Asian] but cannot seem to mention the culture in our inner cities that are dominated by black leftist politics. He cannot seem to even approach the political Snake Pit created by The Bell Curve and proven differences in innate intelligence averages among racial groups that must be included in any discussion of cultural differences. He avoids the tasks that might directly influence and upset the very outcomes he is looking to prove. He is cherry picking. He appears to scrounge for data to support his predetermined conclusion. As a novelty, and being progressive, he gropes for some new social metric called ‘social capital’ to explain his sifted and typed  ‘findings’ and proclaims that governmental policy decisions should not perturb these essential social attributes very much if such a program is  to be successful. He concludes, inter alia, that “Bad” policy can decimate the social fabric, but good policy can only modestly improve it.” Such an unsubstantiated conclusion properly allows social disasters like the condition of many inner cities to remain above criticism for the direct actions of the inhabitants or for the liberal policies that created these hell holes.  Thus, a new liberal escape mechanism is born that explains why many progressive social programs have dismally failed and offers liberals more flexibility and new reasons to conjure new social programs that will enhance,  maintain or possible reconstruct the elements of the lost  ‘social capital’ nostrum they just invented.  All the wonderful social programs so far have failed for certain minorities so we must try again. They need more taxes from us. We can, once more, blame slavery for the manifold ills of black minorities in this country.

The self-inflicted political torments celebrated by the far left in the near-bankrupt New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1][2]-- have little ability to drive them off their progressive stools and redirect their course to enlightenment.  They love to wallow in misery. Anguish is such beautiful sorrow. They finally get somebody to win an election against the backdrop of frustration, ignorance and failure of the Bush administration and thus they  put in some noisy activist from the street-level community organizing communes with no history, suppressed credentials, sealed birth certificate and closed college records  or much else to view.  Obama was a ‘community organizer[3]’ and promised change. That was all it took. It hard to believe that George Bush did not graciously but sorrowfully  assist the far left with this political exercise grounded in sympathy, doubt and guilt. Bush must have crawled around for years to open all these doors for the drooling left. He was truly a failure.  The idea that McCain could fix anything with his spendthrift attitude and maverick gyrations is a joke and this was obvious to all viewers from the beginning.[4] We have spent too much money and too many RINOS have gurgled and bought into the silly nostrum that government can do anything possible if we just throw enough money in the pot and endanger the future finances of our offspring. Bush and McCain were ready and willing to give illegal aliens the vote among other frightening and revolution-tempting gestures.  Bush refused to veto the huge spending bills in Congress so he could go play war in the Middle East and work on regime building while his own regime crumbled and now rots.  So, now we are bankrupt.[5]

So, we got something different—but not so different.

The net result of the last election was to purely endorse spending and more spending and astronomical debt and this is the very favorite non-debatable subject of the Times.  But today our Chief Babbler David Brooks[6][7][8][9][10] broaches the outer walls of the socialist redoubts that inspire our leaders to spend more money and pretends to instruct us on broken societies that probably stem from our much earlier misguided government policies. Brooks, in this episode, manages to sneak around the process of laying blame and substitutes some pretentious mumblings that government policies work only slightly (at best) to influence the outcomes of the lives of our ethnically diverse society. This is almost heresy. This comes very close to a criticism of the left as most social programs and failure and all were derived from the sweating inspiration of Democrats. We need to look closely at this one.  He has something deeper in mind.

How to best read my blogs:

[I offer extensive quotes in this blog so that the reader can view the exact language and can be confident that nothing was taken out of context or that nobody was misquoted. The easiest way to take in the salient points is to read the emphatic points in the quotes and then peruse my comments. Comments on my comments are always welcome: ryckki@gmail.com.]

So, today we will inspect our Babbler’s Babblings and insert some comments and ask a few questions that should have been addressed in this ragzine.

