Italy may be providing a preview of how other countries are going to handle their out-of-control spending problems: Spend even more!
Those old solutions [to financial woes] … emphasize fiscal frugality (cuts to social welfare), flexible labour markets (low wages) and structural adjustment (throwing people out of work).” Given a choice, voters will choose anything else: “they will vote for anyone who promises another way. If the only ones promising another way are racists, sybarites and clowns, that’s who people will vote for.”
h/t Mark L.
Digging the hole deeper. Politicians rarely do what is good for the people, but expend a lot of energy doing what is good for their party at the expense of the people.
For those Canadians (particularly you from Ontario) who are prone to mock the Euros for their debt collapses, you need to remember that we have 2 jurisdictions in Canada who are deeper in debt than the already bankrupt Calif. and US rustbelt.
Ontario, plundered by over a decade of Liberal kleptocrats and their rapacious public sector unions, is at twice the per capita debt of California, Illinois, Michigan combined. Ontario’s debt is going to hit $260 billion this year – that’s 44% of the provinces GDP or 1/4 of Greece’s debt load. Each Ontarian now owes $16,000 in unpaid tax. – bond raters will be down grading Ontario’s credit soon and then the fun starts – Alberta, listen up, because you and Sask will be paying to bail this klepto-depleted province out.
This is serious sheeitt people – but do you hear Ontario’s eminent bankruptcy debt discussed in the media? In provincial legislature? From the new Liberal leader? From the opposition leader? It should be THE election issue – but NO – no one in the governing clique is talking about this taking debt bomb of Greece-like proportions! That can only mean one thing – the politicians (of all brands) will quietly sit on this until it explodes then use the “crisis” to start stealing everything in sight to survive the bankruptcy and get their credit rating back so they can run deficit budgets again – just like Greece, Spain and Italy.
This is the legacy of klepto-economics. If you are on low or fixed income (pensioners or looking to retire) you better hide your savings and secure your tangible assets from government pillage – or move – because these kleptos will be coming for your savings/earnings soon Ontario.
Great article in the Post. Good choice for a link.
Now, which racist, sybarite, or clown will come to power? A little forethought on this matter is called for. We are all managing our personal hedge funds, now. My discretionary spending for the week is a hundred dollars (say): do I get canned food, ammo, or books? Depends which racist, sybarite, or clown is running things close by; and which one is thinking of option B for troubled states: War.
I don’t see how Italy can reject austerity.
You can’t spend what others won’t lend. The interest rates on Italian bonds have already jumped, and will likely increase further as these spending programs are put in place.
In every jurisdiction, federal, state/provincial, municipal, county, whatever – we need ironclad protection against spending more than we take in in revenue.
In the US, that would be a Constitutional Amendment.
In Canada, who knows?
We have to forbid the pols from accessing the cookie jar of debt, or else they’ll always find someone who will tell them “debt doesn’t matter”.
I’m afraid it’s too late for most countries, although the cockeyed optimist in me still feels the US will pull some B-movie worthy save at the last minute.
Have to admit the last US election sort of threw a wrench into even my optimism, though.
There is a solution. Confiscate the politician’s wealth and hold it in trust. If the country does well, they get their holdings returned, with any interest earned. If they drive the country into ruin and collapes, well, they have contributed their share and they can join all of the other people that they put on the streets. Incentive to do what is right, rather than what gets you elected, would be strong.
“I don’t see how Italy can reject austerity.”
Because they, like so many other western nations, are utterly rejecting fiscal reality. They all think the good times will last forever and it’s just NOT FAIR that their precious wages or benefits or pensions have to be cut. They’ll plug their fingers in their ears, scream “LA LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” all the way to total economic collapse. Then they’ll scream, “BUT NOBODY TOLD US THIS WOULD HAPPEN!”
The WILLFUL ignorance of a typical western democratic voter in today’s society is not to be underestimated. It put Barack Obama back in the White House. It is running European society into fiscal ruin. Canada is likely not immune, as we will probably discover to our dismay when Justin is finally crowned.
I simply no longer believe there is a solution to this problem. Obama’s reelection ripped the wool from my eyes. Leftism in western society is hell-bent on destroying said society, little by little, piece by piece, and voters are simply too ignorant to stop it.
I.M.:
My point is that Italy might not have a choice. The bond markets might make the decision for them by refusing to lend at anything other than exorbitant rates.
rabbit, that’s the “economic collapse” point, possibly including “government collapse.” Since the citizens refuse to take their fiscal medicine because it tastes bitter, and go so far as to vote out politicians who try to make them do so, the fiscal disease will worsen until it destroys the society outright.
