David McWilliams clearly brings up the issue of forgiving debt, but he never really advocates it.

Isn't it kind of important if govermnents go further into debt or not?

Maybe I'm just used to the way academics advocate things, but I saw this as advocacy for debt forgiveness. Or more accurately, for making the banks eat the loss on their bad loans, rather than destroying Europe in a vain effort to protect the banks' interests.

There is a downside to that too, but it's vastly preferable to the path they're actually following.

My main commentary is that towards the end when he describes the U.S. as being a properly functional fiscal union, he's describing a process which the Tea Party & Republicans have vehemently vowed to bring to an end.

Apparently they want to bring to America the worst of Europe. I swear that line is in Romney's stump speech somewhere...

>> ^marinara:

David McWilliams clearly brings up the issue of forgiving debt, but he never really advocates it.
Isn't it kind of important if govermnents go further into debt or not?

My only question is, what makes him think that leaders don't want their citizens in debtors prison?

that's an interesting interpretation through the lens of *religion

Adding video to channels (Religion) - requested by Trancecoach.

He could have mentioned that Germany has a working fiscal union as well, it is a Federal Republic after all. Domestic tranfers between the states is a very successful and popular mechanism, or at least it used to be until a few weeks ago.

But I wanted to point out something else. Germany, with its export-centered economy, is the last country in Europe that could afford general austerity in the peripheral states or the union as a whole. The resulting decline in demand would cripple the German economy more than anything else. The European free-trade zone is paramount to German interests. So why the fuck would they push these extreme austerity measures on GIPSI? Not to mention that avoiding austerity works much better, as shown by Argentina and most recently Iceland.

But it's not just austerity that is being forced upon the periphery. The German proposal to install a European Commissionar to run Greece's finances has raised the stakes enormously. Forfeiture of national sovereignty, that's one fucked up idea of solving problems. Both default and austerity have severe economical consequences for Greece. But austerity and losing sovereignty would add a whole new dimension to the European crisis. Greeks are no strangers to being occupied by foreign powers, particularly the Germans. That's one explosive mixture we're talking about.

Plus, democratically elected governments in Greece and Italy were already replaced by technocrats, so what the hell are we doing here?

It's like the world has been taken over by a flat earth cult, isn't it?

I like the religious angle of this video -- I think that's more likely what's really driving this policy than anything else. People have gotten it into their heads that debt is a sin, and recessions are a purgatory that must be suffered in order to purge that sin.

More and more, it seems like everyone everywhere needs to go see a good psychiatrist. People need to learn that the human mind usually works the wrong way around -- people often decide what conclusion they want to come to, and then try to build a logical justification to support it.

Unfortunately at the extreme, this leads people to hang onto a belief by the thinnest thread of support possible, even when there's overwhelming evidence for an alternative way of looking at the world.

IMO, things like climate change denialism, creationism, and anti-vaccination movements bear a huge similarity to the austerity movements in the Western world. It's a certainty borne more of prejudice than reason.
>> ^radx:

So why the fuck would they push these extreme austerity measures on GIPSI?