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What is it, the fact that people in positions of responsibility prefer to ruin the institutions they are running than lose face by admitting a mistake and changing course? There are three stories about the euro crisis: the Republican story, the German story, and the truth. -- Paul Krugman
What is it, the fact that people in positions of responsibility prefer to ruin the institutions they are running than lose face by admitting a mistake and changing course?
they've starved any other neural pathways than the canon they have espoused, they were selected for their capacity to be single minded 'true believers' and now that's all they know how to be, especially as that attitude is reinforced every time they open a E1000 bottle of wine and feel like they're getting away with the heist.
any critical thinkers (not team players) were thrown under the bus long ago, the filtering so efficient, now their bubble of delusional denial is as hermetic as is possible, and only the most gamechanging of events can irrupt it.
since the universe abhors stasis, that's exactly what they'll get, unless enough wise heads unite in a message that could be strong enough to capture mass attention and steer the ship away from the shoals.
heavily armed, extremely paranoid psychos have taken over the asylum, now it will take a correspondingly high level of survival intelligence to wrest back the control from them.
it is a very tricky, difficult situation. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
But this is a fool's game.
Even Varoufakis believes (with his constant beating of the drum for Eurobonds) that eventually Germany will change course. But it will never happen, not until it is way too late.
My concern throughout has not been that some workable policy mix won't be find after all the wrong ones have been tried first, but the collateral damage inflicted before getting there.
The destruction of Greece is too much collateral damage for me, but of course one could argue that it's about 1% of the EU so it's not a serious loss if it stops at that. What I can't fathom is the callousness required for the Troika to formulate and execute the policy. You don't drive "one of us" to IMF riots, which indicates that Greece is not perceived as one of us in Brussels and Frankfurt and that is the real problem. There are three stories about the euro crisis: the Republican story, the German story, and the truth. -- Paul Krugman
You don't drive "one of us" to IMF riots, which indicates that Greece is not perceived as one of us in Brussels and Frankfurt and that is the real problem.
Of course. Wasn't that clear from the beginning?
There is a tiny economic area (no, with a currency union that expression doesn't make sense). Start new: there is a tiny area that managed to break away from the old arch-enemy and chose us. It hasn't much of a business idea, but who cares? It's one territory and without question the centre has to transfer funds to the parts of the periphery that are at a disadvantage. Perhaps one day it will even be the other way round, who knows? You noticed that I am talking of the Saarland, I hope.
It just depends on the definition of us, and that means the definition of the European idea.
Or will it? Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
German-polish relations haven't been as good as now since the siege of vienna.
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