Acropolis Now

[Furunculus]

Wow, that is from a year ago.

Though your reply to the post was a conceptual misunderstanding.


Let's break down this post into other words:

- People are not taught the key skills they need in order to understand or comprehend information.
- This has a "Fox News"/"Daily Mail" culture of speakers preaching to illiterate masses or don't actually know what is good or bad for themselves.
- My post encourages education, in under to equip the populace with these means, for an informed and education population to make decisions in politics.


Seriously, who would disagree with that statement? How isn't an engaged, informed and educated populace a bad thing for the politics and democracy? (unless you want them only as sheeplike)

i counted at least six people who badly 'misinterpreted' the statement, so perhaps some clarification is overdue. :)

[Beskar]

i counted at least six people who badly 'misinterpreted' the statement, so perhaps some clarification is overdue. :)

Mainly resulted from the first misunderstanding. It was pretty clear what I meant.

[Jolt]

Within six months Greece Spain and Portugal will all have had sovereign debt crisises

So you're saying the country with the highest deficit fall in the EU is still going to have a sovereign debt crisis? Despite the fact it is 6 months time from reaching half of the deficit that it had some 4 months ago?

Sources?

[Furunculus]

So you're saying the country with the highest deficit fall in the EU is still going to have a sovereign debt crisis? Despite the fact it is 6 months time from reaching half of the deficit that it had some 4 months ago?

Sources?

Portugal's interest rates on government borrowing are rising sharply:
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fo...e-54629-2.html

and they have a lot of debt to roll-over in 2010 and 2011 in addition to the new borrowing required for deficit spending:
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fo...e-54629-7.html

[gaelic cowboy]

Spain's parliament passes €15bn austerity package

[gaelic cowboy]

Seing as things are a bit heavy in this thread how about some Riot Dog funnies

This is my personal favorite

He even turned up on the front cover of the european economist

[Furunculus]

is europe really headed towards meltdown?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...-meltdown.html

[Beskar]

I think it is all hype by the elite, just to screw over the poor people.

End of the day, the governments would just get their acts together and deal with it. There doesn't have to be so much "hoo haa" about it all.

[rory_20_uk]

So far at least 3 have died due to the hoo haa. Oddly enough, people with no grasp of Economics do not understand why they have to suffer merely as the country has vastly overspent. The best way to show this is to destroy private and public property and fight with the police...

[Beskar]

So far at least 3 have died due to the hoo haa. Oddly enough, people with no grasp of Economics do not understand why they have to suffer merely as the country has vastly overspent. The best way to show this is to destroy private and public property and fight with the police...

Indeed, they are idiots.

We British have a simplier solution.

[Vladimir]

You lack passion!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

You lack passion!

No they don't. It's just that by act of parliament emotion has been restricted to the Queen's Birthday, Guy Fawkes Day, and Soccor (football) matches. Anything else just wouldn't be cricket.

[gaelic cowboy]

Oh Brits have passion alright you just need to go to the right places to see it. I will never forget the sight of the happiest racist I ever saw at the Germany v Ireland match in Japan. Robbie put one in the back of the net to draw the game and he nearly flew down on to the pitch from the second level to kiss the man.

[Vladimir]

Sorry. I'm channeling my inner Latino. Beskar's post just made too much sense.

The Latin/Mediterranean machismo lifestyle is good for spring break but not too handy in a crisis. The main reason why the old world will never surpass the new is because it carries this type of baggage around. It's a shame they don't see that.

[Furunculus]

Indeed, they are idiots.

We British have a simplier solution.

agreed with the bald statement, regardless of whether there was irony intended.

you cannot spend what you don't have and expect to get away with it.

[Jolt]

Portugal's interest rates on government borrowing are rising sharply:
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fo...e-54629-2.html

What I'm seeing from the graphic is the interest rate in freefall after the Greek collapse and the speculation attacks on Portugal. Much less rising in any shape or form.

and they have a lot of debt to roll-over in 2010 and 2011 in addition to the new borrowing required for deficit spending:
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fo...e-54629-7.html

I'll be damned if Portugal can't cover 18.000 million from debt these two years with the current measures applied. It will be payed, and I bet without a difficulty.

[Furunculus]

i am pleased for you that you are so optimistic, but i don't believe such optimism bears much relation to reality.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle7140173.ece
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...697098,00.html
http://www.nrc.nl/international/arti..._a_living_will

[Jolt]

i am pleased for you that you are so optimistic, but i don't believe such optimism bears much relation to reality.

Optimistic? Anything I said so far hasn't been disputed anywhere. It isn't much of an optimistic viewpoint, but rather a down-to-earth viewpoint. Of all the articles you are putting up, they only talk about the general european economic climate, and amongst those, not one word is used to depict Portuguese measures as lacking in any extent, or doubting the ability of our economy to cut off the debt. It is widely agreed that Portugal is simply taking the necessary steps to resettle the finances. That is the reality we are dealing with.

