sweasel.com

When the hairdressers in Greece are allowed to retire at the ripe old mark of fifty because of exposure to hazardous coifs, are they allowed to keep their styptic pencils? If so, require them to stow ’em in their ‘popular’ fun-hole.

Greece is a sideshow. It could sink below the waters of the Aegean tomorrow and no-one would notice. The real toxic debt is in Spain. That’s a real country, not a toy like Greece, with absolutely berserk levels of indebtedness. For better or worse, national stereotypes exist, and I cannot see the sober, prosperous peoples of Germany, the Benelux countries and Scandinavia indefinitely transferring their savings to what they regard, not altogether unfairly, as a bunch of shiftless Dagos. Sooner or later you have to tell your deadbeat brother-in-law to give you back your damned lawnmower and take a hike.

The only reason the Germans haven’t yet cut off Greece like a gangrenous toe is that it would start a domino effect with Spain, Portugal and Italy leaving the Euro. Once that many have gone the Euro starts to look pretty pointless.

I am happy to note that everything is still the US’ fault.

Glad to see that nothing has changed since I was stationed in Germany in 1988.

You get a large enough voting bloc in the Germanic countries of anti-Western muzzies combined with the inevitable “white guilt” 30-40% and they’ll vote away all of “their” money to the Diagos & Guappos. That old-fashioned fiscal responsibility bullshit is for the Earners, who are already a minority in an awful lot of countries.

RE: I’m not sure how clearly this is coming across to you over there. . .

Ms Sweasel….it’s coming through quite clear, at least to those of us who understand how a market economy works. The delusional leftists who believe a market can be controlled by government experts are (I suspect) having a little difficulty with it.

The latest internet news is people in Greece aren’t getting paid, and the government isn’t paying its bills to suppliers.

The question I have is where is all the bailout money going? Who gets it? *SOMEBODY* is getting all that money.

France? We’ll have to wait and see just how far down the rabbit hole Hollande goes. California, Illinois, Detroit, same story. Detroit runs out of money in a week or so, unless Michigan gives them another hundert mil.

And yet, it must be said, Germany rigged the whole EU system to work in her favor (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is always banging on about this in the Telegraph). So there surely is a “hard working North, shiftless South” dynamic, but it’s not quite as simple as that.

I’m considering that for my epitaph: “it’s complicated.”

Also, Europe’s insane currently proposed model is not without precedent. The Southeast of England is the prosperous engine that drives the whole socialist GB project.

Maybe we should just let the German finish what they had hoped to accomplish with WWI and have the whole festering socialist lot of multicultural looters. It’ll be the United European Union of Deutshland.

Conquest by other means, FG…

I grew up in Europe, still have a lot of friends living there across several countries, mostly north, mostly Germany. We visit many of them on our annual treck to whatever spot on our Jan vacation. Love getting together with them….they piss me off something fierce. This last Jan, soaking up the sun in Sicily, one of my German friends had few good words to speak of Merkel’s bailouts thus far of Greece. He bitched that his retirement age had been bumped to 62 years, at which time he would quit working and continue to receive his benefits and salary. When I explained to him that the avg American was still working part time at 72, and retirement was not continued salary but a mere fraction (if you are lucky enough to have a government or defined benefits plan) he was shocked. So there lies the problem…..the southern areas were allowed to go on a spending spree on the north’s dime. The southern people have become accustomed to sitting on the beach for 30+ years after a mere 20+ years of working. The northern people are pissed that they have to work 10+ years more than the southern people and live in cold, damp areas. And the Americans go on working till they fucking drop dead, supporting both the southern and northern European people thru foreign aid and our military
providing their security, because we feel guilty about dropping bombs all over their nations while we rescued them from nazis.

The thing you have to remember about Barroso is that he was once a Maoist. It is claimed that he no longer is.

I know I will be reproved by gentler souls who believe in the power of redemption, but my take on it is quite simple. If the man was sufficiently bug-fuck crazy as to believe that shit at some point in his life, then he cannot be regarded as anything other than ‘suspect’ in the future.

