NP - And Greece created Europe: the cultural legacy of a nation in crisis

[Joseph Tracy]

No one forced German and French Banks to make so many loans to governments indulging in unsustainable largesse. But underlying all of this is the unsustainable energy requirements of capitalist growth. A growth that is not so much the creation of wealth as the concentration of power in the hands of master con-men, and generalissimos.  Nobody is in charge.. It's just competing delusions, death-star gunners,  hordes of zombies in fast moving engines of planetary destruction all working for ad agencies, ponzi banks,  mining operations, drug dealers.  N

The thing is there is no option of "fixing" this mess. A large transition is overdue and inevitable..Why be afraid of letting the big banks die? The sooner people face the future without dragon lairs in their dreams the better.  Small governments that can't afford wars, small banks accountable to local realities, small farms,  small cities, small towns, no heirarchies, all leadership collegial and transparent.. Unnatural and uncontrolled growth is called cancer. 
On Nov 12, 2011, at 12:31 AM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> History is a fountainhead of information and instruction, but far too
> shifty to base current economic loyalties upon. You won't find many
> folks more philhellennic than I, but I wouldn't intentionally give a
> Greek my credit card. I would, however, debate ideas endlessly with a
> Greek before most Americans I know.
> 
> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 2:50 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/nov/03/greece-europe-cultural-eurozone-crisis
>> 
>> Let us not forget that Europe began in Greece. The idea of the
>> European continent as a cultural unity dates back to ancient Greece in
>> more ways than one.
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant

On Nov 11, 2011, at 8:50 AM, David Morris wrote:

> 1. The bailout is *Greek debt* owed to German banks.
> 2. The Euro can't be delvaued differently in different coutries.  So,
> yes, Greece leaving the Euro is one solution.
> 3.  Austerity is a foolish solution to a recession. but a recurrent foolishness.
> 
> On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 7:20 PM, Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's not clear to me why the Atlantic article makes any sense.
>> 1. The bailout is not to the Greek people but to German and French banks.
>> 2. Greece buys more than it produces and should devalue its currency making
>> imports into Greece more expensive and encouraging domestic production. That
>> would make Greek exports more competitive. The problem is that the Euro is
>> not a Greek sovereign currency.
>> 3. Greek austerity will put German workers out of work.
>> 
>> David Morris wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 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."
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."
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