Irish irate as Bundestag sees budget first

I'm an American--not a European

As such, you should deplore the social market economy that Germany's trying to force on the rest of the continent instead of defending it.

Germany has been assisting with technology and building weapons for Israel

So what? We have China building phony chips for our guided weapons. Doesn't serve very well to have enemies building your weapons for you. Playing both sides makes for an unreliable partner. And it doesn't make up for Germany's anti-Israel propaganda campaign (about three-quarters of Germans believe that Israel's out to exterminate the Palestinians and maybe over half of Germans equate the IDF with the Nazi SS).

As for Italy, they dug their own grave by voting in genuine fascists back in 2008. They would obviously be working behind the scenes to take their useful idiot Berlusconi out of the picture not long after he got them in.

On a nice fall evening here in Allentown Pa, I get Toronto Radio 740 on the Am radio in my '76 Custom Cruiser when I roll home from work. I get the money exchange on their business report. We are at 97 cents to their dollar. That is of far more importance to me to anything you are selling

Ain't selling anything. It's only your prerogative that you want to hold to your liberal preconceptions and ignore the storm that's brewing across the Atlantic.

BTW, I can get 900 CHML at night up in Monroe County the clearest; 740 is a little noisy right now, but I can still get it. And China's not trying to prop up the Loony as the next candidate for world reserve currency, a status that the US liberal politicians abused to (soon to be literal) death.

Nice ride, incidentally. I've got a '95 Caprice Classic sedan with a 275 CID eight and tuned-port injection, iron block and heads. Wouldn't mind having the kind of ride that the Olds affords . . .

I will be blunt. That is commonly referred to as an LT engine here. The other problem I have is that the engine in a '95 Caprice was a 350 CID Chevy engine. I do not remember a 275 at any point in my life. What vehicles ran them?

They were in 94 through 96 model years of the Caprice; they replaced the throttle-body-injection 305.

BTW, sorry for the typo; displacement is 265 CID. IIRC, they nicknamed the engine the "baby LT1", although its official designation was L99; bore of 3.736" and 3" stroke, with identical pistons to the Vortec 5000.

No, it would be an infringement of national sovereignty, and I have no clue why some Irish T.D. would do what he did.

Still, as you seem to hate my country, and I love mine, I have no clue how to discuss this matter any further in a level-headed way. I am very sorry.

Thank you very much for your comprehension.

I do admire your tenacity in working through the obscure “Hansel and Gretel” reference. Perhaps it was because of that exhausting effort that your reading comprehension failed.

Adjectives are included to partition sets into subsets. In this case the word “failing” distinguishes welfare states that are in crisis from those that aren’t, e.g. Germany. After all, if Germany wasn’t relatively healthy for the moment) it would be unable provide help. One reason Germany isn’t failing yet is the retirement age reforms pushed through in 2007.

Perhaps associated with the mental exhaustion involved in deciphering the “Hansel und Gretel” reference is the incorrect claim that “every country that got a bailout loan had their governments fall before they got them”. Both private banks (under pressure from their governments) and the ECB have made bailut loans (i.e. loans that would otherwise have been unavailable at the rates given or even at all) to the PIIGS’ governments before their governments fell. Feel free to check the ECB’s balance sheet. This isn’t a claim that I made in my post, but since you have raised it we might as well get it straight.

I would also caution you against thinking that ECB controls interest rates. It doesn’t control them any more than the Fed does. Both the Fed and the ECB can influence interest rates, but real factors in the economy will overwhelm anything a central bank can do.

The interest rates primarily reflect lenders’ views of credit risk. No one wants to take an explicit haircut or an implicit haircut through inflation or devaluation. If a lender does lender into a risky situation, higher interest rates will be demanded.

The culprit in Europe and the rest of the Western world is unsustainable welfare state spending. Different countries are at different points on the slippery slope to bankruptcy. The PIIGS are just the harbingers of the longer term future for everyone unless major policy changes are made.

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