The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

MONDAY DOOM WATCH: Europe Circling the Economic Drain

Posted on | November 28, 2011 | 26 Comments

Four headlines from Drudge:

Britain draws up emergency
plans for collapse of Euro …

IMF drafting $800 billion
bailout plan for Italy, Spain …

REPORT: FRANCE, GERMANY PREPARE
TO TAKE DRASTIC MEASURES …

NYT: Time runs short …

Remember, these are sophisticated Europeans. Liberals have always wanted America to be more like sophisticated Europe, where everybody has a mistress and six weeks of paid vacation.

Speaking of liberals, how does Paul Krugman explain the European economic crisis? Because I’m pretty sure Greece, Spain and Italy haven’t been governed by tax-cutting Republicans recently, and yet Krugman insists that all economic woe is caused by tax-cutting Republicans.

For example, when a city like Pontiac, Michigan, goes bankrupt:

The unemployment rate in Pontiac is pegged at 25 percent. In 2009, as GM restructured under a government bailout, it shuttered its plant in Pontiac and ceased production on the line of cars named after the city, calling it a “damaged brand.”

Read the whole thing and draw your own conclusion. My point is that, to Krugman, this problem must somehow be the fault of those evil tax-cutting Republicans, who are to blame for everything.

Exactly how Krugman will blame the Euro crisis on the GOP, I don’t know, but surely he’ll find a way. He’s got a Nobel Prize, you know.

Category: Economics, Greece, Italy, Spain

Comments

26 Responses to “MONDAY DOOM WATCH: Europe Circling the Economic Drain”

  1. richard mcenroe
    November 28th, 2011 @ 12:14 am

    Bush snuck over there when he wasn’t busy making America his fault and made Europe his fault too.  The man’s just that eeeeeevil…

  2. richard mcenroe
    November 28th, 2011 @ 12:37 am

    Has anyone pointed out that when all this goes south, our NATO commitment forces will be right in the middle of the s***? When the tanks start rolling — and it’s Europe, that’s what will happen when they can’t think of anything else to do — what are we doing to safeguard our people and equipment… or at least decide which way to point them?  Because we are now  brilliantly bound by treaty to EVERY party on both sides of the disaster…

  3. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 7:41 am

    “…to Krugman, this problem must somehow be the fault of those evil tax-cutting Republicans, who are to blame for everything.”

    Well that… and the absence of an alien invasion defense infrastructure.

  4. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 7:45 am

    I think it’s then that Hillary! places a really big order with Office Depot for Acme Overcharge Buttons.

  5. Quartermaster
    November 28th, 2011 @ 7:52 am

    Very powerful evil. Even the Dems didn’t know how powerful evil he is.

    I just can’t believe that RSM didn’t see that Bush is to blame for all this.

  6. Bosun349
    November 28th, 2011 @ 7:56 am

    When you make this into an ad hominem attack on Krugman, you miss the issue that matters. America IS behaving like Greece. Borrowing trillions to purchase things we can’t afford IS the American equivalent of mandating six weeks of vacation. If it continues to take out 2 dollars in loans for every 3 dollars of tax revenue it raises, the American government WILL inevitably go just as bankrupt as Greece.

    And Republicans ARE part of the problem. Policy contributions to the  federal debt are measurable. The debt has exploded in the past decade primarily for these reasons: Bush tax cuts; wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Medicare Part D; economic stimulus; and revenue loss from the implosion of the home-ownership bubble that was the centerpiece of Bush’s domestic agenda. An American blogger who attacks Krugman over this while giving Bush and the Republican congressional leadership a pass looks as ridiculous as the Greeks who throw riots when their maxed-out national credit card is declined.

  7. American in Dublin
    November 28th, 2011 @ 7:57 am

    Wait, you forgot this cheery news clipping.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8917077/Prepare-for-riots-in-euro-collapse-Foreign-Office-warns.html

  8. smitty
    November 28th, 2011 @ 8:03 am

    An American blogger who attacks Krugman over this while giving Bush and the Republican congressional leadership a pass looks as ridiculous as the Greeks who throw riots when their maxed-out national credit card is declined.

    If you read this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that Speaker Sprinkler Man and the GOP get precious little love.
    Yet the point remains that the NYT in general, and Krugman in particular, are not mere idiots, but rather throw gasoline on the fire on a regular basis.
    Fact is that, Progressive stock manipulators though they may be, the GOP at least tries to hear a sane plan now and then, before a Democrat Senator nixes the deal.

