Απο τον Νεύτωνα στον Adam Smith

Από τη χρεωκοπία στην αυτογνωσία

Από “Τhe book's Journal” και τους:

Ορέστης Καλογήρου (Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης)

Γιώργος Καρράς (Εθνικό Μετσόβιο Πολυτεχνείο)

Βάσω Κιντή (Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών)

Μάνος Ματσαγγάνης (Οικονομικό Πανεπιστήμιο)

Ελίζα Παπαδάκη (δημοσιογράφος)

Δαμιανός Παπαδημητρόπουλος (πολιτικός αναλυτής)

Υπάρχουν ζητήματα που βρίσκονται εκτός δημοκρατικών διαδικασιών, που δεν μπορούν να τεθούν σε ψηφοφορία. Δεν μπορούμε για παράδειγμα να ψηφίσουμε για το αν ισχύουν, ή όχι, οι νόμοι του Νεύτωνα - είναι άλλες οι διαδικασίες μέσω των οποίων θα αποφανθούμε για την εγκυρότητα ή μη των νόμων αυτών. Αν εμείς, παρόλα αυτά, θελήσουμε να θέσουμε τους νόμους του Νεύτωνα σε ψηφοφορία, το πραγματικό νόημα της ψηφοφορίας αυτής δεν θα είναι η εγκυρότητα των νόμων, αλλά το κατά πόσον εμείς θέλουμε να τους λαμβάνουμε υπόψη ή θέλουμε να τους αγνοούμε (και ενδεχομένως να φάμε το κεφάλι μας). Σε κάθε περίπτωση οι φυσικοί νόμοι υπάρχουν έξω από μας, Σε μας το μόνο που μένει είναι να συγχρονίσουμε τη σκέψη μας με αυτούς, να τους καταστήσουμε (και μαζί να καταστήσουμε και τους εαυτούς μας) έλλογους, ή να μην το κάνουμε: τούτο το τελευταίο μεταφερόμενο στο επίπεδο της κοινωνίας είναι υπό την ευρεία έννοια ο λαϊκισμός.

Οι κοινωνικοί και οικονομικοί νόμοι δεν είναι ακριβώς σαν τους νόμους της φύσης, αναλλοίωτοι. Αυτό όμως δεν σημαίνει ότι σε κάθε χρονική περίοδο δεν ισχύουν συγχρονικά τέτοιοι νόμοι. Με αυτή (και μόνο με αυτή) την έννοια όσα ισχύουν για το φυσικό περιβάλλον και τους νόμους του, ισχύουν, τηρουμένων των αναλογιών, και για τα κάθε λογής περιβάλλοντα (κοινωνικό, οικονομικό κλπ) εντός των οποίων βρισκόμαστε και η ισχύς των οποίων εκφεύγει των ορίων της ελληνικής δημοκρατίας. Θα οφείλαμε ανά πάσα στιγμή να γνωρίζουμε το περιβάλλον αυτό και -στο βαθμό που δεν μπορούμε έτσι απλά δια προεδρικού διατάγματος να το αλλάξουμε- να το λαμβάνουμε υπόψη μας. Η ιστορία των τελευταίων τριάντα χρόνων στη χώρα μας, που είναι ακριβώς η ιστορία του λαϊκισμού, εντός του οποίου όλοι, μα κυριολεκτικά όλοι, είμαστε βουτηγμένοι, είναι αδιαλείπτως και σε περίοδο προϊούσας παγκοσμιοποίησης μια ιστορία άγνοιας περιβάλλοντος, νόμων και κανόνων, μια ιστορία έκρηξης ενός ιδιόμορφου ελληνικού βολονταρισμού. Αυτή την άγνοια περιβάλλοντος η αριστερά την ονομάζει αντίσταση και ανυπακοή, σε πείσμα της δικής μας παιδείας, που δεν τη θεωρούμε δα λιγότερο αριστερή από των άλλων, σύμφωνα με την οποία αντίσταση σημαίνει να αντιπαλεύεις κάτι προκειμένου να το αλλάξεις κι όχι απλώς να το αγνοείς.

Ένα μόνο παράδειγμα άγνοιας αντικειμενικών συνθηκών θα φέρουμε από το παρελθόν, γιατί σκοπός μας εδώ δεν είναι να κάνουμε ιστορία. Στις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 80 και ενώ η Ελλάδα έχει μόλις εισέλθει στην “Κοινή Αγορά”, στην ελεύθερη αγορά της Ευρώπης και επομένως βρίσκεται μέσα σε ένα περιβάλλον το οποίο δεν ελέγχει, το ΠΑΣΟΚ εφευρίσκει ένα υβριδικό οικονομικό μοντέλο, το οποίο θα μπορούσαμε να το κωδικοποιήσουμε ως εξής: παράγουμε καπιταλιστικά, αμειβόμαστε σοσιαλιστικά, καταναλώνουμε ελεύθερα και παγκοσμιοποιημένα. Μέσα σε λίγα χρόνια ένα μεγάλο μέρος της μη ανταγωνιστικής ελληνικής παραγωγικής βάσης αφανίστηκε από προσώπου γης, ένα άλλο κομμάτι κατέληγε στο δημόσιο υπό τη μορφή των προβληματικών επιχειρήσεων. Στο εξής ένας ολοένα συρρικνούμενος και ασθενικός ιδιωτικός τομέας είχε να θρέψει ένα διογκωμένο και διογκούμενο δημόσιο τομέα, με συνέπεια η σοσιαλιστική αμοιβή (σύμφωνα με τις ανάγκες μας) και η ελεύθερη παγκοσμιοποιημένη κατανάλωση να εξασφαλίζεται με δανεισμό.

Αλλά και όταν, στις αρχές του 2000, η χώρα προσχώρησε στο ευρώ, το νόμισμα δηλαδή έπαψε

να είναι πολιτικό εργαλείο, καθώς βρέθηκε κι αυτό εκτός ορίων της ισχύος της ελληνικής δημοκρατίας, ουδείς προβληματίστηκε για τη νέα αντικειμενική συνθήκη που δημιουργείτο και τον τρόπο προσαρμογής προς αυτήν. Κάπως έτσι φτάσαμε στο φθινόπωρο του 2009, όταν ξεκίνησε, δειλά στην αρχή, με μεγάλη ένταση λίγους μήνες αργότερα, η επανάσταση των δανειστών μας, οι οποίοι, λόγω των τεράστιων ελλειμμάτων που σωρεύονταν κάθε χρόνο σε ένα ήδη δυσθεώρητο χρέος, αρνήθηκαν να ανακυκλώσουν το χρέος μας, ή ζητούσαν τέτοια επιτόκια για να το πράξουν, που η αποδοχή τους και μόνο εκ μέρους μας ήταν συνώνυμη της χρεωκοπίας.

