And it's people like this that the Statists think will be able to legislate and regulate US corporations and banks and insurance companies to low risk heaven. "Pull the other one".
The creation of a stand-alone European Monetary Union was a calculated risk. Without the unifying disciplines of a common fiscal policy, profligate governments could, in effect, tap into the savings of the more prudent. To avert such free riding, the Maastricht Treaty had imposed firm entrance criteria: low inflation, manageable public debt and small budget deficits.
In 1999 Greece conspicuously failed the entrance exam. Yet two years later, after fiddling the national books, it squeaked through the door despite the manifest weakness of its economic institutions and fiscal management. Able now to tap markets as cheaply as Germany, Athens embarked on the mother of spending sprees. The wildly overbudget Athens Olympics alone, organized, if that is the word, by none other than Greece's just-appointed finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, should have raised eyebrows. Europe's watchdogs slumbered on.
Greece could borrow almost without limit, because although the Maastricht Treaty expressly barred bailouts of indebted members, financial markets judged that euro-zone governments would do anything to prevent a sovereign default. And no one told the Greeks that they could not live forever on the never-never.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0630-greece-20110630,0,6954767.story
The creation of a stand-alone European Monetary Union was a calculated risk. Without the unifying disciplines of a common fiscal policy, profligate governments could, in effect, tap into the savings of the more prudent. To avert such free riding, the Maastricht Treaty had imposed firm entrance criteria: low inflation, manageable public debt and small budget deficits.
In 1999 Greece conspicuously failed the entrance exam. Yet two years later, after fiddling the national books, it squeaked through the door despite the manifest weakness of its economic institutions and fiscal management. Able now to tap markets as cheaply as Germany, Athens embarked on the mother of spending sprees. The wildly overbudget Athens Olympics alone, organized, if that is the word, by none other than Greece's just-appointed finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, should have raised eyebrows. Europe's watchdogs slumbered on.
Greece could borrow almost without limit, because although the Maastricht Treaty expressly barred bailouts of indebted members, financial markets judged that euro-zone governments would do anything to prevent a sovereign default. And no one told the Greeks that they could not live forever on the never-never.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0630-greece-20110630,0,6954767.story
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