We begin our dissection of this rubbish:

“Roughly a century ago, many Swedes immigrated to America. They’ve done very well here. Only about 6.7 percent of Swedish-Americans live in poverty. Also a century ago, many Swedes decided to remain in Sweden. They’ve done well there, too. When two economists calculated Swedish poverty rates according to the American standard, they found that 6.7 percent of the Swedes in Sweden were living in poverty.”[11]--The Limits of Policy By David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist Published: May 3, 2010 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

The central tendency of his point offered here, festooned with far too many words injected and not enough data or neuronal power to make his point very convincingly, is that all cultures [and all that baggage] retain some attributes, positive or negative, when they are transplanted willingly or not into different societies. He does not dig deeply enough into history to show that the US is a melting pot and a major transformation event for millions of poor people who were escaping tyranny or poverty. He seems to forget that many ethnic identities, customs and such were scrapped right off the boat. For the Irish in 1848, the choice was starvation or a dismal life as serf on some British-owned plantation or to take their chances in America as we read in The Great Hunger.[12] The  US Irish are not ignorant peasants subsisting on potatoes any more. And what about the Coolie Chinese in San Francisco and the general Bay Area compared to their ancestors? This place was a new experiment where the Old World had little influence upon us until World War I when the progressive failure Woodrow Wilson got us entangled with the problems of Europe for a price of only 160,000 dead. He drones on about little things and ignores larger issues but rushes to his conclusion a bit too soon.

Here, he signals he is about to sum up:

“A similar pattern applies to health care. In 1950, Swedes lived an average of 2.6 years longer than Americans. Over the next half-century, Sweden and the U.S. diverged politically. Sweden built a large welfare state with a national health service, while the U.S. did not. The result? There was basically no change in the life expectancy gap. Swedes now live 2.7 years longer.

Again, huge policy differences. Not huge outcome differences.”-- The Limits of Policy

Here, Brooks treads on dangerous political grounds because he fails to acknowledge and celebrate our cherished social programs like welfare, prison life, education, drug rehabilitation, juvenile detention and more that were specifically designed to ‘help out’ and change the future of the little guy. He stubbornly ignores heredity here. But, he is priming his own pump with an excuse.

And more:

“Asian-Americans have a life expectancy of 87 years compared with 79 years for whites and 73 years for African-Americans.

Even in struggling parts of the country, Asian-Americans do well. In Michigan, for example, the Asian-American life expectancy is 90, while for the average white person it’s 79 and for the average African-American it’s 73. Income and education levels are also much higher.”-- The Limits of Policy

Brooks divides up the life spans and other ethnic attributes during some Ouija Board séance and sorts a few of them by race in limited cases. Do we hear an echo of The Bell Curve[13][14][15] here? He apparently unwittingly sorts out groups of people by superior ethnic cognitive skill averages and then seems to stare at their geographic locations of origin, compares this to their present location and dismisses  what influences education, self care, employment, the dreaded religious practices and other factors that might be in force here. Intelligence must definitely not be any factor however remote we must presume from his silence. I wonder what he would say about why the Amish or Mormons and if they are much are different from their ethnic origins and why they are omitted from this Opus Magnus.  Did America give many a chance to scrap some of their social bonds and form new ones?

Avoiding the politically trappy notions of differential cognitive skills Brooks babbles on with a grand introduction of a new metric: “social capital.”

“When you try to account for life outcome differences this gigantic, you find yourself beyond narrow economic incentives and in the murky world of social capital. What matters are historical experiences, cultural attitudes, child-rearing practices, family formation patterns, expectations about the future, work ethics and the quality of social bonds.”-- The Limits of Policy

It is culture he tells us—not heredity. He blatantly leaves out the importance of superior cognitive skills and religion again! These two are an obvious ethnic and social division metric  that could be placed in his list to muse about, but are painfully missing some  inspection by our Babbler are the ugly cases of the US  inner cities of several states where the government is completely controlled by black left wing Democrats. We can stare at the crime statistics, sloth, over the top murder levels[16], health problems from AIDS and VD, drug addiction rates, chronic unemployment, poor educational performance and other metrics of this group and compare that outcome with Brook’s conclusion. Does he dismiss this sector because he must think that life in the concrete jungles of Oakland and Baltimore reflects life in Gold Cost or Ivory Coast of the 15th century? We have several dozen to a hundred cities to cite with the kind of data that Brooks files to cite in this op-ed! The top 10 cities in crime metrics all have left liberals at the helm and only NYC has a white mayor in this cohort. We might also want to compare the outcome of places like Los Angeles with their social antecedents in Mexico City and border towns along California and Texas. Can we draw any conclusions from an analysis of California[17][18][19] and their ‘ejukashon’[20] process and wonder if this expensive jumble is constructive in the retention of any social capital terms?  Why do Asians populate the University of California at Berkeley more than 50%?