Αποτέλεσμα αυτής της κατάστασης, μιας κατάστασης δηλαδή που και πάλι το πεδίο ορισμού της βρίσκεται έξω από μας, εκτός ορίων της ελληνικής δημοκρατίας, στις αγορές, ήταν το μνημόνιο. Αρκετοί χαρακτηρισμοί έχουν ακουστεί, όπως “το απαράδεκτο μνημόνιο”, “το μνημόνιο δεν είναι μονόδρομος”, τάσσομαι κατά του μνημονίου”, να κάνουμε δημοψήφισμα, “να ψηφίσουμε αν είμαστε υπέρ ή κατά του μνημονίου”. Στην πραγματικότητα σε όλους αυτούς δεν αρέσουν οι συνέπειες του μνημονίου, όπως δεν αρέσουν στους ανθρώπους οι συνέπειες ενός σεισμού, ή μιας καταιγίδας. Αλλά οι συνέπειες του μνημονίου, για να αξιολογηθούν, θα πρέπει να συγκριθούν με τις συνέπειες του μη μνημονίου: το μνημόνιο μας δίνει για κάτι λιγότερο από τρία χρόνια κάποια χρήματα με σχετικά υποφερτό επιτόκιο, προκειμένου αφενός να εξυπηρετήσουμε το ληξιπρόθεσμο χρέος μας, αφετέρου να καλύψουμε τα καινούργια ελλείμματα που θα δημιουργήσουμε σ' αυτά τα τρία χρόνια. Σε αντάλλαγμα αναλαμβάνουμε την υποχρέωση να μειώνουμε σταδιακά αυτά τα ελλείμματα, μέχρι να τα φέρουμε κάτω του 3% του ΑΕΠ. Για παράδειγμα το 2009 το δημόσιο είχε έσοδα περίπου 50 δις (για την ακρίβεια 49) και δαπάνες 85 δις, άρα το έλλειμμα ήταν πάνω από 35 δις. Το μνημόνιο μας επέβαλε να μειώσουμε το 2010 το έλλειμμα κατά 6% του ΑΕΠ, δηλαδή περίπου κατά 15 δις. Αυτό την ίδια στιγμή σημαίνει ότι μας επέτρεπε (και μας χρηματοδοτούσε) να έχουμε ένα έλλειμμα 20 δις (35-15=20). Με αυτά τα 20 δις πληρώσαμε μισθούς (μειωμένους), συντάξεις, τόκους κ.ο.κ.

Χωρίς τα χρήματα του μνημονίου η χώρα θα χρεωκοπούσε. Χρεωκοπία σημαίνει βέβαια αδυναμία πληρωμής χρεωλυσίων, ενδεχομένως και τόκων, σημαίνει όμως ταυτόχρονα και αδυναμία δανεισμού, διακοπή συναλλαγών και πάρε-δώσε του ελληνικού δημοσίου με τον έξω κόσμο. Αδυναμία καινούργιου δανεισμού σημαίνει αδυναμία χρηματοδότησης του καινούργιου (έστω μειωμένου) ελλείμματος που “παράγουμε” σα χώρα το 2010, το 2011 κλπ. Σημαίνει δηλαδή αναγκαστικά απότομη, ήδη από το 2010, προσγείωση σε μια κατάσταση μηδενικού ελλείμματος σαν κι αυτή στην οποία φιλοδοξούμε να φθάσουμε σταδιακά μέσω μνημονίου σε λίγα χρόνια. Αλλά αυτή την απότομη προσγείωση (είναι πολύ εύκολο να την υπολογίσουμε, είναι 36 δις μείον οι τόκοι που ενδεχομένως χρεωκοπώντας δεν θα πληρώναμε) η χώρα δεν θα μπορούσε κοινωνικά να την αντέξει -εδώ δεν καταφέρνει να αντέξει την πολύ μικρότερη προσγείωση του μνημονίου. Αν καταλαβαίνουμε καλά τα όσα περιγράφουμε, σημαίνουν στην πραγματικότητα μια κατάσταση τόσο διογκωμένου ελλείμματος, ώστε η χώρα να μην αντέχει (κοινωνικά) ούτε καν να χρεωκοπήσει.

Αυτό είναι άλλωστε που φοβούνται και οι αγορές. Φοβούνται δηλαδή ότι αν και όταν, με τη βοήθεια και του μνημονίου, φθάσουμε σε πρωτογενή πλεονάσματα και επομένως δεν έχουμε ανάγκη καινούργιου δανεισμού για να χρηματοδοτήσουμε ελλείμματα, τότε και μόνον τότε θα πάμε σε μια μορφή λελογισμένης χρεωκοπίας (αναδιάρθρωση), είτε με κούρεμα, είτε με επιμήκυνση, είτε με αναδιαπραγμάτευση επιτοκίου, ή με έναν συνδυασμό όλων αυτών, ώστε να μειώσουμε το ύψος των τοκοχρεωλυσίων που μας βαραίνουν και που σιγά σιγά θα προσεγγίζουν τα 20 δις. Λένε πολλοί ότι το μνημόνιο αποτυγχάνει, γιατί ακόμα και στο βαθμό που πετυχαίνουμε κάποιους από τους στόχους του, δεν πέφτουν τα σπρεντ και επομένως δεν θα μπορέσουμε να βγούμε για δανεισμό στις αγορές. Αλλά τα σπρεντ δεν μειώνονται, επειδή οι αγορές φοβούνται όσα περιγράψαμε παραπάνω -και οι αγορές θα συνεχίσουν να φοβούνται. Εμείς δεν έχουμε παρά να εκπληρώσουμε τον στόχο των πρωτογενών πλεονασμάτων (το μνημόνιο δηλαδή) και τότε θα έχουμε τη δυνατότητα επιλογής, να “αποφασίσουμε” δηλαδή αν θα επιβεβαιώσουμε τους φόβους των αγορών αναδιαρθρώνοντας το χρέος, ή αν αντέχουμε να το τιμήσουμε -οπότε θα πέσουν και τα σπρεντ. Τα εισαγωγικά στο “αποφασίσουμε” έχουν την έννοια, ότι η χρεωκοπία μιας χώρας δεν μπορεί να είναι μια πράξη συμφέροντος, αλλά μια πράξη εξαναγκασμένη, μια πράξη απόγνωσης, η έσχατη λύση. Αυτής της μορφής η χρεωκοπία γίνεται κατανοητή και αποδεκτή από τους άλλους. Η άλλη χρεωκοπία, κοινώς το φέσωμα (που ορισμένοι αριστεροί προτείνουν κάπου μεταξύ λύσης και επαναστατικής πράξης), δεν είναι αποδεκτή και προκαλεί αντιδράσεις και αντίποινα. Αυτό καλό είναι να το έχουν κατά νου και όσοι θεωρούν, ότι την ώρα που προσφερόταν στη χώρα η λύση του μνημονίου, εμείς είχαμε τη δυνατότητα να επιλέξουμε τη χρεωκοπία. Η αντίδραση θα ήταν τέτοια, που πιθανότατα σε λίγες βδομάδες δεν θα διαθέταμε συνάλλαγμα να αγοράσουμε πετρέλαιο για να κινηθούν τα φορτηγά μας.

Υπάρχουν άλλοι που κατηγορούν το μνημόνιο ως αντιαναπτυξιακό και κομπάζουν πως είχαν προβλέψει ότι θα μας οδηγούσε σε αδιέξοδο. Αλλά όταν έχεις το 2009 ρίξει 35 δις δανεικά στην οικονομία σου (και το ίδιο έκανες και τα προηγούμενα χρόνια) και τώρα πρέπει να τα αφαιρέσεις, είτε σταδιακά (μνημόνιο), είτε απότομα (μη μνημόνιο), πολύ απλά γιατί κανείς δεν σου τα δανείζει πλέον, αυτή η αφαίρεση εξ ορισμού είναι η συρρίκνωση. Ας μας πει κάποιος πως θα αφαιρεθεί ένα 15% του ΑΕΠ από την οικονομία, χωρίς να έχουμε πτώση του ΑΕΠ και θα τον χειροκροτήσουμε, γιατί θα έχει ανακαλύψει νέους γεωμετρικούς χώρους. Σε αυτή την κατάσταση ανάπτυξη μπορεί καταρχάς να έρθει μόνο απέξω.

