US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

i think everyone knows the greek people are going to suffer no matter what

really seems to me like 'greek panic' or 'greek blame' is a kind of moral/political inability to realize that northern european publics are going to have to suck it up too. each piece of debt has two parties, the lender banks were just as 'profligate and undisciplined' as those lazy mediterraneans, and no they weren't acting in the best interests of their nations' peoples either.

i mean, a lot of people are probably saying this too. the greek state is not the thing that people are really afraid of collapsing, it's the institutions that are so upside down that a shock will produce too much miserable fallout to locate entirely on someone else... am i not right?

well youll all be excited to know that niall ferguson is pretty sure the ottoman empire is going to return

that was a little garbled:

greece goes down, kind of a big deal in itself, but needn't be 'systemic'
european banks get yanked down the drain with them
then it's the banks begging their governments for rescue directly, not the 'greeks'

what could be masked as a nationalist problem quickly becomes revealed as essentially a class problem

i will admit that when i heard about some of the benefits of being greek i was like damn

6 weeks paid vacation, retirement at 53!!!!

6 weeks vacation is pretty normal in Europe. the average Greek retirement age is higher than Germany's.

isn't that par for the course throughout Europe?

xpost

anyway bottom line, i'm sure the US debt ceiling issue is actually important for a number of political and even economic reasons but i'm also pretty sure it's not a global catastrophe in the making.

as for the teabags/GOP not being able to spin any negative effects re the debt ceiling onto Obama and the Dems: they did it successfully for the 2008 financial meltdown. they'll do it again to Obama and the Dems if it comes to that.

as a crisis of the very concept of democratic sovereignty.

Rather like globalization was. It's not a crisis of global sovereignty; that started when you borrowed money from foreign lenders. No-one forced anybody to borrow money? No-one told these countries not to adhere to the deficit rules of joining the Euro (though having France and Italy flagrantly snub them didn't help). It's a crisis of performance. It's a crisis of politics. You fuck up, you either pay back or no-one wants to do business w/you again. For all the indignados out there, where were your protests when your governments were spending money they didn't have unsustainably? Your protests are almost meaningless now 'cause all any government can do is determine the degree to which you are all screwed now.

at dinner tonight with ~~~Europeans~~~ Greece was the hot topic & the consensus is that this is a dangerous game between the same olde powers of Europe, another case of war by other means...the danger a reversion to military dictatorship in a Eurozone country & then who knows, since there's some history here with that sort of thing.

@umairh
umair haque
No, Greece is not "like Lehman Brothers". Bankers' "bailouts" didn't involve decades of "austerity" and misery.
2 minutes ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet Reply

For all the indignados out there, where were your protests when your governments were spending money they didn't have unsustainably?

as if govt press releases were full of details of illegitimate contracts, credit default swaps, etc! i mean at some point you trust that the Really Serious Dudes who say that everything is going swimmingly know what they are talking about. everybody bought it.

as for the really big, obvious wastes of money like the olympics, there were plenty of protests, i.e. http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=247524

we'd all greece like $97670978078097087 each if they just would copyright their language

As a second-generation Greek, I'm so just so proud that we're on the leading edge of worldwide economic collapse.

from Daily Show:

Greek debt is US $44,000 per citizen
US debt is $45,000

Go Greece! I know we can catch up.

might need to start a war or three

per-capita GDP (PPP) - World Bank

US $47,284
Greece $28,256

what would the Spartans say

"sparta"

So when is Obama gonna give in to Cantor and Boehner and their demands re tax related items...Perhaps when Obama and Boehner golf again (see below)

Washington Post
Congressional Republicans abruptly pulled out of debt-reduction talks with the White House on Thursday and demanded that President Obama meet directly with GOP leaders to resolve an impasse over taxes.

With the clock ticking toward an Aug. 2 deadline, senior Republicans said negotiations led by Vice President Biden had ceased making headway as congressional Democrats pressed for as much as $400 billion in new taxes on corporations and the nation’s wealthiest households.

“We’ve known from the beginning that tax hikes would be a poison pill to any debt-reduction proposal,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a speech on the Senate floor. “Those who are proposing them now either know this or they need to realize it quickly.”

In a joint statement with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), his representative in the talks, McConnell said: “President Obama needs to decide between his goal of higher taxes, or a bipartisan plan to address our deficit. He can’t have both.”

McConnell and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said the talks could not move forward unless Obama takes taxes off the table. Democrats called the move irresponsible and showed no sign of backing down from the fight.

The campaign arm for House Democrats quickly issued a fundraising letter accusing Republicans of quitting the talks because they “aren’t willing to budge on ending tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.”

“The only way to make sure we begin to live within our means is by coming together behind a balanced approach that finds real savings across the budget — including domestic spending, defense spending, mandatory spending, and loopholes in the tax code,” Biden said in a statement. “We all need to make sacrifices, and that includes the most fortunate among us.”

