It is getting Ugly in Greece....

[MicroBalrog]

Globalization, the religion of the "financial community," has one model for Everywhere.  Some nations were made to be backward, materially poor, self-sufficient, and, one hopes, modestly happy.  This of course is not enough for the global power-brokers and cartel manipulators for whom everyone and everything is just another leveraged loan profit center.

Nonsense. Freedom is for everyone.

[De Selby]

I love this idea that big finance has just been "shortsighted" in this crisis - on the contrary, they're doing better than ever.  Their salaries aren't being taken back to pay for the bad corporate decisions they presided over, nor are there moves to seize their investment portfolios or other sources of income to pay.

Instead, they and the corrupt regulators they dealt with get to keep their millions, call for "austerity measures" that mean fewer taxes paid by them (at the expense of fewer benefits for the public), and then hire back all the unemployed as peasants on their mansions.   

It's a pretty darn smart strategy, if you ask me - they are on track to recreate feudalism with themselves as the landlords.

In America, they've managed to lay the blame on consumers, who had the least say in how wall street financial instruments were created that destroyed housing values and left all the banks (not their employees or CEOs, though) in need of public cash.  This was less so in Greece, which had an even more corrupt government.

But nevermind all that, keep demanding market discipline for the guy who makes $10 a day washing windows - he needs it, not the financier millionaires whose windows he washes.

[TommyGunn]

In America, they've managed to lay the blame on consumers, who had the least say in how wall street financial instruments were created that destroyed housing values and left all the banks (not their employees or CEOs, though) in need of public cash.  This was less so in Greece, which had an even more corrupt government.

Oh, I think our government measures right up there with the Greeks. 

[longeyes]

Nonsense. Freedom is for everyone.

If you think globalism is the engine of universal liberty you are very, very much mistaken, my friend.  Hooking diverse peoples on the welfare state, consumerism, and unpayable debt is the antithesis of "freedom."

[Perd Hapley]

Nonsense. Freedom is for everyone.

You might want to read his post. 

[roo_ster]

Nonsense. Freedom is for everyone.

Wrong in two ways. 

First, in the way longeyes wrote his post.  I'll let others demonstrate how.

Second, in the way you read his post.  Many folks don't want freedom, they just want to lord it over the other guy. 

[MicroBalrog]

Wrong in two ways. 

First, in the way longeyes wrote his post.  I'll let others demonstrate how.

Second, in the way you read his post.  Many folks don't want freedom, they just want to lord it over the other guy. 

Maybe that is true, but that is irrelevant in two ways:

1. The morally superior choice is always freedom, whether dealing in Greeks, Japanese, or Finns.

2. The economically superior choice is always freedom.

[longeyes]

So you think the Greeks got "freedom" when they created an unsustainable welfare state based on empty promises, hedonism, slackerhood, and IOUs to the banking mafia of Europe?  So is the new hip welfare state Greece better off--and more free--than the old Greece that eked out a spare but honest living off its historical legacy as a museum with a Mediterranean climate hosting German tourists with Baedekers and lederhosen?

[MicroBalrog]

This is hardly the choice.

The choice is between a welfare state controlled by Europe (and temporarily pared back to a slightly smaller welfare state), not even to establish some kind of 'freedom' or 'fiscal sanity' but merely to bail out some wealthy bankers - and a welfare state that is at least run by Greeks. The Greeks can leave the EU, reinstate the drachma (which will incidentally make their country more attractive to tourists) and gradually pay their debt down as economic growth ensues again after some period of turmoil. THe Eurocrats will not let that happen.

[longeyes]

Fine, let Greece be Greece, I'm all for that, but do you really believe an independent Greece--which I favor--can sustain the kind of welfare state they now want?  Sustainable liberty depends on virtue, and a certain kind of virtue expressed out in economic terms.  Then do you agree that globalization/globalism is in fact a major component in this situation?  There are no Zorbas in Brussels.

[HankB]

Sometimes globalism develops cracks - when the British owners of Icelandic banks made bad loans to Europeans and saw their British depositors were going to lose money, they prevailed upon the Icelandic government to raise taxes on Icelanders to make good the losses.

Unfortunately, those uppity Icelanders - who were not in line to receive any profits from the banks were they to be successful - balked, and rejected the call to accept responsibility for the foreigner's losses in a nationwide referendum.

Pesky serfs ought to respect their titled betters.

Now the Greeks want someone else to bail them out . . . and the someone else they're looking to is balking. Uh oh.

(Look for this scenario to be replayed with California in the near future.)

[MicroBalrog]

Fine, let Greece be Greece, I'm all for that, but do you really believe an independent Greece--which I favor--can sustain the kind of welfare state they now want?  Sustainable liberty depends on virtue, and a certain kind of virtue expressed out in economic terms.  Then do you agree that globalization/globalism is in fact a major component in this situation?  There are no Zorbas in Brussels.

Not today, no. But an independent Greece *might* find it easier to afford it again in the future - for a limited period of time of course, but I am no proponent of welfare state.

There is not a struggle between liberty and a welfare state, anywhere in the world.

