Tag Archives: greece

All the news…

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It’s a busy weekend. That’s good in so much as it means that this post more or less writes itself. That’s bad in that the world seem shell bent of flinging itself apart at the seams. Terror attacks on three continents that may not have been coordinated, but the timing of which is certainly close enough together to be suspect. A political fracas in the US that covers all the ground from heritage to hate to healthcare to marriage. The greeks have declared a bank holiday and appear all but determined to drive their country over their own fiscal cliff and straight into default while the European Union hopes the rest of them can shrug it off.

If you’ve kept an ear on the news, there’s a lot of information coming in on all fronts. Weekends are usually where they bury the stories we’re not supposed to pay attention to, but any one of the headlines this week would usually have legs all by itself. Combined, there’s almost something in there guaranteed to keep everyone stirred up at least for a few more turns of the news cycle.

I’m not fool enough to think any of these problems amounts to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but they pace at which they keep coming is a little troublesome. I’ve got at least half a dozen methods of information delivery in an arm’s reach right now… and I find myself wondering if we all weren’t just a little bit better off when we got our news from the morning edition, the evening edition, and 30 minutes of TV highlights at 6PM.

The world’s always been a complicated place, but it’s only recently that we’ve all gotten the opportunity to watch the sausage made each and every day. I wonder if it isn’t time I try to force myself to tune it out for just a little while.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Greece. What’s the problem? You ginned up a mountain of bills and now suddenly don’t want to pay because it’s too hard. It’s unfair. The big countries are picking on you. God it sounds so familiar – like exactly what happened when so many people in this country found themselves in homes they couldn’t afford “through no fault of their own.” Except see, there is fault. There is definite fault when you spend other people’s money without any reasonably expectation of ever being able to pay it back. Putting your financial house in order is painful. It sucks. All the free stuff people thought they were entitled too is suddenly not free – or not there because you can’t afford it. And the only way the economy keeps on working is if people who loan money can expect to get that money back. It’s a loan, not a gift after all. I feel ever more strongly that the US is headed in a similar direction to our Greek friends. $18 Trillion in loans aren’t going to pay back themselves – and they’re certainly not going to get paid while we continue to add more debt to the pile. If Greece’s gnashing of teeth is any indicator of the howl that will go up when the US realizes we can’t afford to be all things to all people, we’re in for one hell of a rough ride.

2. Negotiating with terrorists. According to the US government it’s now OK for our fellow citizens to negotiate with terrorists. While I won’t pretend to imagine the nightmare that is having a family member or loved one in the hands of ISIS, I can tell you that I wouldn’t want my family to be responsible for providing aid and comfort to the enemy in the form of a substantial cash donation on my behalf. What I would like, on the other hand, is for the armored fist of the most powerful nation in the world to come crashing through the terrorist’s front door in an effort to a)rescue me and b) eradicate the terrorists who believe kidnapping an American citizen will end well for them. If Option A and Option B are mutually exclusive, please feel free to exercise Option B with as much lethality as necessary to get the job done. And then drop a few more 1000-pound bombs just to stir up the dust and make the rubble bounce a bit for good measure.

3. The joys of home ownership. Don’t get me wrong, I love the house. It crossed off just about every feature I had on my list. Having been in it now for three months, though, some of its warts are showing… and by warts I’m referring to the perpetually moist basement / piss poor foundation grading and drainage / sieve-like window well combination that I’ve been fighting since spring time turned into Maryland’s version monsoon season. Between the landscape contractors looking at fixes to my own modest efforts at improving the around-the-house drainage situation trying to get a grip on the underside of this not so old house has become something of a second job. Now I know it’s mostly just a function of sealing up the window well, correcting the drainage, and adding on a secondary source of electricity to keep the pumps chugging along… but just now, with another couple of days of rain in the forecast, my patience – something never know to be in vast supply – is wearing even more thin than usual.

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Regardless of what you call it, when you creditors agree to write off 50% of your existing debt you are, by definition in default. Call it a haircut. Call it a Pontiac. It’s a default. Period. End of story. Fortunately, the world is polite enough to call it something different in the hopes that no one will notice and in the process they can prevent the European Union from flinging itself apart. When the rest of the world goes to all this trouble, the polite thing to do would be to say thank you and then go on about the business of trying to salvage your national economy. But that’s not your style is it, Greece. Oh no. You’re going to ask you voters, who have already demonstrated their inability to face reality, vote on the idea as a national referendum. Seriously? Are you trying to make a name for yourself as the go-to country for dysfunctional government? As a citizen of the United States, I thought we had a lock on that one, but you’re making a damned good run at it.

Look, it’s only a matter of time before the rest of us have to take our share of the bitter, bitter austerity medicine. Yes, it sucks being the one stuck going first but that was just the luck of the draw. Could have happened to any of a dozen debtor nations. We can kick and scream that it’s not fair until we’re all blue in the face, but guess what… the universe doesn’t care about fair. We can do the hard things now, while we still have some options, or we can wait a while and then spend the next two decades just reacting to things that could have been avoided if we’d have taken action sooner.

Treason…

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This Monday Rasmussen released a poll that proclaimed a “pre-revolutionary” sentiment in the United States. Watching the home grown violence gripping our allies in the UK, in Spain, and in Greece, we should take a hard look at what it means to be “pre-revolutionary.” A revolution isn’t just tearing down the machine with no ideas about what the next best thing should look like. Can you imagine George Washington or Ben Franklin simply throwing out the British and then going home to hope for the best… but only after looting all the stores in Philadelphia?

I know there are plenty of people out there agitating and that there are a few of them who have no purpose other than just wanting to see the world burn. Our forefathers granted us a republic and we owe it to ourselves and our own posterity to avail ourselves of every built in electoral and procedural safeguard to maintain it. I swore an oath to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. When I took that oath, I never dreamed that it would be the latter that most worried me.

If there is doubt for anyone reading this, let me go on the record in as loud and clear a voice as I can muster: The faceless mob, the rabble, who use the present adversity to feed into this call for insurrection deserve nothing more than a traitor’s death. In a turbulent world, we are still the last great bulwark between civilization and the abyss. Should be stumble or if we shrug, beyond here there be monsters.