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Thursday, February 11, 2010

Crass and phony?

A friend--a pretty right wing friend, I might add, who once cited Ronald Regan, Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush as his political heroes--proves that old blind squirrel/acorn thing when he reacts like a sane person to this news from today's Wall Street Journal about the EU bailing Greece out of its debt crisis :
We aren't "helping Greece"--just as, in the past, we weren't helping Brazil, Mexico or whomever. Who we ARE helping is the debt holders--JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of England, Credit Suisse, etc. They are the ones to whom Greece (or Brazil or Mexico) owes the money. Greece defaulting on its debt doesn't hurt Greece. They are just like anyone who goes through bankruptcy; everything is fine. It is the banks who suffer if they don't get back the money they
loaned--again, just like in a bankruptcy.

But no one wants to say, "Hey, let's bail out JPMorganChase."  So, instead, we "save Greece." Sounds good--noble even, maybe. But crass and phony.

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