Simon Black – By plane, Asia and Europe are 12 hours apart. But on the ground the gap feels like decades.
It’s always a shock to leave a place like Vietnam (where I was last week) and fly to Europe.
Vietnam is one of the fastest growing countries in the fastest growing region of the world. It’s exciting.
Whereas here in Europe, sometimes it feels as if nothing’s changed in the last five centuries.
It’s a night and day difference.
All eyes may be on Greece right now, but in reality, the economic malaise is widespread across the continent.
Italy is gasping to exit from its longest recession in history, while unemployment figures across Southern Europe remain at appalling levels.
In France, the unemployment rate is near record highs.
Finland, once a darling of the Eurozone, is posting its worst unemployment figures in 13-years.
Even in Austria growth is flat and sluggish.
It’s clear that Greece is not the problem. It’s a symptom of the problem.
The real problem is that every one of these nations has violated the universal law of prosperity: produce more than you consume.
This is the way it works in nature, and for individuals.
If you spend your entire life going in to debt, making idiotic financial decisions, and rarely holding down a stable job, you’re not going to prosper.
Yet governments feel entitled to continuously run huge deficits, rack up historic debts, and make absurd promises that they cannot possibly keep.
This is a complete and total violation of the universal law of prosperity. And as their financial reckoning days approach, history shows there are generally two options.
The first outcome is that a country is forced to become more competitive– to rapidly change course and start producing more than it consumes.
It’s like a bankrupt company bringing in a turnaround expert: Apple summoning Steve Jobs in its darkest hour.
But here’s the thing: if a nation wants to produce, it needs producers. That means talented employees, professionals, investors, and entrepreneurs.
Greg Hunter – Investment banker Catherine Austin Fitts says the world is getting tired of what she calls “disaster capitalism.” What does she mean? Look no further than Greece as Fitts explains, “Greece essentially looks to me like disaster capitalism. You are trying to get another positive return by liquidation, but the reality is if you liquidated the global economy, you are not going to get a positive return. The game can go on for a while.
Paul Craig Roberts – Greece’s lesson for Russia, and for China and Iran, is to avoid all financial relationships with the West. The West simply cannot be trusted. Washington is committed to economic and political hegemony over every other country and uses the Western financial system for asset freezes, confiscations, and sanctions. Countries that have independent foreign policies and also have assets in the West cannot expect Washington to respect their property rights or their ownership. Washington freezes or steals countries’ assets, or in the case of France imposes multi-billion dollar fines, in order to force compliance with Washington’s policies. Iran, for example, lost the use of $100 billion, approximately one-fourth of the Iranian GDP, for years simply because Iran insisted on its rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.