He is, to understate the case, ‘lacking sound judgement’.

This isn’t an ‘Oh! sorry – I made a slight mistake!’ error. This is someone who not long ago espoused the political philosophy of a psychotic monster who killed in the region of 30 million people.

Imagine, if you will, the media furore if we replaced ‘Mao’ with ‘Hitler’.

Barroso and the rest of these Euromorons cannot be taken seriously. They live in a world where ideas, however crazy, are admired for their elegance and, even when proved quite unworkable, even genocidal, they are willing to pursue them to the end.

And yes, we have been here before.

No believer in the good old Common Sense that binds the anglosphere together, should pay these mountebanks and demagogues, these superannuated student politicians, a moment’s notice.

They are, frankly, quite barking mad.

Yep. People who are into Mao are also into Pol Pot and Stalin. When you’ve sunk that low, there is no coming back. They’re batshite crazy for evah!

Almost makes you want to grab a bat and let the stupid out.

All I can say is that if one fucking dime of US taxpayer money goes to bail out Europe, there is going to be collective screaming loud enough to hear in Budapest.

And the sooner Europe rots and burns, the sooner we can start teaching high-schoolers here, that the Euro-Socialist model was a pile of shit fairytale from head to toe. Rather than the system we are tripping over each other to duplicate.

Completely Off Topic – and at the risk of being tossed in the spam filter:
Here is an article and the attendant video, for a mistaken identity of an object – NSFW – and please, for the sake of your computers, do not be eating or drinking while watching and reading!

First, the article:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/sex-toy-fools-entire-chinese-village-142914102–abc-news-topstories.html

Now, the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yia27nBTgfk&feature=player_embedded

Enjoy the gigglefits! 😉

A few weeks ago I had a nice chat with a cousin who lives in Germany. They do not like subsidizing the scofflaws of Europe, no, they do not. PIGS can go hang for all they are concerned.

Comment from EZnSF
Time: June 20, 2012, 1:58 am

I commend the purchase of good earplugs as soon as possible.

I was just over at BELMONT CLUB. Short form, to avoid collapse in Spain and Italy in the immediate future; the Euros are going to pledge their €500 billion “European Stability Mechanism” fund AND their €250 billion “European Financial Stability Facility” fund to buy government bonds from the endangered countries to “save” them.

There are difficulties with this. First, this is going all it with everything they have. Second, they do not have it as those funds are down to about €22 billion plus IOU’s from various broke European governments for the remainder.

The IMF is going to be on the hook for the rest in the end. Who funds the IMF?

And since Buraqus Magnus Perfidious has arrogated unto Himself the power to create and destroy statutes by Executive Order, there is not much left to stop it.

Subotai Bahadur

Rumours on channels have it that there has been a nuclear squib detonation of a nuclear warhead near Chicago.

To bad it wasn’t D.C.

Radiation spikes in Chicago and in Michigan … looks like something bad happened last week …

That was me up in Michigan, trying to get over my grudge and accept my Mother’s husband. I flew in and out of Chicago, so the teeth grinding might have possibly caused an electron or two to jump orbitals.

Sorry about that.

Rumour has it that environmental monitors in a police station, along with certain university’s monitors (those pesky beta tubes for P32) started going off in someones lab …

Where is cascade these days?

One problem with these PIIGS leaving the Euro is that that action settles virtually nothing.

Oh..It may prop the Euro up a bit more when the collective dragg on the currency is expelled. But the bad debt persists. ANd the central banks are no better off. And neither are the economies of the PIIGS.

See….the Greek debt is denominated in Euros…. And even if they revert to Drachmas, and let the currency float downward, their debt service will still be denominated in Euros….

So, other than the fires, rioting, and looting, now’s a great time to get the most for our US dollars over in Europe. There are a lot of countries that I didn’t get to visit, when I was stationed in Germany.

