Shepherding Germans ?
They do seem to need it.
Our country has difficulty understanding separation of church and state.
Schenska.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/
Greece in crisis as talks fail for third time
11 May 2012
| 10 CommentsNo deal. No Euro.
Spain's most indebted village pays the price
11 May 2012
Debt crisis: as it happened - May 11, 2012
11 May 2012
| 359 Comments Spanish banks given 15 days to plan how to raise €30bn
11 May 2012
| 14 Comments Spanish banks need €100bn
11 May 2012
| 3 Commentshttp://www.spiegel.de/international/topic/euro_crisis/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/macroeconomic-morality/
"May 11, 2012, 2:23 pm
Macroeconomic Morality
A brief postscript to today’s column: contrary to what some people may think, I don’t regard anyone who disagrees with me as necessarily a mendacious idiot. Economics is hard, and people will disagree. Sometimes people will give advice with the best of intentions that turns out, in hindsight, to have been disastrous; that’s a tragedy but not a sin.
But here’s what is indeed a sin: choosing your position based on what is personally convenient.
I may make jokes along the way – I kind of need to in order to stay sane – but the stuff I write about is extremely serious; there’s a vast human tragedy taking place, and anyone who has the ear of the public has a duty to make a good-faith effort to get it as right as he can.
Yet all too many players in this game, very much including economists and public officials, very obviously haven’t been making that good faith effort. They’ve seized on dubious arguments, touted obviously weak evidence as definitive, looked for excuses either not to act themselves or for their friends not to act. And invariably the thrust of these bad arguments is to comfort the comfortable and give them license to afflict the afflicted.
I like to think that I have enough integrity to change my views when it becomes clear that they were wrong. Maybe, maybe not — although it’s probably worth pointing out that I didn’t believe in the liquidity trap and was pretty down on old-fashioned Keynesianism until 1998, when a hard look at Japan and an attempt to understand what was happening there led me to change my mind. Anyway, I try, because the ideas of economists and political philosophers matter.
And too many people aren’t trying, which is, as I said, a sin."
But here’s what is indeed a sin: choosing your position based on what is personally convenient.
I may make jokes along the way – I kind of need to in order to stay sane – but the stuff I write about is extremely serious; there’s a vast human tragedy taking place, and anyone who has the ear of the public has a duty to make a good-faith effort to get it as right as he can.
Yet all too many players in this game, very much including economists and public officials, very obviously haven’t been making that good faith effort. They’ve seized on dubious arguments, touted obviously weak evidence as definitive, looked for excuses either not to act themselves or for their friends not to act. And invariably the thrust of these bad arguments is to comfort the comfortable and give them license to afflict the afflicted.
I like to think that I have enough integrity to change my views when it becomes clear that they were wrong. Maybe, maybe not — although it’s probably worth pointing out that I didn’t believe in the liquidity trap and was pretty down on old-fashioned Keynesianism until 1998, when a hard look at Japan and an attempt to understand what was happening there led me to change my mind. Anyway, I try, because the ideas of economists and political philosophers matter.
And too many people aren’t trying, which is, as I said, a sin."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/austerity-safety-nets-and-spending/
"May 11, 2012, 2:34 pm
Austerity, Safety Nets, and Spending
The latest in the attempt to make excuses for the abject failure of austerity is the claim that European countries didn’t really practice austerity after all. This is mainly coming from the usual suspects – the people who, for example, used Census hiring to claim that Obama was presiding over a vast expansion of government employment. (What will it take for pundits to realize that if Veronique de Rugy, for example, cites a number you can pretty much assume that it’s wrong?) But I have to say that the responses I’ve seen have been surprisingly weak – some people who should know better are conceding the point that maybe there haven’t been big spending cuts. Yes, there have.
For the fact is that you can’t just look at spending levels to ask what is happening to spending programs. Here in the United States spending on unemployment insurance and food stamps has risen sharply, not because the welfare state has expanded, but because a lot more people are unemployed and poor. Similar effects are at work in European countries, which have stronger safety nets than we do. Also, some spending represents banking bailouts, not exactly what people have in mind when they talk about big government.
So let’s take a look at the example of Ireland. (All data from OECD). Here’s total spending in millions of euros, which might look as if there’s not much austerity:
But let’s parse it a bit. First off, there’s “capital transfers” – basically bank bailouts. These bulged in 2010, but continued into 2011:
Then there’s “social transfers”, which includes means-tested programs and unemployment benefits. These are up, but not because the programs became more generous; instead, they reflect the dire state of the Irish economy:
Finally, there’s government spending on consumption and investment:
So yes, Ireland has done austerity – some of it on the tax side, but much of it on the spending side. The same is true in Greece, Portugal, and Spain. Don’t believe the usual suspects when they say different. In fact, don’t believe the usual suspects when they say anything at all."
For the fact is that you can’t just look at spending levels to ask what is happening to spending programs. Here in the United States spending on unemployment insurance and food stamps has risen sharply, not because the welfare state has expanded, but because a lot more people are unemployed and poor. Similar effects are at work in European countries, which have stronger safety nets than we do. Also, some spending represents banking bailouts, not exactly what people have in mind when they talk about big government.
So let’s take a look at the example of Ireland. (All data from OECD). Here’s total spending in millions of euros, which might look as if there’s not much austerity:
"When you owe the bank a thousand dollars and can't pay, you have a problem.
When you owe the bank a billion dollars and can't pay, the bank has a problem." Old joke.
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