Is poverty being deliberately imported into California? Is that the social legacy they brought here? Is that a valued piece of social capital we must preserve? How about drug addiction? Does that help or hurt some of these pleasing social attributes he places into context for us? Was the failure to implement Ebonics[21] a mistake?  But, Brooks fails to probe these waters and answer other obvious questions. He is content to keep his essay as politically correct as possible [the censors are watching] as he carefully avoids the inevitable conclusion that our social experiments in the major cities with ‘education[22]’, welfare[23], drug rehab, job training and other worthless social programs are massive failures.  New Orleans is exactly what the crime-besotted and drug-crazed leftists want for their ‘chocolate’ city and they love the welfare, drugs, corruption and massive bribes to voters loosely disguised as tax revenues that sustain this outrage. Baltimore, Philly, Detroit, Atlanta, Oakland, San Francisco and many other places seem to share this progressive view of governance. They are the ones going bankrupt too. How can we show where this prevalent social capitalistic metric came from as we look at the successful in our society? Where did the tax and spend mantra come from? George Washington? England? Germany? Did the current welfare system destroy social bonds? How about affirmative action or busing? Did those programs stigmatize blacks and rupture their social bonds?  How would Brooks explain American exceptionalism as viewed by Alexis de Tocqueville  only 50 years after our democratic experiment started?

The Prisons:

We can easily view the statistics of persons in prison for various crimes by race although some sites carefully suppress the ethnicity ratios of inmates.[24] It turns out that the ethnic distribution of groups in the prisons is remarkably different from their fractional representation in the general population.[25] Here, we see that blacks are arrested 36% of the time while their fractional representation in the general population is only 12%.  It is also true that of all the murder victims tabulated 47% were black showing, clearly, that this interaction is highly intraracial. It appears that Brooks is using a form of political masking here commonly seen in the writings by others at the NYT or ‘Old Gray Lady.’ He omits significant evidence from his work for political reasons. Going a bit further we note that his colleague Maureen Dowd, the Old Red Lady [26][27][28]of the Old Gray Lady, has conveniently provided us with her ‘Unspoken Words Theorem.’ She has the supernatural but politically stimulated ability to hear what is not spoken and provide us with an analysis and we might borrow this method to print herein what is not mentioned in this op-ed today.

What is not there can thus be extracted:

Here is a good example of how this interesting process works:  In a rage, Maureen added new information to a recorded quote by Joe Wilson who yelled “You lie!” at president Obama during an address to Congress, [but Obama really didn’t lie she states.]  Quoting Dowd: “But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”[29]]—and here it is! She has the proof!

Brooks conveniently avoids any mention of this propensity for violence and crime in the black population because if he did he would be obligated, following his own theory here, to compare the US crime statistics with the history of Africa and make some sober conclusions. He could also avoid the crime statistics in Europe as well as it pertains to blacks and other minorities who can burn 100 cars every night in Paris for a week and not elicit a response from the governments in charge.[30] Was, or is, Africa as violent as we might think a few centuries ago and is this violence an intrinsic part of the social capital of minorities as they cannot seem to adjust to our western culture? Thus, he falls silent on this topic and finds ways to blame whites. This services the old progressive political theme. But, we can use the Maureen Dowd process and find numerous unspoken words in this Brooks piece, fair or unfair, as it makes little political difference in the slant here and we can conclude with confidence that Brooks is saying this:

“We cannot find a way to assimilate blacks in our society in terms of education, work ethic, violence and other social metrics so we need to invent some restricting factor that is not inherent in their culture and blame that factor on whites so that we can excuse blacks from any blame.”

This restricting factor, of course, is his buzz words “social capital, “which was destroyed by slavery. This, of course, calls for more taxes and more affirmative action programs and more government to search for ways to restore what was lost three centuries ago.

A rule:

“Therefore, the first rule of policy-making should be, don’t promulgate a policy that will destroy social bonds. If you take tribes of people, exile them from their homelands and ship them to strange, arid lands, you’re going to produce bad outcomes for generations.”-- The Limits of Policy

This current snippet is so narrow and myopic it stands by itself as one of the most foolish statements ever printed in the Walter Duranty Papers. This snippet also does not explain the similar violence and glaring inability by black minorities to assimilate into European societies such as France, Germany and England. If minorities are violent and cannot pass tests and perform on the job in France then how can this be explained when they willingly and eagerly came into the country with no hint of slavery to force them? What social bonds were broken here by the French, Germans, Belgians and English? Perhaps the premise is just pedestrian-level progressive baloney politics. That assumption fits better into the mainstream of NYT outputs.

