Today, May 8, 2010: Bad News Abounds — All of It Was Avoidable
Today, on the Northern Tier, news comes which is sobering at least, and alarming at most. In fact, downright frightening. In our Western Hemisphere British Petroleum has created an oil well which is spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. There is no good news about this. The environmental damage already is beyond comprehension, and it is going to get worse, much, much worse.
In Europe some of the Economic Union nations have joined to shore up the finances of Greece. Greece has been spending itself silly. It has run out of money. The EU countries want to prevent this because their economies (in fact the world economy too), are at risk. The bailout might work but the problem is that the other countries are in disastrous debt circumstances. Britain has debt equal to its annual Gross National Product. The Government Party economists have been telling us, I think, thare there is no real problem of government debt. That was what was pitched when Bush and Obama and companies came up with the bailouts of the New York financial wizards (gamblers?) and the car companies (private enterprises which because lack of capable management have become black holes of private debt). The bailout debt was extraordinary. No problem some economists said. “You have to spend money to make money” a person I once knew said (a person, by the way, who was living off the income of the shopping centers his father had built).
The next bit of news is that there is now talk of a debt time bomb. We hear this from Moody’s, one of the economic rating agencies. One of the group which helped to bring us the subprime mortgage, derivative, securitization meltdown.
Regarding the derivative economy or lack there of read A. de Borchgrave, Stock market time bomb?
And there is also this: Some news about how the state governments are dealing with the economic problems of the the states. Check out this editorial in the Seattle Times — State budget is officially signed — and utterly unsustainable. The point of news is that the states are trying to avoid making tough decisions. The states do not want to offend the members of the Government Party, so they find ways to avoid having to make hard choices. After all, the politicians, Democrat mostly, but also Republican, are protectors, benefactors and in many instances members of the Government Party.