Posts Tagged ‘Greece’
November 3rd, 2011 by John Feehery
Either the Greeks should pull out of the Euro or the Europeans should kick them out.
That is how I look at the current debt crisis that has hit the financial markets.
I had the opportunity to peak behind the scenes of thinking of leading European institutions in the year 2000, just as the Euro was transitioning to become the leading currency on the continent.
I was lucky enough to be selected to participate in a European Union Fellowship, and I got a chance to spend some quality time in Brussels and Strasbourg.
I worked for Speaker Hastert at the time, and I left days after the Bush-Gore election, which still had not been decided (and wouldn’t be for the whole time I was in Europe).
The Europeans were nervous about Bush. They wanted Gore to win. The Vice President shared their perspectives on global warming (this was especially of interest to the Danes and the Finns), and they didn’t think that Bush had the intellectual curiosity to be President. Read more...
Tags: Al Gore, Bailout, Euro, Financial Crisis, Franc, France, George Bush, Germany, Greece, Mark
Posted in Theory | No Comments »
November 1st, 2011 by John Feehery
It was the Athenians who are credited with inventing democracy, a noble experiment that frequently lurched towards despotism. At its height, Athenian democracy had about 30,000 participants in a nation-state that included around of a quarter of a million people.
Of course, at that time, only men were allowed to participate in the Assembly. Women and slave were not allowed a vote, and as time went on the Greeks invented all kinds of rules to keep the numbers of actual assembly members down to manageable mob.
To Plato, “Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.”
It must not have been that charming, as it didn’t last all that long.
I was thinking about Athenian democracy in the context of the decision by the Greek government to hold a referendum on the question as to whether the Greek people agree with the latest bailout plans of the European Union.
Most experts agree that giving the people a chance to vote directly on a proposition that requires them to except higher taxes and less help from the government is probably not going to win. Read more...
Tags: California, debt crisis, European Bailout, Greece, Plato
Posted in Theory | 1 Comment »
June 10th, 2010 by John Feehery
Greece / Photo credit: Ulamm
In actuality, there isn’t much in common between the United States and the Greeks.
That was the conclusion of a distinguished panel of economists hosted by the American Action Forum and led by former CBO director Doug Holtz-Eakin.
But if we don’t get our act together soon, things could get steadily worse for the economy and for the American people, and while we probably won’t default on our debt (because we can always print more money), it won’t be very pleasant around here unless we start making some fundamental changes
Senator Judd Gregg, a longtime deficit hawk and current ranking member of the upper chamber’s Budget Committee, keynoted the forum, wryly pointing out in his presentation that western Democracies founded on the Scottish Enlightenment philosophy of free market capitalism and representative government (which, of course, would include the UK, the US, and Japan) are having the hardest time dealing with debt.
Totalitarian regimes, like the Chinese and the Cubans, don’t have our debt problems, because in the case of the Chinese, they work hard and have a government that is immune to public opinion, and in the case of the Cubans, nobody sane would lend the large amounts of money in the first place. Read more...
Tags: Andy Busch, china, Cuba, Dean Baker, Debt, doug holtz eakin, Government, Greece, health care, judd gregg, Politics, spending
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, health care, spending | 2 Comments »
May 17th, 2010 by John Feehery
Tags: Congress, Debt, elections, Government, Greece, Hawaii, Kentucky, Libertarian, Pennsylvania, primaries, primary, Pundits, voters
Posted in Government, Media, Politics, Theory, election | No Comments »
May 14th, 2010 by John Feehery
In 1921, the Congress first started thinking about doing a budget. It passed the Budget and Accounting Act legislation that first directed the President to submit a budget. It also created the General Accounting Office (which a couple of years ago changed its name to the General Accountability Office), an agency tasked with making certain that federal dollars were spent wisely.
When in the 1970’s, Richard Nixon decided he had the power to impound funds that he didn’t want to spend (his version of the line-item veto), Congress reacted by passing the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, legislation that created the Congressional Budget Office and created the modern budget process, if you can call it a process.
Under this law that passed more than three decades ago, the Congress is supposed to pass a budget resolution, to outline how it is going to spend money and raise revenue for the next half decade or so. The budget resolution is not a law because it is not signed by the President, but the purpose of it is law-like. The budget is not just a set of suggestions. Sure it can be waived in emergencies, but they have to be big ones (like war, pestilence or natural disasters, that kind of thing). Read more...
Tags: Budget, Congress, Congressional Budget Office, Economy, election, Greece, spending
Posted in Financial Crisis, Politics, Theory, election, spending | 1 Comment »
May 11th, 2010 by John Feehery
A little more than 2300 years ago, Alexander the Great rampaged out of Greece into Asia Minor, and Greek civilization reached its largest sphere of influence. A few centuries later, the Romans followed suit, and Western civilization would forever be formed in the minds of the Europeans and the world.
After Roman civilization declined, Europe went through some murky times in the Dark Ages, but soon the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the ideas of free market capitalism, industrialism, scientific progress, democracy and financial innovation made Western nations the most powerful in the world. The Spanish, the Portuguese, Dutch, the French, the English, the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians all took turns establishing different spheres of influence and empires of different sizes and shapes.
The 20th Century was tough on the Europeans. Two world wars decimated its wealth and vibrancy (and growth, especially population growth), and for the last half of the century, the continent was dominated by two non-European powers (the Americans and the Russians). The once dominant European powers were pawns in a Cold War chess match that featured a former colony squaring off against a backward, Communist behemoth. Read more...
Tags: Austro-Hungarians, debts, Dutch, English, European Union, French, Germans, Germany, Greece, Greek civilization, Portuguese, Spanish
Posted in Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Theory, spending | No Comments »
April 24th, 2010 by John Feehery
My wife’s boss, George LeMieux, the junior Senator from Florida, gave me a startling statistic the other day. He said that he got it from Erskine Bowles, President Clinton’s former chief of staff.
According to LeMieux, the Federal government is taking in roughly 23 trillion in tax revenue, but spending roughly 34 trillion. That is bad enough, but what is chilling about these numbers is that the 23 trillion that we are taking in only covers the costs of entitlement spending. Entitlement spending is the money we pay for Social Security, Medicare and the federal portion of the Medicaid programs.
For everything else, including national defense, the State Department, the FAA, etc, we have to borrow money from the Chinese and other generous foreign governments. How does that little fun fact grab you? I feel more confident about America’s future, don’t you?
Now Democrats will say that there is an easy way to close this gap: Raise taxes on the rich. But if you raised taxes to one-hundred percent on all the rich people, the gap would likely still grow, because when you raise taxes on rich people, you usually get less revenue. Read more...
Tags: America, china, dollar, entitlement spending, Erskine Bowles, George Lemieux, Greece, International Monetary Fund, Medicaid, medicare, retire, Social Security, tax revenue, Washington Post, yuan
Posted in Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, Government, Politics, Theory, spending, taxes | No Comments »
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