  9. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 8:54 am

    What I find amazing is that in the midst of numerous stories in several outlets, the Eurocrats keep insisting that the fall of the EURO currency is unthinkable. It appears to be thinkable.

  10. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 9:32 am

    Ever read John Ringo’s Last Centurion? All we’re doing is changing the location….

  11. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 9:35 am

    The Bush tax cuts produced extra revenue; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost less than the stimulus. Oh, and as for the Republican congressional leadership? This chart shows that a pure Copperhead Congress does FAR worse (as well as proving points 1 and 2)… and we’re not happy with the RINOs we had to deal with then.

  12. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 9:37 am

    The Eurocrats should have listened to the Spaniard.

    “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

  13. richard mcenroe
    November 28th, 2011 @ 9:52 am

    You just gave me a book idea.  Cool.

  14. richard mcenroe
    November 28th, 2011 @ 9:54 am

    The EUrocrats plan on stabilizing their currency by outlawing wheelbarrows.

  15. edward royce
    November 28th, 2011 @ 10:28 am

    What is worse is that these bailouts are coming through the IMF.  That means that the American taxpayer is on the hook for 17% of the total no matter who gets bailed out.

    We need to leave the IMF asap.  Especially before China shows up for a bailout!

  16. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 11:06 am

    Too late I suspect, when one of the PIIGS has trouble selling bonds it’s due to lack of market confidence in those countries, when the market doesn’t want German bonds it’s lack of confidence in the Euro.

  17. Adjoran
    November 28th, 2011 @ 1:01 pm

    Not only was Frank either architect or co-architect of virtually every counterproductive banking and finance law of the last 25 years, he is also corrupt to his very soul. 

    He used his position to influence the bonuses for his lover, who was an executive at Fannie or Freddie, and to prevent any needed reforms which might have prevented the crisis or at least ameliorated its effects from even being considered.

    Good riddance to bad rubbish.

  18. Quartermaster
    November 28th, 2011 @ 1:08 pm

    Just because it is “unthinkable” does not mean it won’t be thought of. The universe has a way of forcing itself into the thought processes of people that try to ignore it.

  19. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 2:25 pm

    In other words, as long as the keeper put in plenty of extra food, only the congenitally aggressive would be a problem.

    Someone forgot to put in lots of spare “food” when flustering this cluck together.  Then they left town and forgot to call their cousin to watch the place.

  20. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 2:51 pm

    They didn’t forget they just ran out of  “spare food”. Our dear leader just offered to help with that, we are so boned.

  21. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 2:55 pm

    For it to be ad hominem, it has to be a personally aimed attack.  A critique of the man’s competence, for example. An aspersion cast upon the quality of his education, perhaps. Maybe a rude comment on his ancestry, or his waistline.

    However, Krugman’s statements comprise a great deal of self-beclownment, so all anyone has to do is ask questions, as Stacy did here, and let people figure it out for themselves, as you apparently did.  Reaching for the Croix de Bushdidit in an attempt to fend off the damage is understandable, but it doesn’t work unless it’s fresh–very fresh.

    This appeal to inherited problems was past it’s shelf life the moment Obama, Pelosi, and Reid poured liquid oxygen on the smouldering fire of Democrat-induced mortgage banking collapse.  So no, the debt did not explode in the “last decade,” it went astronomical in 2009 due to Obama’s stimulus, bailouts, and  then Obamacare. A mere “explosion” would have seemed a cool, misty breeze by comparison.

    Every troy ounce of debt incurred by all previous American administrations–ALL of them–was rendered insignificant by those astoundingly foolish acts.

  22. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 3:00 pm

    It was a carefully-tuned side effect of steering hurricane Katrina into the levee.  Not only eeeeevil, but a really good pilot.

    He must’a gone down to the crossroads.

  23. Anonymous
    November 28th, 2011 @ 4:33 pm

    Him, offering to “help”?

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…ahhhh…HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

  24. “Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs” « Temple of Mut
    November 28th, 2011 @ 6:34 pm

    […] invested in the Euro. However, we both suspect that Europe will suck the rest of the world into a a whirlpool of fiscal chaos. From: The Cotton Boll […]

  25. Tennwriter
    November 28th, 2011 @ 10:37 pm

    You can put us in your book.

  26. Britain Warns of Riots And Euro Collapse | Is the End soon?
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