Private Miracles and Public Crimes

McDonald's as the Paradigm of Progress

By J. Tucker

The nice folks at the local McDonald's know me well, but even they were puzzled when I snapped a dozen images of their newly restored interior, which is absolutely beautiful. Like most fast-food places, the management is used to customers but still a bit surprised by dedicated fans like me.

I feel vindicated by recent data on this company's hiring in the midst of terrible economic times.

"The managers here might be the greatest humanitarians in history or they might be the greediest and most selfish people on earth. It really doesn't matter."

The national labor-participation rate has been falling for a decade and is now as low as it was during the 1982 recession. If people were leaving the workplace with wads of cash and every intention of living out their dream of a life of leisure, this might be good news.

Sadly, all evidence runs the other direction. People want remunerative work but can't find it, and their situation is getting worse not better, thanks mainly to legal restrictions and artificial burdens borne by institutions that would otherwise be hiring.

McDonald's appears to be responsible for more than half the new jobs being created right now: its April jobs fair added 30,000 people to its payrolls. It has bucked the trend — a bit like swimming against the tide.

But instead of congratulating this great company for doing the impossible, the judgment in the press is harsh. Burger flipping is the only work to be had out there? Surely this is evidence of how pathetic economic growth is.

The trouble with this line is that it doesn't recognize how difficult it is for an institution to adapt itself and still grow in this climate. And how does McDonald's do it? It is an old recipe: watch the markets, emulate the successful, adapt and change, and slavishly serve the consuming public.

The reinvention of McDonald's began only two years ago, as its management noted the new vogue for healthy food and fancy coffees and fruit smoothies served up in a posh environment such as Starbucks offers. Can McDonald's, the very embodiment of the lowbrow urge for a greasy burger and fries, actually horn in on this market?

"The result is not just a beautiful model for serving up food but a beautiful model for social service in general."

It doesn't seem likely, but the company gave it a try. There were new breakfast items like fruit parfaits. There was an apple-and-walnuts salad, along with many other premium salads, for lunch. There was a new premium burger made of Angus beef (which to me tastes as good as a restaurant-style burger). There were new fruit smoothies that taste as good (or better) than the ones that cost twice as much at the hip smoothie bars.

Not that McDonald's merely chases public fads. The company responded to an earlier outcry for diet food by making the McLean sandwich in the mid 1990s. No one bought it. The company dropped it from the menu. The lesson is that public piety is not the same thing as actual spending habits. Future development would be rooted in reality, and it certainly is today.

Most of all there was the addition of new coffee drinks. Each is made from freshly ground beans, with the addition of fresh milk (whole or low fat), all made upon order. McDonald's added its own spin. The most annoying aspect of Starbucks, as everyone knows, is the wait. Everything is done by hand, from the cleaning to the packing of grounds.

Common sense can go a long way

Is Germany Turning Into the Strong, Silent Type?

Its economic strength has foreign officials prodding Germany to take on greater international burdens. But the country's leaders are reluctant to accept that role.

By MARCUS WALKER

Germany is sitting on top of the world. But the rest of the world thinks it's getting too comfortable up there.

The country has come roaring out of the global financial crisis, boasting one of the strongest economies in the West and seemingly poised for years of rising exports ahead.

What's more, the better it does, the more the world expects it to do. Europe and the U.S. want Germany to take charge on cleaning up Europe's debt crisis and do more for big causes—like supporting the Arab revolutions and the sputtering global economic recovery.

Germany's answer? Business as usual suits us fine.

Unlike many other Western countries, Germany has spent years living within its means and building up a deep trade surplus. Now it's reluctant to bail out nations that weren't as prudent. And it doesn't want to get involved in foreign entanglements like Libya.

All of which leads to a question with big implications for the global economy and political order: What is Germany's place in the world?

German leaders argue that they don't want to tinker with a winning formula, and they're already making significant contributions to the EU and NATO. But critics see it differently. They attack the country for wanting to be a big Switzerland: a trading nation that profits from the business opportunities of a globalized economy but shirks the dirty work of globalization, including international involvement in armed conflicts.

Germany's traditional allies even fret that the country is losing interest in Europe and the West. After all, when you've carved out a lucrative niche selling precision machinery and luxury cars to fast-growing emerging economies such as China, who needs stodgy old Europe?

"Germany is rising in a Europe that's coming apart at the seams," says John Kornblum, former U.S. ambassador to Berlin. "How is this country—the only major economy in Europe that can keep up with globalization—going to fit into this Europe?"

A Changing Dynamic

Both NATO and the EU were built around Germany, by allies that wanted to bind Europe's strongest country into a multilateral structure. Germany, rueful of its history, also felt more comfortable inside their embrace.

Today's Germany, more confident of its own strength and virtue, exudes the sense that it no longer needs either alliance quite as much as it used to. Only 24% of Germans see more upsides than downsides to EU membership, while 31% see more downsides and 40% say it's a mixed bag, according to a survey published in German newspaper Die Zeit in March.

Berlin is also insisting on harsh bailout terms for Greece and Ireland, reflecting a cool cost-benefit analysis and Chancellor Angela Merkel's fine antennae for the public mood. Long gone are the times when Germany abided by the European consensus and gladly opened its checkbook for the common cause.

Meanwhile, Germany recently shocked its NATO allies by refusing to back their military intervention in Libya. When the United Nations Security Council authorized the intervention in March, Germany abstained, along with China and Russia, instead of supporting the U.S., France and Britain.

Decisions like these have led critics to ask whether Germany is becoming an unpredictable country and an awkward partner. "This is an aging, sometimes crotchety society that wants to avoid risks and hang on to its money," says François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Even President Barack Obama, who awarded Ms. Merkel the Presidential Medal of Freedom on June 7 while showering praise on her, tactfully suggested Germany could be doing more to help out with international conflicts.

Yet, another take on the Greek and/or Banking crisis

Germany's Weber Slams Rescue Efforts

By MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG And NINA KOEPPEN

FRANKFURT—Former Bundesbank chief Axel Weber said Europe needs to consider guaranteeing all Greece's outstanding debt because Athens's only viable alternative is a messy default that would be more costly and risk sparking broader financial turmoil.

Mr. Weber, in his first interview since leaving the Bundesbank and the governing council of the European Central Bank at the end of April, said Europe's response to the crisis so far addressed Greece's immediate funding needs without offering the country a credible, long-term resolution for paring its growing mountain of debt.

That uncertainty is fueling fears that Athens will be forced into a messy default and has destabilized markets.

"Ultimately, solving the Greek debt problem will have to deal with the outstanding, past amount of debt, and there are, unfortunately, only very limited options: Either a default or partial haircuts or a guarantee for the outstanding amount of Greek debt," Mr. Weber said. "Governments have to decide which option they want to go for, but the current piecemeal approach of repeated aid programs inevitably leads to the latter solution."

Even after his resignation, Mr. Weber, 54 years old, remains an influential, if controversial, figure in European economic circles. His comments on Greece will likely draw notice in Berlin and other capitals as leaders grapple with the latest flare-up of a crisis that has plagued the Continent for nearly two years.