[longeyes]

Not today, no. But an independent Greece *might* find it easier to afford it again in the future - for a limited period of time of course, but I am no proponent of welfare state.

There is not a struggle between liberty and a welfare state, anywhere in the world.

I could swear there's one right here in the good ol' USA...  When people want the best for you, reach for your revolver.

[roo_ster]

There is not a struggle between liberty and a welfare state, anywhere in the world.

Huh, what? 

Welfare state progressivism is antithetical to liberty.

[AJ Dual]

Huh, what? 

Welfare state progressivism is antithetical to liberty.

I agree. However, it's antithetical to liberty in the sense of American decline. Where it expands, where there used to be more economic liberty etc.

I think Micro is saying that in the Hobsonian view of history and the world as a whole, where people are killed, raped, burned, beaten, imprisoned, and herded about willy nilly by the powers that be is the normal way of things, fretting over a nominal Euro-style socialist democracy vs. some Libertarian minarchy/Anarcho-capitalist state... just isn't that big a deal.

From my point of view, trying to impose the level of socialism in say Greece, much of Europe, or even Israel... here in the U.S. would have me ready to do violence to try and prevent it. And in fact I get more fretful about the direction of our country in such matters every day. I weigh the trends, vs. the ages of my children, and when they'll be independent adults, and were I to "do something about it", it would no longer ruin their lives.

On the other hand, in terms of practical personal liberty, from the point of view of the average human being anywhere in the world through 95% of recorded history, or people today in many parts of Africa, Asia, or the Middle East, Greece in it's present state would seem like paradise.

Micro, correct me if I'm wrong here...

[MicroBalrog]

Huh, what? 

Welfare state progressivism is antithetical to liberty.

Yes, thank you, and?

There's nowhere in the world (excepting Virginia), right at the present, that the electorate actually faces an up-or-down choice, where you actually can choose between "European welfare state" and "individual liberty".  The choices they have, in Greece, is "welfare state managed by the Greeks" and "welfare state managed by unelected Eurocrats via remote control". That's all there is, really. It's not like the Europeans are coming in and imposing magnificient liberty at loan-point.

Yes, right now the policies they are promoting seems to be sensible. But the danger of letting the Europeans manipulate entire states' economic policies the same way they seem to want to manage individual is far beyond the individual merits of a specific decision.

[AJ Dual]

I just remembered, my parents along with an aunt and uncle are going on a cruise to Greece in May... 

They're all "60, going on 40" types in health, appearance, and attitude/outlook, so I don't worry for their safety, none of them are "old", just that they may have their vacation ruined.

[Lee]

Things are so bad, they hired a Mexican to play Zorba.

[Monkeyleg]

Things are so bad, they hired a Mexican to play Zorba.

Well, Anthony Quinn is dead, so they wouldn't have hired him anyway.

[HankB]

Not today, no. But an independent Greece *might* find it easier to afford it again in the future - for a limited period of time of course . . .

You mean until people realized that the drachmas an independent Greece minted were worth about as much as Zimbabwe dollars?

[MicroBalrog]

You mean until people realized that the drachmas an independent Greece minted were worth about as much as Zimbabwe dollars?

You've never heard of inflation helping export-based economies, you mean?

[Perd Hapley]

You've never heard of inflation helping export-based economies, you mean?

Or tourism.

[Blakenzy]

Greece bailed out again, in exchange of giving up control of its revenue.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_EUROPE_FINANCIAL_CRISIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-02-21-08-18-17

Greece will also have to pass within the next two months a new law that gives paying off the debt legal priority over funding government services. In the meantime, Athens has to set up an escrow account, managed separately from its main budget, that will at all times have to contain enough money to service its debts for the coming three months.

These requirements, together with tighter on-the-ground monitoring, are an unprecedented intrusion into the fiscal affairs of a sovereign state in Europe and could eventually see Greece being forced to pay interest on its debt before compensating teachers, doctors and other state employees.

Haha... the Greeks are going to get punched in the seat so freaking hard. Sovereignty gone. They are just a financial protectorate or client state now. Might as well just toss their flag and call themselves euro-serfs.

[agricola]

Haha... the Greeks are going to get punched in the seat so freaking hard. Sovereignty gone. They are just a financial protectorate or client state now. Might as well just toss their flag and call themselves euro-serfs.

TBH I doubt the Greeks are going to be the ones getting punched in the seat, the EU mob will inevitably push this too far and it will blow up in their faces (possibly literally in the case of those poor EU drones who are going to have to oversee this in Athens) when enough of the Greeks realise that the EU is not going to stop ramping these demands up, doesnt have the ability to back up its threats with any kind of actual force (be it economic, political or military) whatsoever, and the "doomsday scenario" (ie: decouple and default) that they keep getting told about is actually much better for the short, medium and long term future of their country than the bailout "medicine" is.   

Once the Greeks realise that, so will the rest of the PIGS.  Then so will everyone else, and the EU in its current form dies.

[MillCreek]

^^^ And in that light, it is interesting to see if Portugal is going to make it.  With crippling austerity measures mandated by the EU on top of a deepening recession, it is difficult to see how Portugal is going to save their way out of this mess.