[InsaneApache]

Bruce Anderson, surprisingly, talks sense....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The euro is in a mess. Even some of its stoutest defenders now agree that its survival is threatened. But the problem is being misdiagnosed. Although the catalyst was Greece and southern Europe, the underlying cause lies to the north, in Germany. The euro is the latest crisis in modern German history and the German political elite's search for a stable identity.


This is something that it is hard for the English to grasp, which is paradoxical. The English live in the midst of their history. Ancient historical forms are still preserved in their modern constitution. Yet they often seem unaware of the extent to which history can scar, condition and confuse other nations. Germany was certainly scarred. By 1945, two-fifths of the males who had been born between 1915 and 1925 were dead or missing. Germany's cities were in ruins. Millions of Germans who had been ethnically cleansed from Poland and Czechoslovakia were about to limp home to a shattered country, in which millions more were already on the verge of starvation. But it was not just the physical destruction. The nation of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven had descended into bestiality. In 1945, economic recovery must have seemed inconceivable; moral recovery, impossible. Many sensitive Germans thought that they and their descendants had forever forfeited their right to hold their heads high among the nations.
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In the post-war years, those thoughtful Germans were able to make common cause with other Europeans who were determined to ensure that there would never be another European civil war. The continent had barely survived two: a third would finish it off. So the European movement recruited the idealism of some of the ablest politicians of the post-war vintage.

There was only one problem: historical change. Terror and death had imposed a brutal discipline on the peoples of Europe. North of the Balkans at any rate, Europeans realised that the age of boundary disputes and irredentist conflicts was over. It was replaced by an era of economic co-operation. Europe started again where it had left off in 1914: interdependence, a steady growth in trade, increasingly open markets. As a result, a broken continent recovered. The end of the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the recovery of the states which had been left behind appeared to conclude that process. The age of the abyss was over.

But abyss politics retained its momentum, in the attempt to build a united Europe. Denied the pleasures of German patriotism, the German political class became European patriots. Then there were the French. They were defeated in 1870 and 1940. They almost bled to death in 1914-18. Dien Bien Phu, Algeria: the end of French imperialism was much more scarring than its British equivalent. Dean Acheson said that the British had lost an Empire but not yet found a role. Nobody said that about the French, because it never occurred to anyone that France could have a role. The post-war British were surprisingly relaxed about their relative decline (though it helped to create Scottish nationalism). The French were determined to reassert themselves, and Europe seemed the way. Both France and Germany had humiliations to exorcise; for both of them, Europe seemed to be a form of historical psychotherapy. The Germans would be good Europeans. The French would organise Europe, so that it could be run by a French jockey on a German horse.

The climax of this was the single currency, which is a good argument against allowing psychologists to have any role in running currencies. The euro could easily have worked, on one condition: that the euro-zone became a country. Otherwise, it was always doomed. There is a simple explanation for this. In all countries, rich regions and rich people subsidise poorer regions and poorer people. This enables the latter to use the same currency as their prosperous neighbours. Without fiscal transfers, the poorer areas would not be able to earn enough. So the logic of the euro was that the rich countries would transfer funds to the poorer ones.

There followed deceit and delusion. No one told the electorates of the rich countries that they would have pay up for the rest, because even in war-guilty Germany, every sane politician knew what the answer would be. Instead, German politicians deceived themselves. They decided that the poorer countries would not need subsidies, because they would start to behave like Germans. They would learn about high productivity rates and high savings ratios. The acme of this self- deceit came over Greek membership of the euro. Berlin is now indignant, which it has no right to be. Germans who trusted the Greek government's figures were not only naïve. They were certifiable. Any sensible person would have expected the Greeks to turn up with a Trojan horse full of monopoly money. Those who chose to believe Ulysses's descendants have only themselves to blame.

But the Germans thought that they had placed limits on their naïveté, and on others' misbehaviour. French jockey or no, the Germans did ensure that the European Central Bank (ECB) would merely be a multilingual Bundesbank, profoundly averse to inflation. Although it was bank-krieg not blitzkrieg, the euro would enable the Germans to control the eurozone.

This demonstrates the limits of German psychological insight. The southern Europeans did not want to work like Germans or save like Germans. They only wanted a German credit rating, so that they could spend like lottery winners. They have, without first taking the precaution of buying a winning ticket. Now, it is not clear how they can stay in the euro and still grow their way out of their deficits. For us Brits, this is not as funny as it sounds. We need them to grow so that they will be able to buy our goods, to help us deal with our deficit. As sterling will surely strengthen against the euro, our exporters' problems will be compounded.

