Monday, June 11, 2012

This Ain't Rocket Science

Joseph StiglitzandPaul Krugman, both having been honored with the prize named for Alfred Nobel, would be your economic rocket scientists. And of course they're infinitely smarter than you and me. From their perches atop academia's elite they scowl at any world leader who would dare hesitate to throw $trillions (yes trillions, before they're through) at countries like, for example, Greece: Greece; who recently tried to collect property taxes by adding them to utility bills: Whose people thus sued, and whose courts (I'm guessing academically accomplished judges) ruled in the peoples favor: So now the power companies can't turn off the lights when a customer doesn't pay his bill. So guess what, the Greeks stopped paying their gas and electric bills (that'll teach them. Who do they think they are trying to trick people into paying their property taxes). Greece; whose constitution says that once you get a job with the government, you're guaranteed a job for life. No kidding!

And Stiglitz and Krugman would have us believe that anyone with the wherewithal (Merkel, the IMF, the EU, the ECB, the Fed) to inject billions upon billions into Greece; who would even suggest that such aid must be met with substantial reform (austerity) is a blundering idiot. Growth at any cost would be their mantra. You don't reform during the worst recession since the Great Depression, you reform after you borrow and spend your way back to prosperity.

Seriously: These geniuses would have us believe that if "we" bailout say Greece (and all the others) and promote economic growth in the process, we can revisit reform once the economy recovers. No kidding; that's what these good professors profess: That the likes of Greece; who, upon acceptance into the Euro, not only didn't take the opportunity to change their profligate ways, stepped it up big time, will take its medicine once it's back on its feet. Now if that's not naivet

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