Greek death spiral accelerates

The Telegraph ^ | 2/10/2012 | Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

[bruinbirdman]

Another normal day at the Hellenic Statistical Authority.

We learn that:

Greece's manufacturing output contracted by 15.5pc in December from a year earlier.

Industrial output fell 11.3pc, compared to minus 7.8pc in November.

Unemployment jumped to 20.9pc in November, up from 18.2pc a month earlier.

I have little further to add. This is what a death spiral looks like.

It is what can happen if you join a fixed exchange system, then take out very large debts in what amounts to a foreign currency, and then have simultaneous monetary and fiscal contraction imposed upon you.

Germany discovered this on the Gold Standard when it racked up external debt from 1925 to 1929 (owed to American bankers) in much the same way as Greece has done.

When the music stopped – ie, when the Fed raised rates from 1928 onwards – Germany blew apart in much the same way as Greece is blowing apart. This is not a cultural or anthropological issue. It is the

[Razzz42]

Germany also had an unexpected drop in industrial output.

For Greece, when 60,000 businesses go bankrupt in a year there the EU just raises VAT on food by almost double to make up the difference in uncollected VAT.

[spokeshave]

Greeks dusting off the recipe for acorn flour bread from the 40’s....

[tired&retired]

Sounds as though they are speaking of USA policy.

[Democrat_media]

How can a country survive if we don't produce our own clothes, our own cell phones, our own computers, and so on?

I'm talking about the U.S.A.. Who thinks with Obama exploding the debt ,sending our jobs to China , letting in immigrants etc. that what is happening in Greece won't happen to the U.S.A?

[blam]

"Sounds as though they are speaking of USA policy. "

The Collapse Of America In Raw Numbers (With Video)

[SMARTY]

Personally, I feel that “O” has deliberate and calculated plan to put the US belly-up as soon as possible.

There is no other way to explain the policies and plans which he puts forward.

Everything he proposes is patently ruinous and guaranteed to produce debt, discord, dysfunction and irreversible damage for this country.

There's the problem. In our history, America has HAD and SURVIVED bad Presidents and bad policies. However, the ill-conceived and unlawful changes “O” is forcing into place will set the US on an irreversible course from which we will NOT be able to recover. This path is totally coerced and does not bear the approval of American citizens...it ought to have been pre empted LONG ago!!!

Our leaders have betrayed us by inches for donkeys' years and then finally jumped into the abyss right along WITH “O” rather than challenge the new religion of ‘tolerance’ in this country. This brand of suicidal, self-loathing 'tolerance' trumps even cold hard logic and is costing us everything we have.

When this rush for wall-to-wall, blind and unreasoning tolerance is completed in America, the anarchy will begin wholesale and on all levels!!

[Democrat_media]

Sadly, what you say is true. Well put.

[Nip]

Given that the Soviet Union failed in 1990s because of its inability to manage its finances it is “only fair” that the Us should fail for the same reason.

Since we weren't failing fast enough to be “fair” the liberal-progressive-socalists of America got together and round someone who would help us along the road of “fairness”

BTW - is the above sufficient to get me a lifetime vacation at ‘Gitmo?

[DuncanWaring]

Personally, I feel that “O” has deliberate and calculated plan to put the US belly-up as soon as possible.

Many of us have been saying that since mid-2008.