Since announcing his departure, Mr. Weber has frequently been named as a potential successor to Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Josef Ackermann, whose contract expires in 2013. Mr. Weber didn't rule out going to work in the private sector, but said he had a contract to teach central banking at the University of Chicago until May of next year. He said he hadn't decided what to do after that, but added that he wouldn't pursue another policy-making position.

Issuing guarantees could help persuade Greece's creditors to exchange the debt they currently hold for new bonds with longer maturities, effectively giving Athens more time to pay back its loans. Europe's banks, which hold much of Greece's debt, are resisting rolling over their Greek bonds unless they receive incentives, such as guarantees that that the debt will be repaid. Germany and other European countries have so far resisted making guarantees, arguing that it is in banks' best interest to participate voluntarily.

The real risks of the shale gas revolution, and how to manage them.

The Facts About Fracking

By The Wall Street Journal

The U.S. is in the midst of an energy revolution, and we don't mean solar panels or wind turbines. A new gusher of natural gas from shale has the potential to transform U.S. energy production—that is, unless politicians, greens and the industry mess it up.

Only a decade ago Texas oil engineers hit upon the idea of combining two established technologies to release natural gas trapped in shale formations. Horizontal drilling—in which wells turn sideways after a certain depth—opens up big new production areas. Producers then use a 60-year-old technique called hydraulic fracturing—in which water, sand and chemicals are injected into the well at high pressure—to loosen the shale and release gas (and increasingly, oil).

The resulting boom is transforming America's energy landscape. As recently as 2000, shale gas was 1% of America's gas supplies; today it is 25%. Prior to the shale breakthrough, U.S. natural gas reserves were in decline, prices exceeded $15 per million British thermal units, and investors were building ports to import liquid natural gas. Today, proven reserves are the highest since 1971, prices have fallen close to $4 and ports are being retrofitted for LNG exports.

The shale boom is also reviving economically suffering parts of the country, while offering a new incentive for manufacturers to stay in the U.S. Pennsylvania's Department of Labor and Industry estimates fracking in the Marcellus shale formation, which stretches from upstate New York through West Virginia, has created 72,000 jobs in the Keystone State between the fourth quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2011.

The Bakken formation, along the Montana-North Dakota border, is thought to hold four billion barrels of oil (the biggest proven estimate outside Alaska), and the drilling boom helps explain North Dakota's unemployment rate of 3.2%, the nation's lowest.

All of this growth has inevitably attracted critics, notably environmentalists and their allies. They've launched a media and political assault on hydraulic fracturing, and their claims are raising public anxiety. So it's a useful moment to separate truth from fiction in the main allegations against the shale revolution.

       • Fracking contaminates drinking water. One claim is that fracking creates cracks in rock formations that allow chemicals to leach into sources of fresh water. The problem with this argument is that the average shale formation is thousands of feet underground, while the average drinking well or aquifer is a few hundred feet deep. Separating the two is solid rock. This geological reality explains why EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, a determined enemy of fossil fuels, recently told Congress that there have been no "proven cases where the fracking process itself has affected water."

A second charge, based on a Duke University study, claims that fracking has polluted drinking water with methane gas. Methane is naturally occurring and isn't by itself harmful in drinking water, though it can explode at high concentrations. Duke authors Rob Jackson and Avner Vengosh have written that their research shows "the average methane concentration to be 17 times higher in water wells located within a kilometer of active drilling sites."

They failed to note that researchers sampled a mere 68 wells across Pennsylvania and New York—where more than 20,000 water wells are drilled annually. They had no baseline data and thus no way of knowing if methane concentrations were high prior to drilling. They also acknowledged that methane was detected in 85% of the wells they tested, regardless of drilling operations, and that they'd found no trace of fracking fluids in any wells.

Generating electricity by burning dollars

Wind Energy's Ghosts

By Andrew Walden

Tehachapi's dead turbines

Bankrupt Europe has a lesson for Congress about wind power.

Wiwo...wiwo...wiwo. 

The sound floats on the winds of Ka Le, this southernmost tip of Hawaii's Big Island, where Polynesian colonists first landed some 1,500 years ago.

Some say that Ka Le is haunted -- and it is. But it's haunted not by Hawaii's legendary night marchers. The mysterious sounds are "Na leo o Kamaoa"-- the disembodied voices of 37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm.

The voices of Kamaoa cry out their warning as a new batch of colonists, having looted the taxpayers of Spain, Portugal, and Greece, seeks to expand upon their multi-billion-dollar foothold half a world away on the shores of the distant Potomac River. European wind developers are fleeing the EU's expiring wind subsidies, shuttering factories, laying off workers, and leaving billions of Euros of sovereign debt and a continent-wide financial crisis in their wake. But their game is not over. Already they are tapping a new vein of lucre from the taxpayers and ratepayers of the United States.

The Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade Bill appears to be politically dead since Republican Scott Brown's paradigm-shattering Massachusetts Senate victory. But alternative proposals being floated by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and others still promise billions of dollars to wind developers and commit the United States to generate as much as 20% of its electricity from so-called "renewable" sources.

The ghosts of Kamaoa are not alone in warning us. Five other abandoned wind sites dot the Hawaiian Isles -- but it is in California where the impact of past mandates and subsidies is felt most strongly. Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy's California "big three" locations -- Altamont Pass, Tehachapi, and San Gorgonio -- considered among the world's best wind sites.

Built in 1985, at the end of the boom, Kamaoa soon suffered from lack of maintenance. In 1994, the site lease was purchased by Redwood City, CA-based Apollo Energy.

Cannibalizing parts from the original 37 turbines, Apollo personnel kept the declining facility going with outdated equipment. But even in a place where wind-shaped trees grow sideways, maintenance issues were overwhelming.  By 2004 Kamaoa accounts began to show up on a Hawaii State Department of Finance list of unclaimed properties. In 2006, transmission was finally cut off by Hawaii Electric Company.

California's wind farms -- then comprising about 80% of the world's wind generation capacity -- ceased to generate much more quickly than Kamaoa.  In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned.  Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills.

The new aristocracy

Time to send a message to Canada’s postal workers

It is hard to imagine a more coddled, out-of-touch and overcompensated group than postal workers

by the editors of Macleans Canada

Rain or snow or sleet or hail can’t disrupt the mail. But what rhymes with seven weeks of annual paid vacation, out-of-whack pay scales or infinitely bankable sick days?

While the rotating strike by workers at Canada Post has proven to be a hardship for many Canadian businesses, it is also shining necessary light on the massive disparity between postal employees and workers in the private sector. Outside of bureaucrats in France, it is hard to imagine a more coddled, out-of-touch and overcompensated group than postal workers.

Canada Post’s efforts to bring labour costs in line with common sense, modern technology and market rates should be supported regardless of the strike’s immediate implications. A successful conclusion to this strike might even spark a broader rationalization across all Crown corporations and government operations.

By any objective measure, a job at the post office is well-rewarded, despite the weather. Research by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in 2008 found postal workers enjoyed a 17 per cent wage premium over comparable private sector jobs. The current offer from Canada Post would raise wages by 7.4 per cent, on a cumulative basis, over the next four years. Union officials are demanding 11.55 per cent—a massive increase for workers who are already demonstrably overcompensated.