One serious Italian symptom is the trouble of the world’s oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi of Siena. This is an institution renowned for surviving everything. Those Lombards (I mean the commercial tribe, not those of the region, Lombardy) have seen it all since the late Middle Ages, and weathered it all. Their Sienese apartness and their adaptability to any regime or crisis have endowed them with a glamour not usually associated with banks.
All of a sudden, desperate capital raising, loss cover-ups, wanky investments…you name it. Their bailout by the Bank of Italy is not far short of 4 billion euros.
They can talk all they like about special circumstances and the GFC, but these guys have been swimming in the shark pool for six centuries. Here’s the question: have over-education, intellectual faddism, the management cult, faith in theory, models etc displaced the prudence, application and shrewdness that were necessary for capitalism to first take root in places like Siena and Lucca?
Interestingly, all the viable solutions I see here pertaining to keeping politicians fiscally responsible relies on 2 things – a functional democracy and justice system and a vigilant and aware public – a cohesive public who are prepared to deal with the politicos who will not conform to moral/civil principles.
The old saw about the 3 boxes of freedom – ballot box, the jury box and the ammo box – was true in the past but the modern leviathan state and the authoritarian kleptocrats running it, have eliminated the first two “boxes” – they own the just-us system and the democratic system has been destroyed by party capitulation to kleptonomics and malfeasant authoritarianism – you get to vote for the robber/tormentor of your choice.
You realize, these days if you are vocal about making politicians accountable and openly talking about their malfeasance, you will be deemed a “Terrorist” – once so deemed, they will sick the goons or the predatory prosecutors and jurocrats on you to destroy you – however, this becomes an untenable option for the ruling class if people are united in protecting their freedom and property from malfeasant overbearing government and stand ready to defend any fellow citizen the state singles out for attack as a “warning”. Stand united or fall as a divided electorate.
Comfortable with armed defense, civil/social cohesion in a passion for freedom and hatred of government corpulence/corruption – does this describe the average public educated, media-lobotomized zombie?
Better cache food, gold and ammo – the only investment paying dividends in an era of universal kleptomania.
IM;
To a large degree I agree with you. Individual responsibility has become irrelevant to many. Many now see the government as their only hope for tommorrow. Leaders who should be educators simply play the system for their own benefit.
Rev. William Aberhart was a clown too, of course, because he actually took the side of Albertans against Toronto and Montreal bankers imposing their own variety of austerity on the province, demanding prompt repayment of crushing debt they knew Albertans could not possibly repay, on pain of foreclosure and the banksters swanning off with free farmland sitting on top of an ocean of oil.
Meanwhile, Stalin was starving and slaughtering his people in the millions. Not a peep was heard from the papers till it was too late.
The mainstream press will always do everything in their power to slander and defame real statesmen who take the side of the plain people of their nation against banksters, communists and traitors in high places. I expect better from those here than to believe such rubbish when they have the sense to know better and are well aware that the only thing in the mainstream papers that isn’t a pack of lies is last night’s sports results.
The banksters, having convinced complaint governments in every quarter of Europe to mortgage their people’s birthright several times over, now plan to foreclose, evict Europe’s peoples and drive them into exile or extinction, and replace them with a Third World mob who are ignorant of God’s word, and do not object to eating worse than the lapdogs of the banksters’ favourite trollops.
Beppe Grillo is an entertainer by profession, ’tis true. That doesn’t make him a clown. He and the Five Star Movement are the last hope of Italy, just as the Golden Dawn are the last hope of Greece.
Dick, I have no love for bankers, especially central bankers. Those vipers & thieves, as Andrew Jackson so pointedly called them in the 1830s, certainly have much to answer for, and many will spend lifetimes in hell for the crimes they have wrought on society. The answer is not and never was to print money out of thin air; ask any society that has ever tried it and had their currency collapse.
The answer is to understand that you must LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS. As an individual, as a family, as a community, as a province, as a country. As soon as you start racking up the debts to live the high life, without ever intending to pay them back, a reckoning will inevitably follow. That’s just arithmetic.
