Forget About Greece, Protect Germany

Something just dawned on me as I went through my daily Greek Debt Geekfest. The symptoms of the problems that have gotten us all to this point, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Japan, the US and all the rest, are manifested in the articles written about Greece. Dig this tidbit.

April 10 (Bloomberg) -- German resistance to subsidizing emergency loans for Greece may hold up efforts by the European Union to reach agreement on terms of a proposed financial lifeline for the debt-strapped nation.

As officials in Brussels hammered out details to a framework for joint EU-International Monetary Fund aid, Germany restated its opposition to below-market rate loans. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou says without the subsidies Greece can’t cut the EU’s-biggest budget deficit. Finance ministers plan to hold a teleconference tomorrow, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Having done a turnaround, let me assure you that they need to be far less concerned about bailing out nonperforming assets (Greece) than they do protecting and nourishing productive ones (Germany). The Greeks are nowhere near solving their problems and running at neutral, much less a profit. Without Germany around, the whole region is hosed in the long run. Someone, somewhere has to produce things and sell them*, otherwise everyone's going down.

Nowhere in these articles is this discussed. It's all about helping Greece and how sad it is for Greece. Well, if you continue to abuse the productive Germans by demanding they be the region's mommy, Greece is going to have a lot of company.

This is a global contagion, this world view. The Japanese have buried themselves alive with debt because of it. The Greeks and many others in Europe are in the late stages of the disease where the symptoms are obvious and unpleasant. Our current administration is riddled with it. There was even a book written about it and where it all ends.

Who is John Galt?

* - Here in the US, we hate these people. We call them "fortunate" as if Zeus handed them bags of gold and we demand that they "pay their fair share" which amounts to, well, almost everything our government spends.