Sunday, June 17, 2012

Classroom

There is a flip side to today’s worrying events. Not just for arm chair philosophers, but even for example, spread traders, those of us who must have a notion of relative world dynamics to make a living. Thus it is better to understand the core of the present crisis so as to anticipate the next.

(Just for the record on the Euro: The thing was suicide from the start.  If Greece or others are ejected, fine; if they leave on their own accord, fine; if we have a disorderly break-up, fine. Bring it on. For those of us subjected to constant condescension from European elitist types a few years back, this event is just about perfect. US mutual funds and banks have less exposure to this region and are less linked to their European counterparts than ever. And we won’t starve without the E-Z for exports. Bring it on. We understand at this writing that today’s election may provide a pause. Greece will still head to the door, maybe September, maybe December. No way that economy can meet the bailout requirements and now way the Germans will throw them enough slack to make a difference.)

In the meantime we can learn something as to cause and effect. Whether it be the anointed who forced a common currency on the European masses (while skilfully avoiding the ballot box) or a far-left US administration which is trying to force a health plan on an unwilling populous – the result is the same. They defy human nature; thus, they will fail.

Witness success stories like New Jersey, Wisconsin, Indiana and Texas where voters faced and accepted the task at hand (unlike the E-Z) – simple but hard – cut spending, taxes and pensions; treat unions like the parasites that they are; cut bureaucracy. These states are thriving.

But why is it that California is losing folks at the rate of 50M per month? Why are CA businesses fleeing to Texas? Businesses cannot get out of here fast enough. We have beauty; Texas?  Well…. No matter. And “right-to-work” states in the south are booming. But CA is a poster boy of the left – school performance in the cellar, oppressive income and sales tax, a joke of a prison system, infrastructure a mess and, “a lordly public employee caste,” as Vic Hansen of the Hoover Institution so appropriately labelled this bunch.

Whether the Euro or Obama’s “vision,” Hansen notes that, “these are unsustainable ideas that are contrary to human nature and demand coercion for their implementation, given that they are increasingly anti-democratic and have to be implemented from high by an elite technocracy whether in Brussels…or Washington.”

The E-Z’s core problem then is not a hesitant ECB, not Merkel’s stubbornness. All but the wilfully blind now understand, as Hansen explains, “that the left’s statist model of trying to provide cradle-to-the-grave benefits, administered by an elite technocratic class, using demonization to bully the opposition and redistribute income, not only does not work, but cannot ever work.” It does not work for the democratic socialism of the E-Z nor the neo-socialism of Obama.

And this is why we welcome that feared, cataclysmic event - the breakup of the Euro. The rest of us, at least here in America, want past this nonsense. And this is why we welcome a return to balanced politics in the US, meaning a rejection of Obama and the radical left.  It too cannot happen fast enough.


Robert Craven

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