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It won't stop because there are lot of angry leftists (mostly Europeans) who are upset that Greece might actually be forced to pay its bills and what that mean

It won't stop because there are lot of angry leftists (mostly Europeans) who are upset that Greece might actually be forced to pay its bills and what that means for the welfare state model the EU has built itself on. So they snip from the sidelines about nazis, war, banks, conspiracy theories, etc that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Greece is something of a canary in the coalmine here about Europe's leftist policies. The economic situation in other countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria, etc shows that there's a larger problem here. They don't want to pay their bills or cut services. They just want an endless gravy train and soon might suffer the same consequences as Greece. Only the most wealthy, least corrupt, and productive EU states can have a proper welfare state and even some of them have problems with youth unemployment, job growth, low military spending, almost no defense against an expansionist Putin outside of the US Military (whose spending they are first to criticize), etc. We're witnessing the end of the welfare state as we know it, and apparently a lot of Europeans can't handle that basic fact. Apparently from the knee-jerk drive-by downvotes, they can't handle this comment as well.

ojbyrne 11y ago
If your second last sentence is true, then you can't have monetary union. Break up the Euro.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  This is also my opinion as well. A shared currency is just a bad idea and that's something the English realized early on, or at least the Thatcher administration did. Her 1995 book "Path to Power" pretty much predicted this situation.
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    England's realization was also assisted by Soros, so to say.
cristianpascu 11y ago
>> Only the most wealthy, least corrupt, and productive EU states can have a proper welfare state and even some of them have problems with youth unemployment, job growth, etc. That's so true! While Romanian women (the etc. in your list of countries with problems) work 12 hours/day for $10, so cool, polite, wealthy, less corrupt teenagers in developed countries can have cool and cheap Che t-shirts.
abrahamepton 11y ago
Yeah this is all pretty wrong. >> upset that Greece might actually be forced to pay its bills and what that means for the welfare state model the EU has built itself on. 1) Those aren't just Greece's bills. Steve Waldman put it best: "The European financial system was architected to make lending to Greece — and Spain and Portugal and Italy — a money machine for bankers with little career risk over a medium term. Sketchy credits tend to punch above their weight in terms of volume of issuance, so there was a lot of nice paper to buy. The bankers who lent to these states understood perfectly well that there was in fact a long-term risk, an uncertainty, a constructive ambiguity. They lent anyway, and took home very nice salaries and bonuses for doing so." (http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5965.html http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5965.html) 2) This has nothing to do with implicating the welfare-state model; as you note, there are a ton of Euro welfare states with extremely robust economies. Some Euro welfare states have been chronically mismanaged (Greece, Italy, probably Spain) and now they're in trouble, in part for reasons not of their making. >> Only the most wealthy, least corrupt, and productive EU states can have a proper welfare state Oh, so in other words, if you take out Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Norway, Finland, Belgium and Switzerland, the European welfare state is a total disaster, huh? >> and even some of them have problems with youth unemployment, job growth, low military spending, almost no defense against an expansionist Putin outside of the US Military... 1) You know who else has problems with youth unemployment? The United States. Per the BLS (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm), 16-19-year-old unemployment rate among white people was 15.7% in June 2015, and 31.8% among 16-19-year-old black people. THIRTY TWO PERCENT. But yeah, European welfare states are the only ones with a problem here. 2) US military spending is insanely high - we spend as much as the next 7 countries combined (http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison). So it makes a certain amount of sense for Europe to throttle back their own spending a bit, though ideally they would spend more and we would spend much, much, much less.

ojbyrne 11y ago

If your second last sentence is true, then you can't have monetary union. Break up the Euro.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
This is also my opinion as well. A shared currency is just a bad idea and that's something the English realized early on, or at least the Thatcher administration did. Her 1995 book "Path to Power" pretty much predicted this situation.
- tedunangst 11y ago
  England's realization was also assisted by Soros, so to say.

cristianpascu 11y ago

>> Only the most wealthy, least corrupt, and productive EU states can have a proper welfare state and even some of them have problems with youth unemployment, job growth, etc. That's so true! While Romanian women (the etc. in your list of countries with problems) work 12 hours/day for $10, so cool, polite, wealthy, less corrupt teenagers in developed countries can have cool and cheap Che t-shirts.

abrahamepton 11y ago

Yeah this is all pretty wrong. >> upset that Greece might actually be forced to pay its bills and what that means for the welfare state model the EU has built itself on. 1) Those aren't just Greece's bills. Steve Waldman put it best: "The European financial system was architected to make lending to Greece — and Spain and Portugal and Italy — a money machine for bankers with little career risk over a medium term. Sketchy credits tend to punch above their weight in terms of volume of issuance, so there was a lot of nice paper to buy. The bankers who lent to these states understood perfectly well that there was in fact a long-term risk, an uncertainty, a constructive ambiguity. They lent anyway, and took home very nice salaries and bonuses for doing so." (http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5965.html http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5965.html) 2) This has nothing to do with implicating the welfare-state model; as you note, there are a ton of Euro welfare states with extremely robust economies. Some Euro welfare states have been chronically mismanaged (Greece, Italy, probably Spain) and now they're in trouble, in part for reasons not of their making. >> Only the most wealthy, least corrupt, and productive EU states can have a proper welfare state Oh, so in other words, if you take out Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Norway, Finland, Belgium and Switzerland, the European welfare state is a total disaster, huh? >> and even some of them have problems with youth unemployment, job growth, low military spending, almost no defense against an expansionist Putin outside of the US Military... 1) You know who else has problems with youth unemployment? The United States. Per the BLS (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm), 16-19-year-old unemployment rate among white people was 15.7% in June 2015, and 31.8% among 16-19-year-old black people. THIRTY TWO PERCENT. But yeah, European welfare states are the only ones with a problem here. 2) US military spending is insanely high - we spend as much as the next 7 countries combined (http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison). So it makes a certain amount of sense for Europe to throttle back their own spending a bit, though ideally they would spend more and we would spend much, much, much less.