As with most sinecures, however, the real advantage to working at Canada Post is in the benefits. Postal workers currently accumulate sick days at the rate of 15 per year, with no maximum. The extent of this bottomless bank of sick days is illustrated by a recent Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) bulletin that offered up the apocryphal example of “Narinda,” who has “402 days of sick leave credit.” Canada Post is sensibly proposing to buy out this improbable inventory; Narinda would receive $3,000 cash for her hoard of sick days.

Then there is the matter of paid vacation. Current full-time Canada Post employees are eligible for up to seven weeks of holiday, a prospect far beyond imagination for most in the workaday world. And the pension plan has an unfunded liability of $3.2 billion.

The business of mail delivery has changed dramatically since the last postal strike in 1997. The advent of electronic bill payment, email and the rest of the digital revolution has led to a 17 per cent decline in letter mail volume since 2006.

Canada Post’s sensible strategy is to establish a more reasonable pay and benefits system for workers in this declining industry—but only for new hires. Other than replacing the absurd sick-day bank (which Canada Post has offered to refer to binding arbitration), full-time postal workers would keep all their existing wages and benefits, whether appropriate or not. New employees would have a lower starting wage, receive six weeks of vacation instead of seven, and subscribe to a different pension plan.

Canada Post’s offer is reminiscent of the deal given North American dockworkers when intermodal shipping containers revolutionized the stevedore business in the 1960s. Existing workers had their jobs, wages and benefits protected for the extent of their careers, but anyone hired after the deal was signed was expected to accept reality. It seemed more than fair back then. The same logic should apply today.

While disputing the decline in mail volume and continuing to make unrealistic demands on wages and benefits, the postal union is nonetheless seeking new ways to hold the Canadian economy hostage: CUPW has called on Canada Post to expand into banking and finance. The prospect of rotating bank strikes is no doubt pleasing to union organizers. Not so for the rest of the country.

Of course the current postal dispute has significance far beyond the future of letter mail or the ambitions of Canada Post and its union. The gap between private and public sector compensation has now reached crisis proportions, and must be addressed for the sake of equity, affordability and coherent labour peace.

One example of how large and untenable this gap has become can be found in Statistics Canada’s recent observation that public sector employees now constitute a majority of all pension plan participants, despite being outnumbered more than three to one in the workforce. This suggests two types of retirement in the future: one of carefree luxury for public sector employees, and one of reduced expectations for everyone else. A similar dichotomy is at work with Ontario’s practice of paying a bonus to every corrections staffer who takes fewer than 23 sick days per year.

A postal strike seems as good a time as any to start imposing a new sense of reality on the public sector.

Arab Spring!

What We Really Need Is Democracy

By Small Dead Animals

With a totalitarian head-chopping party to vote for;

"Hundreds of Muslim extremists surrounded a church in central Egypt and threatened to kill the local priest, the Assyrian International News Agency reported. The extremists began targeting the church in a village 7 kilometres south of the city of Minya in March after renovation work began, threatening to demolish the church.
Hundreds of Muslim extremists surrounded a church in central Egypt and threatened to kill the local priest, the Assyrian International News Agency reported. The extremists began targeting the church in a village 7 kilometres south of the city of Minya in March after renovation work began, threatening to demolish the church."

Social justice AND Free Trade

A convincing case for free trade found in the history books

By Jagdish Bhagwati

Cordell Hull, at the time the US secretary of state, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for policies that included his tireless efforts on behalf of multilateral free trade

Contrary to what sceptics often assert, the case for free trade is robust. It extends not just to overall prosperity (or "aggregate GNP"), but also to distributional outcomes, which also makes the free trade argument morally compelling.

The link between trade openness and economic prosperity is strong and suggestive. For example, Arvind Panagariya of Columbia University divided developing countries into two groups: "miracle" countries that had annual per capita GDP growth rates of 3 per cent or higher; and "debacle" countries that had negative or zero growth rates. Mr Panagariya, an Indian economist, found commensurate corresponding growth rates of trade for both groups from 1961 to 1999.

It could be argued that GDP growth causes trade growth, rather than vice versa - that is, until one examines the countries in depth. Nor can one argue that trade growth has little to do with trade policy: while lower transport costs have increased trade volumes, so has steady reduction of trade barriers.

More compelling is the dramatic upturn in GDP growth rates in India and China after they turned strongly towards dismantling trade barriers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In both countries, the decision to reverse protectionist policies was not the only reform undertaken, but it was an important component.

In the developed countries, too, trade liberalisation, which started earlier in the postwar period, was accompanied by other forms of economic opening (including a return to currency convertibility), resulting in rapid GDP growth.

Economic expansion was interrupted in the 1970s and 1980s, but the cause was the macroeconomic crises triggered by the success of the Opec nations and the ensuing deflationary policies pursued by Paul Volcker, the US Federal Reserve chairman at the time.

Moreover, the negative argument that historical experience supports the case for protectionism is flawed. Douglas Irwin, the economic historian, has challenged the argument that 19th-century protectionist policy aided the growth of infant industries in the US. He has also shown that many of the 19th century's successful high-tariff countries, such as Canada and Argentina, used tariffs as a revenue source, not as a means of sheltering domestic manufacturers. Nor should free traders worry that trade openness prevented additional growth for some developing countries, as critics contend. Trade is only a facilitating device.

If your infrastructure is poor, or you have domestic policies that prevent investors from responding to market opportunities (such as south Asia's stifling licensing restrictions), you will see no results. To gain from trade openness, you have to ensure that complementary policies are in place.

But then critics shift ground and argue that trade-driven growth benefits only the elites and not the poor; it is not "inclusive". In India, however, the shift to accelerated growth after reforms that included trade liberalisation has pulled nearly 200 million people out of poverty. In China, which grew faster, it is estimated that more than 300 million people have moved above the poverty line since the start of reforms.

In fact, developed countries also benefit from trade's effect on poverty reduction. Contrary to much popular opinion, trade with poor countries does not pauperise rich countries. The opposite is true. It is unskilled, labour-saving technical change that is putting pressure on the wages of workers, whereas imports of cheaper, labour-intensive goods from developing countries help the poor who consume them.

If freer trade reduces poverty, it is presumptuous for critics to claim greater virtue. In truth, the free traders control the moral high ground: with at least 1 billion people still living in poverty, what greater moral imperative do we have than to reduce that number? Talk about "social justice" is intoxicating, but actually doing something about it is difficult. Here the free traders have a distinct edge.

As the historian Frank Trentmann has demonstrated, the case for free trade was made in 19th-century Britain in moral terms: it was held to promote not just economic prosperity, but also peace.

It is also worth recalling that in 1945, Cordell Hull, at the time the US secretary of state, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for policies that included his tireless efforts on behalf of multilateral free trade.

It is time for the Norwegian Nobel committee to step up again.

Back to reality

R.I.P. Tesla

By Eric Peters

Chalk this up to "Lesson Not Learned."

The Tesla electric sports car is dead -- a victim of its own defective economics. This was not unpredictable.

The company created an electric version of the gas-powered Lotus sports car -- and tried to sell it for twice the price of the gas-powered version.

Just 1,650 of these electric lemons found people rich enough -- and dumb enough -- to spend $109,000 for a $51,845 Lotus Elise stripped of its perfectly good gasoline engine and converted to run on electricity.

Apparently, some forms of green still matter more than others.

And gray too. As in brain matter.

Or lack thereof.

