The long standoff between intransigent Greek socialists and their increasingly exasperated creditors appears to be reaching an end, judging by the commentary after an International Monetary Fund meeting this week. It sounds as if the Greeks are running out of cards to play.
On July 30, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law and enrolled former President Harry Truman as its first beneficiary. But today, federal unfunded liabilities are catastrophic for future taxpayers and economic growth. The US Debt Clock lists federal unfunded liabilities at $97 trillion. That equals about $818 thousand per taxpayer; about three times average U.S. net worth; and 131 percent of world GDP.
The Group of Seven (G7) kicked off its annual summit this week with the situations in Ukraine and Greece on top of the agenda. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met privately on Sunday to hammer out details about the two countries.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)– French leader Francois Hollande on Tuesday will make the second visit ever by a sitting president of France to its once prized possession of Haiti, where bountiful resources and brutal plantation slavery made it the European nation’s most profitable colony some 250 years ago.
David Rosenberg, former Chief Economist for Merrill Lynch, recently made the comment that the current global interest rates, at below 2 percent, have only been this low once or twice in the last 500 years. The globalization cycle over the last two decades pushed up total world debt to $223.3 trillion, over three times the world GDP of about $75 trillion. But the current low rates indicate that individuals and corporations no longer have the moral willingness to take on more debt.
Days after being pulled back from leading the Greek diplomatic team in talks with the European Union regarding the nation’s astronomical debt, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and his wife, Danae Stratou, were the victims of an anarchist mob attack while dining out.
Bloomberg Business understandably sees all sorts of signals in Greece’s decision to pull Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis back from bailout negotiations, a move it describes as “clipping Varoufakis’ wings” and “reining him in” after three months of debt talks failed to produce an agreement.
Americans are routinely told not to worry about how much of our titanic national debt is held by foreigners, but those who do keep track of such things may be relieved to know that our current number-one creditor, our totalitarian geopolitical adversary China, has been surpassed by our considerably less hostile ally Japan. Each of those nations holds a little over 10 percent of America’s debt.
Leftist Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, during a visit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, raised the issue of Greece receiving war reparations for the damage the Nazis did to the country in World War II. Despite Merkel’s rapid dismissal of the possibility, the two appeared cordial and friendly during their public press event leading up to a reception dinner.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott delivered his first State of the State Address to a joint session of the Texas Legislature and a packed gallery in the Texas House Chamber. During his address, the new governor laid out his agenda for
Mort Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief and publisher of the New York Daily News and US News and World Report Chairman, declared that the US national debt would create “a real crisis” on Friday’s “McLaughlin Group.” Zuckerman started by saying there was “some truth” to
European finance ministers worried that Greece’s new far-left government would renege on the terms of previous bailout packages, while demanding even more debt to finance wild new spending programs, were given fresh reason for concern when the new Greek finance minister announced his government would not negotiate bailout terms with the European Union or International Monetary Fund.
Perhaps Greece’s new far-left government will rethink its plans to shake Europe down for cash to fund its wild spending binges, now that the German economy has officially entered a deflationary cycle, as reported by Business Insider
Americans who haven’t been paying much attention to the collapse of Greek socialism have been missing a very instructive lesson in where their own country may be heading, for Greece is the end stage of Obama-style debt-fueled dependency politics. It could happen in America, too, most likely beginning with demands for huge federal bailouts by bankrupt Democrat-run basket case state governments.
