Good morning. Well, it didn’t snow last night. 
- Looking at the Iliad.
- Grumbling about Avatar and its message.
- Afghanistan.
- Small town and the city.
- New wars … well I think I’m not reading (any!?) Balkan blogs, perhaps that’s something that needs correction.
- Men in black.
- Zoooom.
- Dating … a scene upon which my young daughters will soon enter.
- A tax plan.
- Why Greek monetary problems are a problem outside of Greece.
- Thinking ahead.
- Secession.
- A new CBS program and Mr Hayek.
- A word from the desert on fasting.
Why Greek monetary problems are a problem outside of Greece.
From what I understand monetary union simply means that Greece uses the Euro as their money. In that sense it isn’t that much different than the old Gold Standard where countries used gold as money. In that regard the only question is whether Greece can make good on its debt (either on its own or with help from neighbors in Europe). Greece default should, in theory, not impact anyone else or the Euro itself just like the collapse of Bernie Madoff’s scheme didn’t cause NYC to have to go off the dollar.
The trouble with monetary unions is that they leave no flexibility for individual countries. If the German economy is near full employment but Greece is in a deep recession, the normal solution would be for Greece to print more money thereby lowering the value of its currency spurring exports and recovery. With a monetary union, though, everyone has to follow the needs of the bulk of the country which is made up of the big economies like Germany and France. An alternative would be for a fiscal stabalizer so countries that are ‘off key’ would get spending from the countries that are doing better.
In the case of credit, though, look at the US. The Federal gov’t doesn’t guarantee state and municipal debt. While it doesn’t happen often, this debt does sometimes go bad. When that happens holders of the debt take a beating and maybe other states and municipalities who ‘look like’ the deadbeat debtor will take a beating as well. But that’s essentially the market at work. If I were advising the EU, I’d suggest a fiscal stimulus for Greece roughly equal to an estimate of the impact the Recession has had on Greece’s budget. If that’s enough to get them out of trouble great, if not then let the market work.
You may ask why this doesn’t happen to the states? If you read Krugman you’d know. It does. We do have cases where the US as a whole is doing good but individual states are in deep recession and would, in theory, benefit if they could have their own currency which they could devalue. What happens in the US, though, is that capital and labor are highly mobile. States recover from recessions by shedding jobs and capital. Workers tend to leave states that are in long term decline and move to states that are moving up. Europe, though, doesn’t have quite that level of mobility both because of gov’t regulation and, to a greater degree IMO, language and cultural differences. A Greek moving to France for better job opportunities is making a major life change, more than an American who moves from, say, PA to NC.
Dating … a scene upon which my young daughters will soon enter.
Strange how the author describes the “pick-up artist” scene as liberal. If you look around the blogs and stuff, it very clearly skews conservative. It’s libertarian-atheist-conservative not religious-social-conservative, but definitely conservative. Go read anything Roissy and his like-minded commenters write about politics. Or half-sigma or any of the others who speak highly of “game.” It’s all very anti-feminist as well. They really, really objectify women and are very misogynistic. There’s just nothing liberal about it at all. It’s a very Randian amoral caveat emptor kinda thing.
Many liberals, myself included, support premarital sex, but we do not support lying and manipulating women (and girls!) so that they’ll sleep with you under false pretenses. And I suspect that girls raised in liberal homes that are open about sexuality are less likely to fall prey to such people than girls raised in homes that moralize about sexuality. Just as a girl who was taught actual sex ed is more likely to use a condom, a girl who isn’t taught that premarital sex is dirty or sinful is more likely to use some good judgment about who she has sex with.
My advice is to teach your daughters that those guys are out there, and perhaps show them some of their writings and techniques so that they aren’t likely to fall for them (and can quickly identify and ignore the jerks.) Closing your eyes and just insisting they wait until marriage isn’t going to help them.
I propose that Sen. Vitter and the gov. of SC begin speaking immediately to groups of senior high school girls and female college freshmen on the merits of avoiding the predations of libertine liberals and the virtues of dating conservative men.