Jubilee

Posted on 2 July 2012 by Erik Hare | 18 Comments

Terrible news piles up in the financial world. The famous JP Morgan inexplicable $2B derivatives loss may be as much as $9B, making everyone wonder who is in charge. The obscurely infamous shifts in the London Interbank Overnight Rate (LIBOR) that signaled the start of the major financial collapse included a lot of manipulation and other illegal activity that’s only now coming to light. And China is experiencing a slowdown in manufacturing that is only deepening.

It all seems unrelated, and yet it all ties together in this thang called “Globalism” – what happens in one part of the world affects everyone. Yet there are few agreements and organizations that really have this tied together in a way that seems appropriate, at least making sure that corruption and disease in one place does not bring down the whole world. And this points to what will have to happen to get us all to start over again – something I have taken to calling “Jubilee”.

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Decisions, Decisions

Posted on 29 June 2012 by Erik Hare | 6 Comments

Here we were, having a quiet summer, and suddenly there is news! On a hot Friday heading into what might be a very long weekend for many people there is a lot to talk about. Let’s keep it light, like a salad in place of a big heavy meal. We wouldn’t want the day to feel even heavier than it already does.

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Greek Drama, New Act?

Posted on 21 May 2012 by Erik Hare | 11 Comments

I admit it, I’ve been slow to write about Greece again. There is news on the Greek crisis every day that is worth writing about, and yet somehow it all seems the same as two years ago.

But then along came Alexis Tsipras, who at 37 is likely to be the next leader in this odyssey of debt. Outside of Greece he and his “Coalition of the Radical Left” are not well known, which is only reasonable. They aren’t that well known in Greece, either. What matters is that he is playing his hand perfectly and may well stand up to the big banks of Europe after June 17th.

Will this former youth organizer for the Communist Party be successful, not just in winning power but leading his nation away from disaster? It seems unlikely, but if it happens it will be one Hell of a story.

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Merkel, Alone

Posted on 16 May 2012 by Erik Hare | 22 Comments

European news has been roughly the same for three years. An agreement is reached between a group of bland looking national leaders, and then one of them disappears from the scene. There’s been an election or a series of protests that led to a resignation, nevermind the reason why. When the cast changes, the old agreement is tossed aside and negotiations begin again.

Why can’t Europe get its act together? Why is it so dependent on personalities?

That gets us to the chief personality of them all, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She has been the one who, with her conservative Christian Democratic Party, has insisted on “austerity”, the tightening of budgets and paying of bills even as the economy crashes. And now Merkel stands completely alone. Does this mark the end of austerity for Europe?

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Growth or Austerity?

Posted on 30 April 2012 by Erik Hare | 13 Comments

On the surface of it, the statement by top Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom is utterly ridiculous. “[Romney’s] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that.” Romney himself made similar statements just before the Michigan Primary last February. “The president finally came around to my own view that Detroit needed to go through managed bankruptcy, the auto companies needed to go through managed bankruptcy to shed their excess costs.”

That wasn’t the way Romney’s opinion piece in the New York Times came off in November 2008, however. At the time he was adamant that there was no role for the US government to write “a blank check” to save the US auto industry.

In the end this is a bigger story of how to manage the Depression we find ourselves in, no matter how the details are massaged for the purpose of a campaign. It’s a choice between austerity and forgiveness, the paths taken by Europe and the US respectively. For the campaign it’s a about a level of detail that takes far too much explanation.

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