Yes, the Tesla electric was mighty quick. So is the Lotus it's based on. Maybe not quite as quick, because electric motors have the mechanical advantage of tremendous and immediate torque while a reciprocating engine has to rev to build power. But the gas-powered Lotus doesn't run out of juice -- literally -- after a couple laps around the track. And for a fraction of the cost differential between the electrified version and the gasoline-powered version, one could easily hop up the gas-powered version to be quicker than the electric and have probably $20K or so still jangling in one's pocket for gas money.

That would cover fuel costs for, oh, the next 110,000 mile or so of driving. This calculation is very conservative; it assumes the gas-powered Lotus gets only 22 MPG on average (it's rated 27 highway) and that gas prices are $4 per (they're currently down to around $3.60).

So: $20K = 5,000 gallons at $4 per.

And the above is based on the assumption that you spent $30K to hop up the Lotus instead of just being happy with a 5-second-to-60 car (the Lotus) instead of a 4-second-to-60 car (the electric Tesla). If you're okay with the slightly less quick but much longer-legged Lotus, you've got $50K left to spend on gas.

You'd have to drive that electric Tesla for a long time before it caught up with the gas-powered Lotus.

Not counting in-betweens for those hours-long recharge sessions.

And isn't the point of an electric car economy rather than performance? The Tesla roadster is a six-figure exotic. Whether it's powered by electricity or gas, it's a car for the extremely affluent only. People who can afford to spend $100K on a car -- any car -- don't have to worry about what its gas mileage or cost of operating is. Right?

The Tesla was ostensibly built as a way to sex-up the idea of electric cars. Well, fine. A Lamborghini is sexy, too. I'm sure plenty of Walmart associates would very much like to have one of those, too. Also a supermodel wife. And a vacation house in Monaco. Yeah. That's the ticket!

Anyhow.

Tesla -- the company -- has not taken a lesson from this experience.

It is going to try again.

It's true the pending Tesla Model S electric sedan is less expensive -- just $58,000 (to start) this time. Instead of being priced like a 911 turbo as the Tesla sports car was, the sedan will be priced more along the lines of a Lexus GS460 sedan.

Well, maybe not quite so much along those lines, since the Lexus, at $55,370, is still nearly three grand less -- which would buy you a year's worth of gas at current prices.

And the $58K Tesla S is only good for 160 miles before its exhausted batteries need to be recharged. To get one that will go 300 miles (about half the range of a $22K VW Jetta diesel) before its batteries are exhausted will cost you closer to $80,000.

Meanwhile, a really nice 2011 BMW 330d (diesel) could be yours for only $44,150. It gets 36 MPG on the highway. Run the math above assuming that figure and a cost differential of about $40K and see what you get...

So, my question is: What's in that pipe they're smoking?

And next: Who is backing this venture?

Someone is putting money behind this mess. People who see a market for a $58K-$80K electric Edsel that can't do what a $15K gas-powered car can do.

There are only so many rich idiots out there.

Someone really ought to tell 'em about it.

Wait for the Boom

Citi Director Resigns Suddenly

By AVI SALZMAN

Citigroup (C) announced after the market closed on Friday that director Jerry Grundhofer  had resigned, effective immediately. The company did not elaborate much on the reason for his sudden departure in its release: “We understand his desire to now dedicate more of his time to other interests and we are grateful for his service,” said Citigroup Chairman Richard Parsons.

A company spokesman said that there was no further information about why Grundhofer was resigning.

Grundhofer, who has served on the board since 2009, used to be the chairman and CEO of U.S. Bancorp (USB). He has also served as the vice chairman of Bank of America (BAC) and was on the board of Lehman Brothers.

He was the head of Citigroup’s risk management and finance committee as of the company’s most recent proxy statement. He also served as a director at Citibank

Blackberry Panic!

Stockman on Debt

Dystopia in Action

Swedish Preschool Devoted to Producing Androgynous Children

by Dave Blount

Sweden has taken the lead as liberals race downward to new depths of depravity in their ham-fisted efforts to reengineer civilization in their own grotesque image. While New York is still swinging a sledgehammer at the last remnants of holy matrimony, Swedes have advanced to brainwashing children into being androgynous:

At the "Egalia" preschool, staff avoid using words like "him" or "her" and address the 33 kids as "friends" rather than girls and boys.

From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don't fall into gender stereotypes. …

The taxpayer-funded preschool which opened last year in the liberal Sodermalm district of Stockholm for kids aged 1 to 6 is among the most radical examples of Sweden's efforts to engineer equality between the sexes from childhood onward.

Breaking down gender roles is a core mission in the national curriculum for preschools…

Some of the techniques are subtle in advancing liberal objectives:

Lego bricks and other building blocks are intentionally placed next to the kitchen, to make sure the children draw no mental barriers between cooking and construction.

Others aren't:

Director Lotta Rajalin notes that Egalia places a special emphasis on fostering an environment tolerant of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. From a bookcase, she pulls out a story about two male giraffes who are sad to be childless — until they come across an abandoned crocodile egg.

Nearly all the children's books deal with homosexual couples, single parents or adopted children. There are no "Snow White," ''Cinderella" or other classic fairy tales seen as cementing stereotypes.

As in 1984, the authorities deform language in order to impose their warped conception of an ideal society.

Staff try to shed masculine and feminine references from their speech, including the pronouns him or her — "han" or "hon" in Swedish. Instead, they've have adopted the genderless "hen," a word that doesn't exist in Swedish but is used in some feminist and gay circles.

But at least they recognize biological differences, if not their significance.

Egalia doesn't deny the biological differences between boys and girls — the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct.

I don't even want to think about what kind of games moonbat educators encourage preschoolers to play with anatomically correct dolls.

Growing up

The Inconvenient Truth about Sovereign Debt

by DETLEV SCHLICHTER

The efforts of our political leaders to socialize the fallout from the financial crisis by means of the balance sheets of the government and the central bank, and to thereby sustain an illusion of normalcy, have guaranteed that the financial crisis is now morphing into a sovereign debt crisis – a process that is unfolding at different speeds globally but that in many places is well advanced already. On a long enough time line, everywhere is Greece.

Crises clarify things. When the cash runs out and the chimera of harmony and “shared ideals” can no longer be sustained with borrowed or printed money, the hard questions get asked – and clear and blunt answers are finally given. No more time for fuzzy logic.

Who Owes Government Debt?

Who owes government debt? Who do the lenders to governments ultimately hold a claim against? The answer is not as obvious as it is in the case of loans to private entities, such as individuals or corporations.

In the case of Greece, for example, many will consider the answer to this question obvious: The Greek “people” have an obligation to repay the loans that banks and bond investors have extended to the government of the Greek “people”. After all, the government represent “the people” and have thus borrowed in the name of “the people”. So “the people” of Greece have a collective obligation to pay.

This is nonsense. It is unjust and economically absurd. Also, it is simply not going to happen. Forget about it. Not only in Greece – forget about it almost everywhere. Once the debt load has reached a certain level the “people” won’t pay – and rightly so.

The loan from a banker or bond investor to a government is a contract, and many people will assert that contracts have to be honoured for the market economy to work. But most Greeks never contracted for this debt, their government officials did. The loan is between a lender (bank or bond investor) and the government – a political entity. That entity has seriously overspent and is now going broke.

I maintain that the vast majority of people do not consider the debt of their government to be the equivalent of their own personal debt, nor do they feel obligated morally to assume responsibility for any action that government officials undertake or any contract that they sign. This position is sensible. To have any real sense of personal responsibility one needs to have control over affairs. In a democratic nation state, no single voter has sufficient control over the borrowing and spending activities of the government, and it would thus be absurd to assume the citizen will readily forfeit a considerable part of his or her future income or property to honour debts incurred by those who are running the government.