I suppose riot gear is crazy expensive, over there, nowadays.

Speaking of riots, I want to see what will happen in this Ian Tomlinson case. The old legal maxim is that you take your victims as you find them. But, if his liver was so bad that a push to the ground caused it to blow, it seems like death was imminent anyway.

Should Alex Jones forget to pay the hosting our resident Oviphile will lock h[im|er]self in a lead-lined underground bathroom with a copy of the Protocols & a six year supply of Cheetos. Gonna be lonely down there, make sure your inflatable life-partner is handy.

Fifty?

You’re just getting good at that age!

Ammo? -Check.
Canned goods? -Check.
Booze? Check.

This reminds me of being hit up for spare change by a smelly wino, then berated as “a cheap bastard” when I don’t give him as much as he’d like.

Screw you, pal.

Throwing out Greece and Portugal makes the Euro pointless? That’s like saying tossing out your cousin Ed and his wife that live in your garage makes the house pointless.

The Eurozone was always about letting France pretend they were a superpower when they weren’t and let Germany pay for it. Maybe the Germans thought they would get some benefits under the table but without the will and/or ability to make Spain account for things like Germans it was never going to work.

Now it all hinges on if or when the Germans pull the plug on the whole thing. Kicking out Greece might slow or hasten things, but eventually even France will be flat broke and expecting Germany to pay up.

I understand that there is no mechanism in the EU dung pile of laws and regulations for forcing a country out of the eurozone. Greece, technically, has to fill out the required form (probably in triplicate for each every other eurozone country plus five copies for Brussels) saying it intends to leave.

The situation in Spain is particularly bizarre. The govt is paying close to 7% to borrow money via bonds while the banks are getting loans from the ECB at something like 1.5%. Said banks are buying bonds from the Spanish govt so said Spanish govt can use the money to bail out the banks. You can’t make this stuff up!

Ambrose is worth a read, but I read Richard North at EUReferendum first.

(If this appears twice there’s something screwed up with the Preview function. After previewing I clicked on Post and it all evaporated.)

Sorry, Uncle Al. They both ended up in the Spam bucket.

Mysterious are the ways of Akismet.

The entire point of the EU was to let socialism keep going just a little bit longer by adding new people to take money from. And if they could set up a scheme by which each nation loaned money to the other, they could sustain it just a little bit longer. Then renewable energy would save us all and create a new economy and everyone would be happy and have skittles and unicorns!

We’ll never learn, will we? WHo would have thought that a union of europe would lead us inexorably down the path to world conflict again?

Oh, you don’ think this will result in war?

What kind of history have you been reading? Europe has always gone to war whenever the economy has gone to sheit. They will again, only this time it will look more like a bunch of limp-wristed pansies running around slap-fighting with each other. Germany and France will probably be allies this time (for once) although I do think that Parisian restrauntuers would be smart to go ahead and start printing menus in German while they still have time and the printing presses to do it.

I just pray to Christ almighty that we aren’t stupid enough to get involved this time.

Living in Spain as I do, I have to say that life goes on as normal here. No sign of riots in the street (though, I hear in the nearest big city there are a few dozen people who turn up each day for ‘happenings’). The fact is that when I came here 12 years ago, they were only just coming out of a decade long recession with 20% or more unemployment.

Now, lets get things in perspective here, in Spain, unemployment is a slightly different concept to elsewhere in the world. Spain has a very strong tradition of family support, so a young person who is technically unemployed here, will, more often than not, be helping out uncle Juan in his workshop or auntie Maria in her clothes shop, just not officially. And yes, getting their €400 a month in “unemployment” assistance on top.

I run a small business and I thought, “well, I could get some recent graduates from college to this thing I need done for not too much money”, well more fool me, nary a taker. All too busy with other stuff. Despite 50% youth unemployment

Some rather brazen borrowers here. As Groucho Marx asked in “Duck Soup,” “How about giving this country twenty million dollars, you old skinflint?”

Of course, that was real money back in the 1930s…