serious stuff

or the Yuen.

Woah, they've lost the confidence of the Daily Express??!

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Wishfull thinking. The English would like the euro to fail because they missed the boat and payed the price. Since the introduction of the euro the pound lost a lot of value. In reality the euro is far from lost because the economies in Europe are very much intertwined.

Imagine every state in the US switching to its own currency with fluctuating exchange rates. Thats what Europe used to be like before the ECU and euro.

Nah, Great Britain ought to go back to the Pound Sterling.

I'm thinking the Eurozone will eventually fragment into Protestant North Europe centered on Belgium, Catholic South Europe (Iberia and Italy, mostly), and Eastern Orthodox East Europe.

Think "arab spring" only with europeons.

Mark L. Fergerson

We don't have the grotesque differences in economic structure between our states as Europe has between countries. How much is the Greek economy worth in Euro's ?:-) ...Jim Thompson

Buy some Euro coins now, in mint condition, for numismatic purposes, and they will very soon become worth far more than the original.

I will be buying a few.

Not sure about Euro's but I have a couple of bucks in my pocket that should cover Greeks economy's worth.

Jamie

"John Larkin" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I'm all for it, maybe even go back to the marc and franc.

Do you really think Socialism would have succeeded?

Cheers

No, they should have gone capitalistic communism, like China.

The Germans used to use the Deutchmark. Marc is a French brandy.

It doing very well - better in Germany, Sweden and Norway than anywhere else, and better then the Anglo-Saxon market economies pretty much everywhere except Greece (where the problem isn't socialism, but corruption).

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Belgium was always Catholic, and still hasn't got a government - the French- and Dutch-speaking halves of the country don't seem to be able to work out a viable coalition.

Europe already has representative democratic governments - they don't work perfectly, though mostly better than in Belgium - but they do represent the people, where the American equivalent represents economic power, as Jeffery Sachs points out in his recent book "The Price of Civilization".

The difference between the US and Greece is that the US legalises its unwillingness to pay tax.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

On a sunny day (Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:24:39 -0800 (PST)) it happened linnix wrote in :

I was in a shop last week, and somebody suggested Roebels (Russian).

No such thing as a Deutchmark either. Europe needs to go back to the Deuts= chmark - that's what you mean isn't it? It isn't as if Britain isn't up to = its ears in trouble with their 'pounds sterling'.

J.L. is spot on though about the Protestant effect, you'd have to admit. B= usiness people point out differences dealing with Korea and P.R.C. for same= reason - less corruption in Korea due to more Protestantism. Socialism is= largely based on a sense of entitlement and envy and is espoused by the 'e= ducated' chattering classes, not the workers.

California anyone?

And the reason you don't have big differences in economic structure is because the dollar has been around for such a long time. Even though you will never ever ever ever admit it there is distribution of wealth in the US :-)

Actually the national dept per US citizen is about 25% higher than a Greek citizen. I wouldn't be so happy if I where you.

We're facing a semi-similar situation, going backwards. At our founding we had a single currency, and the states ran their own affairs. In my lifetime, the states have been made dependent on the federal gov't., which now reigns over the states, and the people, micro-managing people's businesses, finances, education, medical care, toilets, cars, windows, light-bulbs, etc.

Thus managed, the states have realized they're now competing with each other for the federal money--a lottery of their own money--and that that's easier, faster, and more profitable than creating jobs or fiscal prudence. IOW, like Greece.

Obama sent his favorite states big buckets of their own (borrowed) money, so they could keep overspending on stupid stuff even in the recession. "Stimulus."

So, those forces are creating a national redistribution scheme that drains one state to favor another. Since some of these states are less responsible than others, it'll be interesting.

Of course most people are too busy watching sports to notice...

-- Cheers, James Arthur

New York also. Massachusetts? Basically we need to dump the riff-raff from our coasts ;-)

Certainly! Wall Street types who should have all government guarantees and bail-outs removed. The we're left with workers and slackers. If you socialists would do a little research, most of our millionaires are self-made, derived from entrepreneurship.

Here's a funny for you... somewhere an OWS crowd surrounded a bank building. They were greeted by having paper dumped on them from the upper floors of the high-rise... Applications for Jobs at MacDonalds ;-) ...Jim Thompson

Jeffrey Sachs would agree, but not for the same reasons

He doesn't. James Arthur wants to present borrowing from the rich (at time when they aren't investing or spending their money)as making the rich poorer, and ignores the effect of giving that money to the poor - who can be relied on to spend it - in reviving a flagging economy. This is pure ideological misrepresentation - James Arthur may be too deeply brain-washed to realise that he is lying, but it's still a lie.

Kenysian stimulus-spending isn't "borrowing your way out of debt" it's quite explicitly going deeper into debt to borrow your way out of recession, and this kind of spending is only useful when the economy is in recession, with unused productive capacity available at the drop of a dollar. Again, this is pure ideological misrepresentation - James Arthur may be too deeply brain-washed to realise that he is lying, but it's still a lie.

He correctly understands that stimulus spending funded by a budget deficit doesn't destroy jobs - it saves jobs that James Arthur's flat earth economics would destroy. It can't get employment up to the level sustained at the peak of building boom generated by the irresponsible

- ninja - home loans being made by James Arthur's beloved bankers, but it can avoid the 25% unemployment that followed the 1929 stock market crash.

It scares the hell out of James Arthur, who doesn't understand much, but is very confident that he knows what is actually going on.

ending us to

Coorporate America did that years ago, as Jeffrey Sachs points out. Obama has failed to drive the money-changers from the temple, and in that sense he is collaborating in the persistent impoverishment of the bulk of the American electorate for the benefit of the rich, but he's not doing anything new there - every American politician since Eisenhower has been in the business of giving the rich what they want at the expense of the rest of the electorate. FDR managed to tone down the greed for a while, or a least managed to persuade the rich that it would be a good idea to invest more in their work-force, but his influence didn't last.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

The US isn't bankrupt... yet. Actually I look forward to it. I consider it the RESET BUTTON ;-) ...Jim Thompson