Progress made

The breakdown of the talks comes after seven weeks of negotiations that all sides say made real progress toward a plan to restrain the swollen national debt. Biden and six lawmakers from both parties had tentatively agreed to more than $1 trillion in savings and had begun to tackle the toughest issues: Democratic demands for higher taxes and spending cuts at the Pentagon, and Republican demands for sharp cuts to health and retirement programs.

Those issues were never likely to be resolved without head-to-head talks involving Obama, Boehner and other congressional leaders. Thursday’s developments may merely serve to hasten the moment of truth.

“The next phase is in the hands of (party) leaders, who need to determine the scope of an agreement that can tackle the problem and attract bipartisan support,” Biden said. “For now, the talks are in abeyance as we await that guidance.”

Asked what comes next, Boehner said the ball is in the president’s court.

“I would expect to hear from him,” Boehner told reporters, adding that his emissary to the talks, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), “has made it clear that these conversations could continue if they take the tax hikes out of the conversation.”

Private channels have already been opened between the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill. Wednesday evening, Obama met with Boehner at the White House, inviting him to follow up “on conversations they had on the golf course on Saturday,” according to White House press secretary Jay Carney. Neither Carney nor Boehner’s office would comment further on the meeting.

conservative wonk thinks obama will win the debt ceiling fight

http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/270398/why-white-house-will-win-debt-limit-standoff-josh-barro

...because state legislatures of any party breakdown are going to be on the hook for the money if the feds don't pony up

ie not only wall street but 'main street' will be (are? i haven't heard of anything like this so far) agitating for it to happen

Did you read the commenters' first sentence?

"It's also as if you don't understand the purpose of the government of the United States. " classic line there

yeah the guy (josh barro) is not exactly popular over there right now, which makes me think he's probably more right than wrong

i mean:

http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/270390/we-dont-need-balance-budget-ever-josh-barro

I still don't think Obama will let it get that far. He'll blink and give Cantor what he wants before there's a debt limit crisis

That is extremely interesting and has things I hadn't thought of in it. I was just trying to get across to my mom how government borrowing/fiscal operations aren't like personal or household ones, and that guy makes some points I wish I'd used.

yeah, a government doesn't die in 70-some years, is the big one!

I was thinking more about markets, money/valuations of things such that the money gets "moved around" without actually existing, and so on, but the whole "not saving for retirement" thing is WAY more basic and grasp-able.

a conservative on one of the other websites i visit

No tax increases were a precondition for the talks. That the talks will fail because the Democrats now insist on raising taxes is no big surprise. Got gold?

How higher taxes are awesome, sez Bruce Bartlett.

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llxzboNVHC1qbhetko1_400.gif
eric cantor, today

Better late than never, I guess. If only he had thought this decades ago. I still will never forgive Bartlett for his role in the Reagan administration and for helping to draft the Kemp-Roth tax bill, which ultimately formed the basis of Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cut. Bartlett's book, "Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action" appeared in 1981

that's a x-post.

I pointed that out in my blog a couple of days ago after Bartlett's appearance on the Lawrence O'Donnell show.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/full_indictment_undermines_threat_of_voter_imperso.php

this is very deep in the weeds, but important in 2012: basically one of the right's big voter-suppression "election integrity" experts is totally full of shit -- references ancient grand jury evidence in support of very tight voter ID laws, won't respond to requests to see that evidence, when found independently it does not say what he says it does. ladies and gentlemen, one of my least favorite people in american public life right now, Hans A. Von Spakovsky.

remember that the alberto gonzales scandal was a vote-rigging scheme writ large. US attys who did not play ball in launching specious lawsuits vs vulnerable dems on karl rove's timetable were cashiered and replaced by ideologues.

the "voter fraud" meme is among the most repellent and awful in the whole sphere of right-wing memes, imo

which is saying something!

“We’ve known from the beginning that tax hikes would be a poison pill to any debt-reduction proposal,”

http://images.yuku.com/image/gif/914251be389f0a17257ebc496e5022907b0ade4.jpg

yeah, that's why _i_ didn't bother to show up for the talks, y'know?

anyone talking about the fact that same-sex marriage may be legal in NY as of tonight?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/new-york-conservative-party-chairman-predicts-passage-gay-marriage-bill_575521.html

i guess they're finally going to vote on it tonight?

yeah, and ppl think it's going to pass

NYT lede

The State Senate will vote on a same-sex marriage bill, a top senator said, setting the stage for a final decision on the most closely watched issue facing the Legislature.

cuomo has to sign it?

oh actually that's probably referring to the fact that the bill still has to pass - as far as we know we're still a vote short in the senate

cuomo will obv sign it since if it passes it's almost entirely due to him

xp maybe. weirdly described tho. the vote won't set the stage for a final decision. the vote IS the final decision (unless NYT doesn't want to be presumptuous about assuming what cuomo will do?)