Posted on 06/04/2005 8:10:53 PM PDT by lainie
Amen to that!
My eldest son who lives in NZ and hasn't got a brain in his head, asked if I had any idea how the entire world blames the US for everything. Conspiracy theories abound: We started AIDS to kill off the poor Africans...but that's old. Bush actually was behind 9/11, to manufacture hysteria/fear of terrorism so he and Cheney (even more evil!), could invade the Middle East to grab oil. The fact that we didn't grab Kuwait's oil is pooh poohed. The Kuwaiti's were already in Halliburton/oil companies' pockets. No need to grab the oil fields. As for Iraq, well, we were stymied by Iraq's existing oil contracts with France, Germany, and Russia. No mention of under the table/illegal dealings/bribes/kickbacks by our European allies. All those Iraqi deaths during the oil sanctions era were our fault.
My son talked darkly about Cheney's lust for the Presidency, and if he got in, God help us. I said Cheney had already turned down the nomination, alas. The US has lost the war in Iraq, lost all moral authority, the Abu Graib 'atrocities' will never be forgotten or forgiven, and yes, that Jenin massacre really happened (NOT...we'd had heated email exchanges over that). We should get out of the middle east and be more respectful of Muslims and their culture. Beheadings, mass graves, WMD's, and 9/11...were waved away. Oh, and Uncle Sam's co-conspirator in fomenting all this trouble is Israel.
I wrote THIS in the hopes of warning what might happen of we do not do something about the grave issues facing us...if we don't seriously apply the lessons of 9-11 for the long term. Getting Bin Laden is not enough. Immigration, China's growth, our moral decline, military budgets/downsizing/realignment, etc. and many more. They all figure in there.
The Euro is going to give. From another story, French Jean-Louis Debre, a key Chirac ally, said that the French government would increase social spending regardless of whether it broke EU deficit rules.
"Today that is no longer the problem," he said.
Whoa! D'ya hear that?
These countries (especially Germany & France) have been cheating a bit on the deficit agreement thingy, but this blatant statement is quite a surprise to me. When the traders get wind of this, and it spreads through the other European nations, I think there will be a huge reaction.
The way this dumb EU system works, if one country, say France, does their little local inflation bit (but depend on Euro's "stability") other EU countries either have to inflate or end up paying for France's bills! That macroeconomic reason dictates the "deficit rules" in the first place. Someone is going to get very mad about this, and real soon.
The Euro is going to be abandoned very soon by those EU countries with the strongest balance sheets. They'll have to, because the weak ones don't have a choice but to inflate themselves out of their socialist overcommitments.
`\
Not gonna happen.
Welcome aboard.
French Jean-Louis Debre, a key Chirac ally, said that the French government would increase social spending regardless of whether it broke EU deficit rules.
Good. The more they spend the quicker reality will bite them in the butt.
Power Line
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010643.php
Maybe it Meant Something, After All
I was taken aback by this Sunday Telegraph article about English reaction to the "No" votes on the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands:
Tony Blair has given up on Europe as an issue worth fighting for, senior allies of the Prime Minister have told The Sunday Telegraph.
A leading Blairite cabinet minister made the admission last night as the European Union descended into deeper turmoil, with doubts surfacing over the future of the single currency.
Mr Blair, who will seek to shift the focus of his administration on to poverty in the Third World this week during talks with President Bush, has told his closest allies: "Africa is worth fighting for. Europe, in its present form, is not."
Most striking is the discussion about the future of the Euro:
Yet the crisis widened beyond the document alone, with a media offensive being mounted to bolster the euro after German officials and an Italian minister openly discussed its possible demise. In the first rumblings of a call for the franc to be reinstated, Nicolas Dupont-Aignant, a member of Mr Chirac's ruling UMP party, said: "France, Italy and Germany would be in a better state without the euro. However, I don't believe we should ditch it now.
"But either it is reformed, and the central European Bank kick-starts growth by lowering interest rates and pursuing a more American-style monetary policy, or the euro will explode in mid-air."
At the moment, the dollar is looking pretty good. As one Euroskeptic Tory says in the Telegraph: "You can't have a single currency without a single government. They are in a mess because they have only done half of it and they are now discovering in a painful way what that means."
When American corporations have lost their way and can't figure out how to improve their market position, a common "solution" is to merge with another similarly befuddled company. This allows both companies to "grow," and permits executives to put off hard decisions for years amid talk of "synergy" and restructuring. I think a similar phenomenon has been at work in Europe, where merger via the EU has been seen as a solution to all sorts of problems that Europe's peoples and politicians lack the will to address in a more meaningful way.
Posted by John at 08:29 AM
Yeah -- I don't know what's going on. On one hand, it's logical that the EU should crack up, because it's not built right and we all know it. On the other hand, nothing at Tony Blair's level really ever happens by chance. The Dutch and French votes were shocking, but if you read articles during the run-up to both elections, they were both well-predicted. So what gives?
Blair was a big EU proponent so he could get to be the president of the EU.
Now, he's doing everything he can to distract from the current situation. The fact that he bought in to
the disaster in the first place leads one to wonder who he's been listening to for EU "advice".
The French vote was shocking because France was the main push behind a united Europe.
The French left realizes that the socialist dream will have to go to compete with Poland, etc. The French right
realized that sovereignty would go to the unelected in Brussels.
The Dutch vote is not surprising, if you have been reading about the somewhat recent social pressures in the
Netherlands.
Read further and you can find out that the Dutch pols undervalued the guilder when converting to the Euro.
That means they surrendered 10% of Dutch citizens' savings, etc., to go to the Euro.
What was shocking to me was the Dutch vote was nonbinding, but their PM will accept the result of the vote.
I wonder what the rest of the EU leaders are thinking now. Is he really a rat leaving a sinking ship, or will they see it as him being the one that shot the final cannon into her broadside?
France as a country sounds like a complete disaster!
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.