The whole notion of democratic “representation” has been obscured by constant propaganda trying to tell us that the government qua democratically elected government represents “the people”, that it looks after the “national interest” (which is a convenient political fiction) and “society as a whole”. This is evidently not the case. The government is not a true representative of anybody.

If the government officials were my representatives – like, for example, the lawyer and tax account who I hire to work for me, or the shop manager or other employees who work in my business, and for whose actions I do in fact take considerable responsibility – I could direct their activities, and most importantly, I could release them from their duties at any moment. In a democracy, I get a chance to kick out my “representatives” only every four or five years even if I tire of their “representation” much earlier, or more precisely, I get a chance every four or five years to cast an individual vote of infinitesimally small importance in a process that may replace one group of politicians with another group of politicians. Whatever my “representatives” do in these four or five years, I have to take the consequences – and live with these consequences for years and decades. If the presently ruling group of politicians decide to bail out the entire banking industry – all with my best interests at heart, of course – I have to foot the bill.

Child Abuse

The Brokest Generation

By Mark Steyn

Our kids are the ultimate credit market, and the rest of us are all pre-approved!

Just between you, me, and the old, the late middle-aged, and the early middle-aged: Isn’t it terrific to be able to stick it to the young? I mean, imagine how bad all this economic-type stuff would be if our kids and grandkids hadn’t offered to pick up the tab.

Well, okay, they didn’t exactly “offer” but they did stand around behind Barack Obama at all those campaign rallies helping him look dynamic and telegenic and earnestly chanting hopey-hopey-changey-changey. And “Yes, we can!”

Which is a pretty open-ended commitment.

Are you sure you young folks will be able to pay off this massive Mount Spendmore of multi-trillion-dollar debts we’ve piled up on you?

“Yes, we can!”

We thought you’d say that! God bless the youth of America! We of the Greatest Generation, the Boomers, and Generation X salute you, the plucky members of the Brokest Generation, the Gloomers, and Generation Y, as in “Why the hell did you old coots do this to us?”

Because, as politicians like to say, it’s about “the future of all our children.” And the future of all our children is that they’ll be paying off the past of all their grandparents. At 12 percent of GDP, this year’s deficit is the highest since the Second World War, and prioritizes not economic vitality but massive expansion of government. But hey, it’s not our problem. As Lord Keynes observed, “In the long run we’re all dead.” Well, most of us will be. But not you youngsters, not for a while. So we’ve figured it out: You’re the ultimate credit market, and the rest of us are all pre-approved!

The Bailout and the TARP and the Stimulus and the Multi-Trillion Budget and TARP 2 and Stimulus 2 and TARP And Stimulus Meet Frankenstein and the Wolf Man are like the old Saturday-morning cliffhanger serials your grandpa used to enjoy. But now he doesn’t have to grab his walker and totter down to the Rialto, because he can just switch on the news and every week there’s his plucky little hero Big Government facing the same old crisis: Why, there’s yet another exciting spending bill with twelve zeroes on the end, but unfortunately there seems to be some question about whether they have the votes to pass it. Oh, no! And then, just as the fate of another gazillion dollars of pork and waste hangs in the balance, Arlen Specter or one of those lady-senators from Maine dashes to the cliff edge and gives a helping hand, and phew, this week’s spendapalooza sails through. But don’t worry, there’ll be another exciting episode of Trillion-Buck Rogers of the 21st Century next week!

This is the biggest generational transfer of wealth in the history of the world. If you’re an 18-year old middle-class hopeychanger, look at the way your parents and grandparents live: It’s not going to be like that for you. You’re going to have a smaller house, and a smaller car — if not a basement flat and a bus ticket. You didn’t get us into this catastrophe. But you’re going to be stuck with the tab, just like the Germans got stuck with paying reparations for the catastrophe of the First World War. True, the Germans were actually in the war, whereas in the current crisis you guys were just goofing around at school, dozing through Diversity Studies and hoping to ace Anger Management class. But tough. That’s the way it goes.

I had the pleasure of talking to the students of Hillsdale College last week, and endeavored to explain what it is they’re being lined up for in a 21st-century America of more government, more regulation, less opportunity, and less prosperity: When you come to take your seat at the American table (to use another phrase politicians are fond of), you’ll find the geezers, boomers, and X-ers have all gone to the men’s room, and you’re the only one sitting there when the waiter presents the check. That’s you: Generation Checks.

Hope and change

The Netherlands to Abandon Multiculturalism

by Soeren Kern

The Dutch government says it will abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands.

A new integration bill (covering letter and 15-page action plan), which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament on June 16, reads: "The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people. In the new integration system, the values of the Dutch society play a central role. With this change, the government steps away from the model of a multicultural society."

The letter continues: "A more obligatory integration is justified because the government also demands that from its own citizens. It is necessary because otherwise the society gradually grows apart and eventually no one feels at home anymore in the Netherlands. The integration will not be tailored to different groups."

The new integration policy will place more demands on immigrants. For example, immigrants will be required to learn the Dutch language, and the government will take a tougher approach to immigrants to ignore Dutch values or disobey Dutch law.

The government will also stop offering special subsidies for Muslim immigrants because, according to Donner, "it is not the government's job to integrate immigrants." The government will introduce new legislation that outlaws forced marriages and will also impose tougher measures against Muslim immigrants who lower their chances of employment by the way they dress. More specifically, the government will impose a ban on face-covering Islamic burqas as of January 1, 2013.

If necessary, the government will introduce extra measures to allow the removal of residence permits from immigrants who fail their integration course.

The measures are being imposed by the new center-right government of Conservatives (VVD) and Christian Democrats (CDA), with parliamentary support from the anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV), whose leader, Geert Wilders, is currently on trial in Amsterdam for "inciting hatred" against Muslims.

No.-

Should American Taxpayers Finance another Big Fat Greek Bailout?

by Dan Mitchell

The notion that American taxpayers are about to subsidize another Greek bailout (via the Keystone Cops at the IMF) is way beyond economically foolish. It is also morally offensive.

To turn Winston Churchill’s famous quote upside down: “Never have so many paid so much to subsidize such an undeserving few.”

Let’s start with a few facts:

- Greece’s GDP is roughly equal to the GDP of Maryland.

- Greece’s population is roughly equal to the population of Ohio.

- Despite that small size, in both terms of population and economic output, Greece already has received a bailout of about $150 billion (actual amount fluctuates with the exchange rate).

- Don’t forget the indirect bailout resulting from purchases of Greek government bonds by the European Central Bank.

- Now Greece is angling for another bailout of about $150 billion.

Is there any possible justification for throwing good money after bad with another bailout. Well, if you’re a politician from Germany or France and your big banks (i.e., some of your major campaign contributors) foolishly bought lots of government bonds from Greece, the answer might be yes. After all, screwing taxpayers to benefit insiders is a longstanding tradition in Europe.

But from a taxpayer perspective, either in Europe or the United States, the answer is no. Or, to be more technical and scientific, the answer is “Hell no, are you friggin’ out of your mind?!?”

Consider these fun facts from a recent column by John Lott and then decide whether the corrupt politicians of Greece (and the special interest groups that receive handouts and subsidies from the Greek government) deserve to have their hands in the pockets of American taxpayers.