One obvious implementation of this ‘rule’ might be to halt the invasion of illegal aliens into the US so as to preserve their ethnic social bonds in their existing homelands. Why ruin a good thing? The central mumbling vector here seems to point to the very aspects he ignores and refuses to discuss and that could be that if blacks had their former ethnic identities scrambled and corrupted during slavery that this must play some major role in the utter failure and criminality of the current generation. Their failure to assimilate is thus our fault. Thus, an excuse is offered, however adroitly, to ‘prove’ to us that we need more social programs to address those disadvantaged for being exiled from their homelands and that relocation produced these bad outcomes for many generations. It must be the fault of the white people again and we must include capitalism. We must have spoiled the system in Africa that made them so successful. Blame us and start all over again.

People with low intelligence have difficulties assimilating into any culture except peasantry.

Liberalism destroys social bonds and ethical standards of conduct. Why not reform that?

Today Brooks glides mindlessly into the narrow slip stream of progressive politics where the quest for more taxes is paramount and blame for any failure on the left is transferred, even over the centuries, to others. He is a useful tool at best.

Raise our taxes and start over with new social programs.  We must, again, redress the sins of the past.

rycK [a 5^th generation Californian in exile]

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

Krugman Traps Himself in his Trappy Claptrap over EU Funny Money

Abstract: Paul Krugman mumbles about deflation and spending in Europe and calls upon members of the EU to do something for Greece, currently dragging down the EU and threatening to ignite a financial panic and a probable disintegration of this hapless union. Their spending is too high, their government packed with nepotistic politicians that owe everything they have to Marxian style unions.  The Greeks lied about their debts before joining this cluster of weak sisters and tried to hide their current deficits by subterfuge and now their central bank is insolvent and their citizens are rushing money from Greek banks into Cyprus to avoid being confiscated by a frantic far leftist government. Krugman can make no negative comments about their wild spending and huge deficits as they are not right wing governments. For Krugman, a Bush 3.4% debt to GDP ratio was too high but the Obama deficit of now 84% is just fine and, by the way, we need to spend more. Thus Krugman talks out of alternate sides of his mouth when analyzing leftist governments when to compare to the right. In this op-ed Krugman mumbles and comes to the conclusion that Greece needs more ‘help.’ Krugman condemns Krugman in this and earlier essays where we can easily pick out his political bias and show that this bias is  the  consistent and eternal basis of his so-called economic advice.

Krugman launches off:

“Not that long ago, European economists used to mock their American counterparts for having questioned the wisdom of Europe’s march to monetary union. “On the whole,” declared an article published just this past January, “the euro has, thus far, gone much better than many U.S. economists had predicted.”…“Oops.”[1]--The Euro Trap By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: April 29, 2010 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

This is a crude feint by our Nobelette since he adores socialism and high taxes and massive government spending.[2] There is some hidden pungi stake embedded somewhere in the rest of this prattle so we need to step carefully.

Debt and spending are not the problem we learn:

“To understand the euro-mess — and its lessons for the rest of us — you need to see past the headlines. Right now everyone is focused on public debt, which can make it seem as if this is a simple story of governments that couldn’t control their spending. But that’s only part of the story for Greece, much less for Portugal, and not at all the story for Spain."--The Euro Trap By Paul Krugman Op-Ed

Oh! Wild spending and gross public debt is not a problem??

“The fact is that three years ago none of the countries now in or near crisis seemed to be in deep fiscal trouble. Even Greece’s 2007 budget deficit was no higher, as a share of G.D.P., than the deficits the United States ran in the mid-1980s (morning in America!), while Spain actually ran a surplus. And all of the countries were attracting large inflows of foreign capital, largely because markets believed that membership in the euro zone made Greek, Portuguese and Spanish bonds safe investments.”-- The Euro Trap

“Then came the global financial crisis. Those inflows of capital dried up; revenues plunged and deficits soared; and membership in the euro, which had encouraged markets to love the crisis countries not wisely but too well, turned into a trap.