To add to the European policy-makers' anxieties, there is another psychological problem. The German patient has recovered from war-guilt and is no longer crippled by an identity crisis. Most Germans of working age think that it is not them but the squandering southerners who ought to be regarded as pariahs. Though the EU is part of their political identity, the Germans are not prepared to sacrifice their prosperity to others' profligacy.

So it is hard to see how the euro can survive.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion...e-1987528.html

These strange times are about to get stranger.....

[Furunculus]

Optimistic? Anything I said so far hasn't been disputed anywhere. It isn't much of an optimistic viewpoint, but rather a down-to-earth viewpoint. Of all the articles you are putting up, they only talk about the general european economic climate, and amongst those, not one word is used to depict Portuguese measures as lacking in any extent, or doubting the ability of our economy to cut off the debt. It is widely agreed that Portugal is simply taking the necessary steps to resettle the finances. That is the reality we are dealing with.

it is optimism, because you appear to believe that portugal is the master of its own destiny.

it isn't, it is a very small cog in a very big machine, a machine that is fraught with inconsistencies that utterly prevent it from working efficiently as IA's article above should make crystal clear.

of course Portugal is cutting spending, it is the only option as club-med cannot live beyond its credit-rating in perpetuity, but can fiscal contraction happen at the same time as the rapid growth needed to pay of long term structural debt (as opposed to short term deficit spending)? the answer is probably not, especially when all your major trading neighbours are also contracting fiscal policy in a way the will depress growth continent wide.

i ask you this; the value of trade in goods and services is split 52/48 percent between Britain and the EU/RestOfWorld, and we will be hammered if the Euro collapses from sovereign defaults, how much trade does portugal do with the EU as a percentage of the total?

How much do Spain and Italy Greece and Ireland do?

For that matter, how much do even France and Germany do?

You are not the masters of your own destiny, you signed what small influence you did have away when you joined the collective.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Excellent article, IA.

Optimistic? Anything I said so far hasn't been disputed anywhere. It isn't much of an optimistic viewpoint, but rather a down-to-earth viewpoint. Of all the articles you are putting up, they only talk about the general european economic climate, and amongst those, not one word is used to depict Portuguese measures as lacking in any extent, or doubting the ability of our economy to cut off the debt. It is widely agreed that Portugal is simply taking the necessary steps to resettle the finances. That is the reality we are dealing with.

Portugal's foreign debt is half that of the UK, Portugal's public debt is not larger than Germany's, Portugal's deficit is much lower than that of the UK, and Portugal's economic growth this year is amongst the highest in the EU.

However, as one of the PIGS, you obviously live beyond your means. Or, the financial markets work on perception, herd mentality, and predator packs. Portugal is the easy target.

[Jolt]

it is optimism, because you appear to believe that portugal is the master of its own destiny.

Ah. You seem to have misunderstood me. I was not refering Portugal in comparison to other countries. I merely said that, due to the results Portugal is achieving, it shall not be because of it that the Euro will fall. As to other countries, that is a different story.

Excellent article, IA.Portugal's foreign debt is half that of the UK, Portugal's public debt is not larger than Germany's, Portugal's deficit is much lower than that of the UK, and Portugal's economic growth this year is amongst the highest in the EU.

However, as one of the PIGS, you obviously live beyond your means. Or, the financial markets work on perception, herd mentality, and predator packs. Portugal is the easy target.

My thoughts exactly. This is a ridiculous system, and must be altered.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Excellent article, IA.Portugal's foreign debt is half that of the UK, Portugal's public debt is not larger than Germany's, Portugal's deficit is much lower than that of the UK, and Portugal's economic growth this year is amongst the highest in the EU.

However, as one of the PIGS, you obviously live beyond your means. Or, the financial markets work on perception, herd mentality, and predator packs. Portugal is the easy target.

What is the size of Portugal's economy vs the UK or Germany though? Bigger countries can sustain higher levels of dept? What is Portugal's "function" in the EU? Lets not forget, the EU launders (sorry, trades) all it's money through London, and most people still buy fridges and cars from Germany.

[Ronin]

What is Portugal's "function" in the EU?

we produce over-exposed football players and anoying douchebag football coaches.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

we produce over-exposed football players and anoying douchebag football coaches.

I was genuinely hoping for a positive answer like, I don't know "oranges". After all Norway produces the Cod, Denmark the Lard, France the unreasonably expensive wine....

[gaelic cowboy]

the Cork for the bottle I expect

[Louis VI the Fat]

the Cork for the bottle I expect

They do indeed!

That, and sunshine and hot babes. Which they surprisingly mix with melancholy in all sorts and shapes.

[Jolt]

I was genuinely hoping for a positive answer like, I don't know "oranges". After all Norway produces the Cod, Denmark the Lard, France the unreasonably expensive wine....

[gaelic cowboy]

Meanwhile in Ireland well make the highly expensive processors in Kildare for ye.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Portugal exports pics of children? Kiddie porn?