George Rebane

For the last several weeks we have been watching Greece sliding down the same chute that we are on.  The symptoms and the disease appear to be identical, only their progress is a lot faster since they are a smaller economy and their mistakes are quickly amplified.  The disease, of course, is big government abetted by government worker unions.  Like we, the Greek electorate voted in their scumbags to try to get more out of the public trough than they were willing to put in.

Now the country is coming unglued with its budget shortfall soaring above 13% of their GDP (compared to the current 11% in the US).  Looking at the bonuses, differential tax rates, and other perks that Greece’s government employees get, it’s a wonder the wheels have stayed on so long.  And now this euro-zone country is threatening to take down the euro and, perhaps, the EU with it.  Joined by Portugal, Spain, and Ireland, the fearsome foursome have so ruined their fiscs that the rest of the EU, led by Germany and France are scrambling to cobble together a bailout program.

The more prudent EU countries have been counseling, now demanding, some spending discipline before they pour in more good money after bad.  The Greeks will have none of it, no one will stand for taking a cut in pay or benefits.  State worker unions (think of our SEIU) representing customs and finance are holding strikes that shut down the country’s ports thereby further weakening the economy.  Through their unions taxi drivers and truckers are joining in.  Those guys all know where the pressure points are, but they are not smart enough to figure out that Greeks simply don’t have the cash (euros) to continue paying for runaway government.  So the striking workers are really playing poker with EU’s richer countries.

Now we have to understand that all this did not happen overnight, but after a long history of government interventions and stimulations to ‘help’ their economy according to the lights of socialism.  So what are the mavens in Brussels to do?  Do they now beggar the financially sound to bolster the more dysfunctional countries – i.e. make the rich pay more, sound familiar?  Are EU countries too big to fail, even if they don’t want to mend their collectivist ways?

You can bet that in our country the SEIU is taking notes and refining its tactics for the inevitable day when it calls for American public service employees to walk out.  This will all be done to protest ‘unconscionable’ spending cuts, and attempting to balance the budget ‘on the backs of the poor’.  You can also bet that it won’t happen until after this November’s election when the Democrats are expected to lose their congressional super majorities.

And if history is a teacher, then they will squeeze us exactly in the parts that will hurt the most, and we ourselves will take to the streets to petition government to do whatever it takes to stop the pain – even if it means giving the unions what they demand.  And on the long slide down, another crisis will have been averted, for a while.

In the meanwhile we continue to stimulate ourselves into oblivion while fabricating news of great government programs that are ‘saving or creating’ millions of jobs.  An RR reader and astute observer of such shenanigans writes me –

Joe Biden said that taxpayers have “gotten their money’s worth” out of the $787 billion stimulus program.  According to the “Accountability Page” on Recovery.gov less than 8% of the ARRA Stimulus funds have been spent.  My math shows a cost per job “saved or added” of over $96,305 per job! Which of course does not take into effect the “creative” job counting techniques used by our scandalous government. 

An engineer friend of mine says that his company received “some” funding for 3 different but connected jobs.  Each of his employees were counted 3 times!

The fall never hurts, it’s the landing that does.