Posted on 10/12/2012 3:55:49 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
You couldn't make it up.
News that the European Union has won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning comes as we learn that Europe's attempt to break the power of nation states through currency union has pushed Greek unemployment to a record 25.1pc – just ahead of Spain – with far worse yet to come.
It comes as EMU's North-South split turns more acrimonious by the day, with the creditor bloc and debtor bloc (to use a very crude description that does not capture what is really a story of currency misalignment) eyeing each other with increasing hatred.
It comes days after Chancellor Angela Merkel was greeted in Athens by enraged crowds, some giving Hitler salutes, others protesting that Greece has become a "slave colony of the European Union".
The Greek state had to deploy 7,000 police and impose a partial lockdown of Athens to keep her safe. The Frankfurter Allgemeine said Konrad Adenauer enjoyed a friendlier welcome in 1954 – as he deserved – less than a decade after Wehrmacht occupation (and 300,000 deaths).
It comes as the vice-president of the Spanish parliament calls for deployment of the Guardia Civil to crush Catalan separatists. And while the Catalan dispute obviously predates the EMU crisis, it has erupted now precisely because the EMU system has driven Spain into crippling depression.
It comes after the EMU's policy structure – having first stoked credit booms in a string of countries – has swung to the other extreme of maniacal contraction that is pushing the eurozone into a deepening double-dip slump.
Precisely because the victim states have surrendered their key policy levers to the EU Project, they have no means of defending themselves or answering the cries of their people. Hence the warnings this week from Portugal's former President Jorge
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
Winning the Nobel Peace Prize is less of an achievement than becoming 6th grade class Vice President. Obama proved that by taking it to an even lower status than Algore did after he took lower than Arafat had.
The Reason the EU Won The Nobel Peace Prize.
Here is a list of the other nominees, in no particular order.
1) Lady Gaga
2) Julian Assange (because of the Swedish rape charges)
3) Bashar al-Assad
4) Barack Hussein Obama’s Dentist’s Mother, Murgatroyd Hfuhruhurr.
5) Snoop Dogg, and his All-’Ho’ Orchestra
6) The author of 50 Shades of Gray
7) Surströmming (fermented Baltic herring)
8) The Greek Economy
The Nobel prizes are a fine idea, and in some fields they are still very important and relevent (if often awarded on the strength of political clout rather than merit). The Nobel Peace prize however, is now clearly totally dominated by leftists, used to make leftist points, and generally to congratulate leftists (or at least people that leftists want to influence).
Really flowerly language and soaring creativity, but what it comes down to is simply: The governments continue to spend far more than the taxpayers can pony up.
If all debt was wiped out tomorrow, the crisis would return in a few more years. These nations continue to make promises they can't keep, to people who know better, yet are demanding even more looting of the public treasury.
It didn't matter if it was the Euro common currency or not; the same problems would exist. Only differences would be that Spain, Italy, Greece, Ireland and Portugal would have already defaulted on their bonds and devalued their currency a few times, only to again be at the same point in this almost exact same moment in time.
Likely, most of the people in those countries are actually doing better today than they would have done under a non-unified monetary policy. Seizure of private property for state gain would have been the natural course to help ease some of the pressure, but there is but one solution: These government have to stop the wholesale looting of the treasury.
That means an end of their single unpayer health care, an end to the endless increases and expansions of retirement benefits for public servants, an end to the endless experiments in ‘green’ energy, and an end of the subscription to the liberal utopias that have reduced what were once thriving countries into the malaise of the old Soviet Block.
But hey, let's blame the Euro. Then get rid of the Euro. Then blame the ejection from the Euro...
One problem exists: The unlimited writing of checks on the future of nations, and the account's already overdrawn. Until that stops, none of this really matters.
And I’ve done even less than them, which, I figure, makes me a pretty candidate for Nobel Laureate. If you nominate me for next year’s Prize, I’ll split the cash with you.
Tragically, that is not true. Some of the other nominees are selfless hard working principled individuals struggling to assert Human rights under difficult and usually dangerous circumstances. As in potentially fatal (to themselves) circumstances. People like Maggie Gobran, a Coptic Christian nun who runs a children’s mission in Cairo. The only worry the average EU bureaucrat has is the minimal chance of a nasty paper cut on the mountains of paper he has to shuffle each day.
The fundamental economic weaknesses of the countries you mention would indeed exist without the EU, but the simple fact is that having a common currency has exacerbated the situation, because these countries now cannot devalue their currency (because it isnt just theirs) and the other members will not allow them to default. Therefore the economic disaster has been allowed to build up and up and up. The bubble will burst eventually of course, but the explosion is going to be a lot bigger, and a lot of the cause of that is the Euro.
This award has become meaningless in the last decade or so.
The Piece Prize comes from Norwegian Politicians.
The Nobel Prizes for real accomplishment come from Sweden.
Consider it done!
I like the selection. The fools running the EU will prove their foolishness to everyone soon enough.
Even better, no undeserving individual wins the prize this year, which is what happens most years.
People like that weren’t going to win.
I fail to see what benefit comes from devaluation of the currency in this; the biggest budget expense continues to be single payer health care and other public benefits, including public employee benefits, retiree benefits, priest benefits.. None of these expenses would even slightly be reduced by currency devaluation - health care costs would rise faster than inflation, as it does today. Public benefits would be increased as fast as inflation. And any savings from the reduced service of existing bonds would be replaced by higher new loan costs.
The only effective solution is to reduce what the government does, to slash the government budgets to far below their current 50% of GDP. Even if Greece fully defaulted on their debts - and really, they've all but done this with their 'haircuts' - nothing actually changes until a fundamental shift in the view of what government does.
The endless socialistic budgets are continuing to prove the rule: socialism is an economic failure. It can survive briefly, but eventually you run out of other people's money.
No they weren’t going to win, and the fact that those kind of people stood no chance is the reason why the award now really has no significance at all.
True.
Now there are two ways to go about that. Reducing public expenditure per se is not easy, because the people have gotten used to their goodies and they will simply vote out anyone who tries to take them away, no matter how much sense such a policy makes. Its a bit like a dying patient firing the doctor trying to give them an innoculation because they are frightened of needles. If you can reduce public expenditure, you should certainly do so, but very few countries have managed to do it. As you mentioned her quote "running out of other peoples money I would point out that even arch conservative and monetarist Maggie Thatcher couldn't do it in the UK. She managed to slow down the rate at which it was increasing substantially, but that was all.
The other way is to increase the economy so that the private sector can afford to keep the public. This is where devaluation comes in. If poor countries cannot compete in terms of size or quality of product, they can at least be much cheaper. But a common currency means that nations like Greece and Ireland find it very difficult to reduce their costs. Their economies do not justify having a currency as strong as the Euro, but they cannot get rid of it, and they cannot devalue, so their economic situation gets even worse. The EU will not allow them to default, with all the pain that would cause, they just keep on pouring more and more wealth in to prop them up. But there are conditions to all this largesse. In effect they all get deeper and deeper into debt. This is not sustainable, not unless there are some pretty radical changes in peoples behavior, but the fact that the EU keeps shoring them up makes people think that they can just keep on going without having to change anything. Its going to be a terrible surprise for many of the citizens of these nations when it all really falls apart. And what a crash it is going to be.
If Al Gore had any semblence of Honor he would have refused that award.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.