Despite Greece’s promises, government spending is up over last year’s already bloated levels, the deficit is bigger than ever, and it has utterly failed to meet the promised sell-off of some government assets. Not a single public bureaucrat has been laid off so far. …Greece can pay off €300 of the €347 billion debt by selling off shares the government owns in publicly traded companies and much of its real estate holdings. The government owns stock in casinos, hotels, resorts, railways, docks, as well as utilities providing electricity and water. But Greek unions fiercely oppose even partial privatizations. Rolling blackouts are promised this week to dissuade the government from selling of even 17 percent of its stake in the Public Power Corporation. …Greeks apparently believe that they have Europe and the world over a barrel, that they can make the rest of the world pay their bills by threatening to default. Greece’s default would be painful for everyone, but for Europe and the United States, indeed for the world, the alternative would be even worse. If politicians in Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and other countries think that their bills will be picked up by taxpayers in other countries, they won’t control their spending and they won’t sell off assets to pay off these debts. Countries such as Greece have to be convinced that they will bear a real cost if they don’t fix their financial houses while they still have the assets to cover their debts. …The real problem is the incentives we are giving to other countries. We have to make sure that “Kicking the can down the road” isn’t an option.

Just for good measure, here are a few more interesting factoids in a Wall Street Journal column by Holman Jenkins.

[Greece is] one of the most corrupt, crony-ridden, patronage-ridden, inefficient, silly economies in Christendom. …The state railroad maintains a payroll four times larger than its ticket sales. When a military officer dies, his pension continues for his unwed daughter as long as she remains unwed. Various workers are allowed to retire with a full state pension at age 45.

To be blunt, Greek politicians have miserably failed. Wait, that’s not right. You can’t say someone has failed when they haven’t even tried. Let’s be more accurate and say that Greek politicians have succeeded. They have scammed money from taxpayers in other nations to prop up a venal and corrupt system of patronage and spoils. Sure, they’ve made a few cosmetic changes and trimmed around the edges, but handouts from abroad have enabled them to perpetuate a bloated state. And now they’re using a perverse form of blackmail (aided and abetted by big banks) to seek even more money.

Let’s now re-ask the earlier question: Should American taxpayer finance the corrupt big-government policies of Greece?

Or perhaps we should think like economists, so let’s rephrase the question: Should we misallocate capital so that funds are diverted from private investment to corrupt Greek politicians?

Or maybe we should think like parents who have to worry about spoiling a child and the signal that sends to the other kids, so let’s ask the question this way: Should we encourage bad behavior in Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc, by giving another bailout to Greece’s corrupt politicians?

Or should we think about this issue from the perspective of addiction counselors and rephrase the question: Should we reward self-destructive behavior by providing more money to corrupt political elites in Greece?

Or how about we think like moral human beings, and ask the real question: Should we take money from people who earned it and give it to people who think they are entitled to live at the expense of others?

Since we paraphrased Churchill earlier, let’s answer these questions by butchering Shakespeare: “A bailout from every angle would smell to high Heaven.”

I wrote back in February of 2010 that a Greek bailout would be a mistake and every development since that time has confirmed that initial commentary.

But that doesn’t matter. Politicians have a different way of looking at things. They look at a policy and wonder whether it increases their power and generates campaign contributions. And when you understand their motives, you begin to realize why they will answer yes to the previous set of questions.

But "we are all Socialists now"

There Are No Socialists

by Victor Davis Hanson

Are There Really Socialists?

Two unconnected developments were announced this past week. President Obama is releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, despite the absence of a global embargo or horrific natural disaster — and despite a litany of assertions from 2008 that drilling and increased supply might only have a marginal effect on prices.

Like the sudden Afghan withdrawal announcement, the tapping is largely explained by political worries about reelection, as in increasing oil supplies to lower gas prices by election time — and thus avoiding campaign ads equating Obama’s opposition to drilling with high prices at the 2012 pump.

In a second piece of news, the Europeans seem to be winning far more plane orders than Boeing. One wonders whether that fact is remotely connected with airlines’ collective worries about obtaining orders on time and as specified — as in uncertainty whether Obama’s NLRB ruling [1] that attempted to shut down a nearly $1 billion new aircraft line in South Carolina translates into something like “who knows what those Americans are doing next?”

All this raises some questions. The strangest things about the global statist crack-up are socialists’ unhappiness with their socialist utopia, and their subsequent efforts to avoid the consequences of the very redistributive state that they themselves once so gladly crafted.

Greece is the locus classicus. Why are the Greeks protesting? Against whom? They obtained long ago the promised bloated sector and high taxes that all schemed to avoid. Their alma mater EU is hardly a demonic capitalist-run plutocracy, but a kindred socialist state. Is Greece an oil producer, industrial powerhouse, high-tech innovator — anything that might explain the sort of upscale life, modern infrastructure, legions of Mercedeses, and plush second homes that one began to see in Greece after 1985?

In truth, socialist Greeks are furious that they have impoverished themselves and demand that private money and far harder-working Germans bail them out — but why so, when socialism should not need outside capitalist-generated dollars? Could not the Greeks, Soviet style, set up a Cuban collective, and adjust their lifestyles (there goes Kolonaki culture) to their means, living in an opportunity of result utopia with a huge public sector, more siestas, high but ignored taxes — with a collective good riddance to those awful intrusive German bankers?

Here at home, Obama got his ObamaCare. Why, then, did he grant hundreds of exemptions — many to northern California liberals? Should they instead not have lined up to volunteer to implement such a wonderful, long-needed entitlement?

He said energy would rightly sky-rocket, given his determination to curb fossil fuel production (cf. “bankrupt” coal companies). Why then is Obama concerned that gas hit $4; is not such a high price a welcomed retardant to burning hot fuels? The higher the gas prices, the more that subsidized wind and solar power, and electric cars are attractive, and thus the more we enjoy “sustainable” power. Right? Am I missing something about this desire within our grasp of “living within our means”?

Obama enjoyed big majorities in both houses of Congress; and on the campaign trail he had promised a de facto amnesty under the euphemism of “comprehensive immigration reform.” So why did he not grant such exemptions, and absorb 11, 15, or 20 million new “citizens” from Oaxaca? Is not that the point of amnesty, to welcome in new constituencies who will remember a benefactor at the polls?

We have heard that taxes, more taxes, and more taxes are the cure for the massive deficits, run up by out of control spending. OK, fine. But why then does multimillionaire John Kerry go to great lengths to avoid taxes on his yacht (why a luxury yacht when so many have so little?); why are redistributive overseers like Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder, Tom Daschle, Charles Rangel, and Hilda Solis either late or delinquent in paying the federal, state, or local governments what they owe? Were not high taxes on the upper incomes like themselves the point of it all? Should not they pay all they can to ensure that their brethren receive needed entitlements? I thought Bono would lead an international effort of multimillionaire rock stars to relocate to socialist states like Ireland or Greece, so that they might gladly pay 75% of their incomes (which at “some point” they had enough of) to help others closer to home. Why instead is he fleeing [2] to low-tax nations? Did not such socialists have enough money by now without undermining the socialist state?

Quote of the Day

Thomas Sowell on the Cavemen

Don Boudreaux quotes economist Julian Simon:

“Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion may be.  The stocks of them are not fixed but rather are expanding through human ingenuity.”

Here's a related quote about natural resources from economist Thomas Sowell in his book "Knowledge and Decisions":

"The cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today."