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Anyone who
has grown fond of the euro crisis has little to worry about: it’ll be
around a while yet. Even the decisions of the latest EU summit won’t
see it off. On one hand, those who blame the politicians for the crisis
are right. On the other, they’re sparing themselves the insight that
the politicians are grappling with a gigantic real-world contradiction,
which springs out of the logic of the system itself and can’t be so
easily shoved away.
The
starting point is the finding that the eurozone states are carrying too
much debt. This is the verdict passed down by the states’ creditors,
the financial markets, in line with their unvarying criteria on
investments: safety and return.
The states
have borrowed too much, but you can flip that around and say that the
financial markets have loaned out too much. This isn’t to fling
..... [The
fake euro rescue cont.]
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I cannot
be surpised, and I cannot fail to see how this also doesn't apply
to the USofA.
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Such situations are common in capitalism. Industry
also regularly turns out goods it can’t sell. The solution to this
problem remains the same: devaluation, which leads to goods and
factories being sold off or destroyed.
In the current crisis, though, it’s precisely this
devaluation that must be avoided, for a large-scale write-down of
financial capital would – the fear is – tip states and banks into the
abyss. "Contagion" is the name of the threat that will be hovering over
us for as long as the financial markets fear it.
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After watching Milton Friedam's epiphanic PBS series Free
to Choose lo these many years ago, I walked away with this
truth
Capitalism, e.g. Free Market
economies, ebb and flow. When left alone they will find
equilibrium. The problem occurs when politicians, convinced by
their own obvious brilliance in all matters, decide to help out, and
get tits caught in the wringer.
Which of course is where we're at.
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