I read a book a number of years ago that gave me a clarity regarding socialism that I’d not had before. I’ve mentioned it here before, but unfortunatly because is in the middle of a 12 book series, it’s not one that can be usually recommended; but, the book can be read as an independant novel. Terry Goodkind’s “Faith of the Fallen” is a brilliant novel, and the most influential on my views, that demonstrates exactly what it’s like to live under socilaism, and to expirience the tactics a government will employ to keep the population subserviant. Unfortunatly, I believe the end of the series is phophetic, as everything I see in the world is leading to the same conclusion. I highly recommend the series “The Sword of Truth” by Terry Goodkind, but please do read “Faith of the Fallen” independantly if you are interested in only reading one book. I recommend it especially to 20 somethings that like to read, and who might be liberal voting sheeple. This series should open their eyes.(not for kids)
All of that said, I’m not recommending this because it’s the greatest literature I’ve read. It’s not! See George RR Martin, Tad Williams and Steven Erikson for that. But as far is influence on my world views, this is par with Ayn Rand for me.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/121127.Faith_of_the_Fallen
“….these days if you are vocal about making politicians accountable and openly talking about their malfeasance, you will be deemed a “Terrorist” – once so deemed, they will sick the goons or the predatory prosecutors and jurocrats on you to destroy you…”-
Absolutely,Occam,and THAT is why the HRC’s will never be disbanded.
As it stands now, the people of Europe are at the stage where they almost have to revolt and imprison their political class,as the PC is not about to suffer from any crisis.
Restraint and doing without services are the penalties imposed on the peasants,not the rulers,and the rulers will not go quietly.
Only trouble is,there’s no one to replace the current ruling class, just more hogs desperate to get their chance at the trough.Conservative,Liberal, Socialist,the names change,the policies don’t.
Maybe they should have a first-class civil war,and afterward revert to tribalism,which is their more natural state.
Just leave US out of it.
My comment from G&M:
Of course the Spender-in-Chief is being disingenuous claiming that the GOP is not compromising. Of course they are!!! The compromise was made during the Debt Ceiling negotiations; and that compromise was/is: 50% of cuts to the military/50% of cuts to government spending. PERIOD!
Obama has deliberately tainted any opportunity to negotiate with the opposition by a) Betraying the trust of the GOP during the recent Fiscal Cliff negotiations where he disingenuously negotiated for so called “increased revenues”(tax increases) in exchange for spending cuts. Obama got the taxes, but never came through with the cuts. BETRAYED! And by b) disingenuously demonizing the GOP by accusing them of not compromising during the Sequester negotiations, when it is in fact HE who has betrayed the trust, and I say deliberately, of the GOP by screwing them over.
The Spender-in-Chief is intent on creating as much friction in government as possible, while bankrupting the country, in a misguided attempt to lower the standard of living to par with 3rd world countries. 3rd world countries that Obama feels have been ‘wronged’ by western Europeans and America. The first “Post American President”.
As Margie Thatcher so eloquently observed about socialists: the ‘equality’ a socialist desires, is that EVERYONE(but the special few working for the government), are equally poor and powerless.
Nanny Bloomberg approved.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/mayor-bloomberg-claims-america-can-owe-infinite-amount-of-money/
Black Mamba, thank you for that link which demonstrates that politicians in the US have absolutely no clue about what they’re going to be running into very soon. Bloomberg’s innumeracy is of a level that I might expect of a very deteriorated Alzheimer’s patient or an individual with an infarct of their parietal lobe. That no psychiatrist has jumped in to immediately involuntarily commit him to treatment is a symptom of a decaying society in which no-one is willing to come forth and say that the emperor has no clothes.
Given that the universe is finite, borrowing an infinite amount of money is physically impossible unless Bloomberg plans on raiding all portions of the multiverse to assemble his infinite money supply. Given that quantum theory of the multiverse posits that information can’t pass from one universe to another in the multiverse, it would require some major revisions to physical theories for the US to borrow an infinite amount of money. Presumably paying physicists portions of the non-infinite money supply available in this universe will buy politicians the theories they need, just like they’ve accomplished with the junk science of CAGW.
More likely, Bloomberg’s economics is going to result in the issuing of $100 trillion bills which might buy a loaf of bread with a mere $2 billion in change at the end of the transaction.
When the parasites are allowed to vote more entitlements for themselves, that is the end of a society. It also demonstrates that the notion that even the demented should be allowed to vote in elections is a very bad idea. Assuming that some future democratic society arises from the ashes of western civilization, likely before anyone is allowed to be a voter in the revamped democracy of 2100, one will have to pass many exams demonstrating that one has logical reasoning skills, an adequate grasp of mathematics and an understanding of history. The other 95% of the population would be free to study the courses required to become an informed voter.
So, the best defense in the short term is to stock up on food and ammo. Gold, if you like having the stuff around, but right now my two favorite metals are copper jacketed lead. Just stocking up is only part of the solution as the statists, in their death throes, will try to confiscate the property of those who saw the coming social collapse. That also means stocking up on sewer pipe and plastic sheeting so that one can hide guns and ammo underground beyond the reach of statist goons for such a time as the guns will be useful in ending their reign.
Ontarios debt is currently $273.5 Billion
http://www.ofina.on.ca/borrowing_debt/debt.htm