The Euro Debacle

Krugman gives me a nice opportunity to capture a good, brief summary on the European situation, which apparently makes America look like we are living in high cotton. Going for a single currency without being a truly unified government looks like a grievous mistake.
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The story of postwar Europe is deeply inspiring. Out of the ruins of war, Europeans built a system of peace and democracy, constructing along the way societies that, while imperfect — what society isn’t? — are arguably the most decent in human history.

Yet that achievement is under threat because the European elite, in its arrogance, locked the Continent into a monetary system that recreated the rigidities of the gold standard, and — like the gold standard in the 1930s — has turned into a deadly trap.

Now maybe European leaders will come up with a truly credible rescue plan. I hope so, but I don’t expect it.

The bitter truth is that it’s looking more and more as if the euro system is doomed. And the even more bitter truth is that given the way that system has been performing, Europe might be better off if it collapses sooner rather than later.

-- Paul Krugman at The New York Times

The Euro Debacle

Krugman gives me a nice opportunity to capture a good, brief summary on the European situation, which apparently makes America look like we are living in high cotton. Going for a single currency without being a truly unified government looks like a grievous mistake.
_ _ _

The story of postwar Europe is deeply inspiring. Out of the ruins of war, Europeans built a system of peace and democracy, constructing along the way societies that, while imperfect — what society isn’t? — are arguably the most decent in human history.

Yet that achievement is under threat because the European elite, in its arrogance, locked the Continent into a monetary system that recreated the rigidities of the gold standard, and — like the gold standard in the 1930s — has turned into a deadly trap.

Now maybe European leaders will come up with a truly credible rescue plan. I hope so, but I don’t expect it.

The bitter truth is that it’s looking more and more as if the euro system is doomed. And the even more bitter truth is that given the way that system has been performing, Europe might be better off if it collapses sooner rather than later.

-- Paul Krugman at The New York Times

Race Suicide

In discussing the prevalence of suicide in earlier times, Alvarez raises the issue of race-suicide, whereby a people would kill themselves rather than suffer a grimmer fate, such as people about to be taken as slaves into the Roman Empire, such as Jewish peoples. Monk being Monk, I particularly fancied the discussion about the Spanish and the Indians of the New World.

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More extreme still, the history of the Spanish conquest of the New World is one of deliberate genocide in which the native inhabitants themselves cooperated. Their treatment at the hands of the Spaniards was so cruel that the Indians killed themselves by the thousands rather than endure it. Of forty natives from the Gulf of Mexico who were brought to work in a mine of the Emperor Charles V, thirty-nine starved themselves to death. A whole cargo of slaves contrived to strangle themselves in the hold of a Spanish galleon, although the headroom was so limited by the heavy ballast of stones that they were forced to hang themselves in a squatting or kneeling position. In the West Indies, according to the Spanish historian Girolamo Benzoni, four thousand men and countless women and children died by jumping from cliffs or by killing each other. He adds that out of the two million original inhabitants of Haiti, fewer then one hundred and fifty survived as a result of the suicides and slaughter. In the end the Spaniards, faced with an embarrassing labor shortage, put a stop to the epidemic of suicides by persuading the Indians that they, too, would kill themselves in order to pursue them in the next world with even harsher cruelties.

-- A. Alvarez, “The Savage God”

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Where is your god now, eh?

Race Suicide

In discussing the prevalence of suicide in earlier times, Alvarez raises the issue of race-suicide, whereby a people would kill themselves rather than suffer a grimmer fate, such as people about to be taken as slaves into the Roman Empire, such as Jewish peoples. Monk being Monk, I particularly fancied the discussion about the Spanish and the Indians of the New World.

_ _ _

More extreme still, the history of the Spanish conquest of the New World is one of deliberate genocide in which the native inhabitants themselves cooperated. Their treatment at the hands of the Spaniards was so cruel that the Indians killed themselves by the thousands rather than endure it. Of forty natives from the Gulf of Mexico who were brought to work in a mine of the Emperor Charles V, thirty-nine starved themselves to death. A whole cargo of slaves contrived to strangle themselves in the hold of a Spanish galleon, although the headroom was so limited by the heavy ballast of stones that they were forced to hang themselves in a squatting or kneeling position. In the West Indies, according to the Spanish historian Girolamo Benzoni, four thousand men and countless women and children died by jumping from cliffs or by killing each other. He adds that out of the two million original inhabitants of Haiti, fewer then one hundred and fifty survived as a result of the suicides and slaughter. In the end the Spaniards, faced with an embarrassing labor shortage, put a stop to the epidemic of suicides by persuading the Indians that they, too, would kill themselves in order to pursue them in the next world with even harsher cruelties.

-- A. Alvarez, “The Savage God”

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Where is your god now, eh?

Santorum Wisdom

Senator Rick Santorum, nominal Republican candidate for the presidency, has his finger on the pulse of this nation's problems.

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"We'll repeal Obamacare and get rid any idea that you have to have abortion coverage or contraceptive coverage. One of the things that I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the sexual liberty idea and many in the Christian faith have said, you know contraception is OK. It's not OK because it's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

-- Senator Rick Santorum

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I laughed.

Santorum Wisdom

Senator Rick Santorum, nominal Republican candidate for the presidency, has his finger on the pulse of this nation's problems.

_ _ _

"We'll repeal Obamacare and get rid any idea that you have to have abortion coverage or contraceptive coverage. One of the things that I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the sexual liberty idea and many in the Christian faith have said, you know contraception is OK. It's not OK because it's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

-- Senator Rick Santorum

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I laughed.