np - The Financial Folly of Fairness

[David Morris]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/the-financial-folly-of-fairness/248216/

"It is obvious that either Germany is going to have to guarantee
massive ongoing fiscal transfers to the PIIGS, or Greece and probably
Italy are going to have to undergo a massively contractionary
austerity program, or they will have to leave the euro.  These three
choice exclude both each other, and any other mathematically possible
outcome."

[...]

"You can try to explain to all of them why their sense of outrage is
rather beside the point in the face of a looming financial explosion
which is going to make everyone much worse off if it reaches critical
mass.  You can also go home and try to explain this to your microwave,
for all the good it will do.  As anyone who has ever spoken to a five
year old knows, the sense of fairness is one of the most primal and
intractable cognitive instincts we have.  In the best of times, it
takes years to change public opinion about what is fair.  These are
not the best of times, and we do not have years."

"I am very much afraid that the euro zone is about to plunge us into
phase two of the global financial crisis--and that as with the Great
Depression, phase two may be even worse than the dismal years we've
just endured.    In search of fairness, we may all get a lot more
justice than any of us really wants."