What’s the nature of the trap? During the years of easy money, wages and prices in the crisis countries rose much faster than in the rest of Europe. Now that the money is no longer rolling in, those countries need to get costs back in line.”-- The Euro Trap

Apparently, the EU setup whereby various nations can ‘share the same currency’ and adopt wild and incoherent spending and taxation theorems with no controls from the ‘union’ is a good idea.[3] We are thusly enlightened.  Actually, it is a disaster. And, does this mean wage cuts? The message is not clear as to what Krugman advises here. He also treads on dangerous partisan grounds by stressing the need for capital influx, a term despised by liberals. We all know that capital influx means the exploitation of the masses.

“The problem is that deflation — falling wages and prices —”-- The Euro Trap

Krugman is well known to want to prevent deflation with massive stimuli.[4]

“So what will happen to the euro? Until recently, most analysts, myself included, considered a euro breakup basically impossible, since any government that even hinted that it was considering leaving the euro would be inviting a catastrophic run on its banks. But if the crisis countries are forced into default, they’ll probably face severe bank runs anyway, forcing them into emergency measures like temporary restrictions on bank withdrawals. This would open the door to euro exit.”-- The Euro Trap

This run is on as Greeks move their money to Cyprus as of only a few hours ago at this writing.  All or most all [9]  of Greece's banks were just downgraded by S&P.[5]  So far, there is nothing new or novel here except the latent need for more spending.[6] What else has Krugman to offer us except fluff? A Greek default is now almost a certainty. [7] He apparently calls for more wealth transfers disguised as taxes.[8]

Here it is!!

“If European leaders don’t start acting much more forcefully, providing Greece with enough help to avoid the worst, a chain reaction that starts with a Greek default and ends up wreaking much wider havoc looks all too possible.”-- The Euro Trap

And a lesson for the US:

“The deficit hawks are already trying to appropriate the European crisis, presenting it as an object lesson in the evils of government red ink. What the crisis really demonstrates, however, is the dangers of putting yourself in a policy straitjacket. When they joined the euro, the governments of Greece, Portugal and Spain denied themselves the ability to do some bad things, like printing too much money; but they also denied themselves the ability to respond flexibly to events.”-- The Euro Trap

This is a circular essay and is, as such, popular in propaganda circles where phrases and slogans can be used in opposition to the exact contest of the message and still influence the ignoranti.  What Krugman is saying is that it is too bad that Greece and others in the foolish union cannot independently print their own money and offset their debt with inflation while retaining certain elements of socialism. It is this experiment in socialism that will crush their system. This essay is an oblique message to Obama and his drooling Congress to spend more money here in the US on green things and social programs that don’t work. The EU is a bad idea as there are no controls over member nations and their spending. Greece and California have much the same problem.[9]

Here is how Krugman thinks deficits are too big when Republicans are in office and 14 trillion is now not so high since Obama is in office:

“Krugman, in a November 2004 interview, criticized the "enormous" Bush deficit. "We have a world-class budget deficit," he said, "not just as in absolute terms, of course -- it's the biggest budget deficit in the history of the world -- but it's a budget deficit that, as a share of GDP, is right up there."

The numbers? The deficit in fiscal year 2004 -- $413 billion, 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product.”--[10] Krugman: Bush's Deficit Bad, Obama's Deficit Good By Larry Elder [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

This clearly shows, by a scale of (14/.413) or 33.8 fold, that Krugman cherry picks numbers and rattles them around in his little cage for a while and then reverts backward to form by stressing that what any leftist on any continent does is fine but Republicans spend too much and run very high deficits. This proof statement, in Krugman’s own words, gives us the proper information to state that Krugman is nothing more than a mouthpiece or simpering stooge for the far left.  Our current debt to GDP ratio happens to be 12.1/14.3 or %84. I think that is a bit higher than 3.5% even in liberal terms.  Was Krugman a deficit hawk[11] when he criticized Bush?

Krugman sums up:

“And when crisis strikes, governments need to be able to act. That’s what the architects of the euro forgot — and the rest of us need to remember.”-- The Euro Trap

This is all very hazy. But, one message is clear. The need to print more money or take on more debt in the EU is paramount. Thus, in the Greek case, we can expect Germany to put up the higher fraction of funds to be sent down the black hole in Athens to be wasted upon those nepotistic government employees and greedy unions who refuse to take cuts of any form. Wasting money on losers is ‘action?’

Thus, this guy drags his credibility through the mushy latrines in a frantic search for anything however small or sticky that will aid Obama and his Marxists who are spending too much money. The proof of his bias and political stoogery derives easily from a reading of his own fluff. I wonder if he keeps copies of his earlier op-eds. I guess he really cannot.

rycK

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com