As Greece Votes Itself Into Collapse, It Is Following The Same Wicked Stupidity That American Voters Followed In Electing Obama

I’ve pointed this out before: there is NOTHING more dangerous than the right to vote when a people becomes sufficiently depraved.  Democrats tell us that we should round-file the 2nd-Amendment-guaranteed right of the people to keep and bear arms even as they tell us that ANY ATTEMPT WHATSOEVER to prevent criminals and illegal immigrants and dead people from voting is “unconstitutional.”

I pointed out the fact that the NAZI Party was elected by the same big-government worshiping socialist fascists who elected Obama twice.

If you put a gun in the hands of a wicked fool, whatever he does with that gun, he will pay the consequences for his foolishness.  At least, if decent people are allowed to also keep and bear arms so they can put an end to that wicked fool.  But let a wicked fool vote, and he can do so over and over again with impunity and never be held accountable.

In Greece – rather obviously a nation filled with wicked fools – we just saw the results of a vote.  It’s kind of interesting.  In the Lost Angeles Slimes we have the following account.  Allow me to post what I believe is the true gist by selecting a few passages and discussing that.  At the very bottom of the article I will have the entire LA Times article available:

In a surprising 61% to 39% result, Greeks said “no” in a referendum on a rescue package that would have kept their debt-ridden country afloat but subjected it to additional austerity measures.

The landslide delivered a sharp rebuke to European Union leaders who had warned that the plebiscite was, in effect, a vote on whether Greece wanted to remain a member of the Eurozone, the group of 19 nations that share the euro currency.

[…]

Jubilant crowds of “no” voters thronged Athens’ main square into the early hours of Monday to celebrate what they said was a chance for Greece to reassert itself and achieve a better deal from creditors. Motorists honked their horns, and triumphant chants of “Oxi! Oxi! Oxi!” — “No! No! No!” in Greek — rose in the balmy Mediterranean air.

But there were already signs of a backlash from angry European officials that could make any new bailout agreement even more difficult. If a deal is not struck quickly, Athens could find itself broke, forcing it to default on its debts and triggering a slide out of the Eurozone.

The left-wing government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, which campaigned for a “no” victory, had “demolished the last bridge on which Europe and Greece could approach a compromise,” Sigmar Gabriel, the German economy minister, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the leader of the Eurozone’s finance ministers, described the poll result as “very regrettable for the future of Greece. For recovery of the Greek economy, difficult measures and reforms are inevitable.”

[…]

Tsipras also said the referendum result had given him a mandate to press international lenders — mostly other Eurozone countries — for a “sustainable” bailout package for the Greek government that would address its staggering debt load and free the country “from the vicious cycle of austerity.”

The Greek economy has contracted by a breathtaking 25% since Athens began accepting emergency loans in exchange for brutal spending cuts in 2010. Tsipras’ radical-left Syriza party swept to power in January on an aggressive anti-austerity platform, setting up the current standoff with Greece’s creditors.

He said Athens was prepared to return to the negotiating table immediately. But with relations at an all-time low, it was unclear whether any of Greece’s European partners would show up and, even if so, whether an agreement could be hashed out before the Greek government runs out of money.

A major debt to the European Central Bank falls due July 20. If Athens fails to pay — as it already did with a loan from the International Monetary Fund last week — and bank coffers are empty, Greece could be forced to introduce a parallel currency and eventually quit the Eurozone.

[…]

Before the ballots were cast, a parade of European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, said they would interpret a win for the “no” side as an expression of Greece’s desire to quit using the euro.

But Tsipras insisted that the vote “did not answer the question ‘in or out of the euro.’ That question must be removed definitively from the discussion.”

Polls consistently show that an overwhelming majority of Greeks want their country to remain in the Eurozone and, by extension, the 28-nation European Union.

Let’s understand some basic facts: Greece owes – and promised to repay when it borrowed – $270 BILLION.  To be extravagantly wasted on a tiny nation of 10,775,557 people.  That massive government borrowing allowed Greek government to provide benefits that far and vastly exceeded the country’s ability to pay for its largesse.  And as Margaret Thatcher once famously put it, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”  It’s like that saying, “Your mouth is writing checks that your ass can’t cash.”  Greek socialists, like ALL socialists EVERYWHERE (especially here in the U.S.), want to live high on the hog and force somebody else to keep paying the tab.  And so when the check comes due for that fancy meal in the high price resort, they angrily refuse to pay the tab they racked up.

The European Union is saying, “You’ve got to pay for this.”  And the Greek socialist liberal progressives are like, “oh, hell no.”  And a major problem now is that if Greece can weasel out of its debt with some stupid vote, then why can’t the OTHER P.I.G.S.?  Why can’t Portugal weasel out of its debt that they compiled with the same insanely wicked socialism Obama and the Democrat Party preach here?  Why can’t Ireland weasel out of its debt?  Why can’t Spain say bye-bye to its debt payments?  If the EU allows Greece out of its debt, the entire system will necessarily massively collapse.

These are simply facts.  And facts ought to matter.  The European Union simply cannot possibly allow Greece to do what Greece insists on doing without basically cutting the throats of every single person in every single member-state of the European Union that would go broke paying for Greece’s AND therefore Portugal’s AND therefore Ireland’s AND therefore Spain’s massive self-inflicted debt addiction.  Which again is no different from the debt-addiction of Barack Hussein Obama and every single member of the just-as-socialist Democrat Party machine.

But liberal progressives, and let’s just call them what the hell they are – socialists – are pathologically immune to facts or reality or consequences.

So how did the EU view this referendum (emphasis on “dumb”)?  Another article says it all in two sentences:

Tsipras dismissed harsh criticism from other European countries on his decision.

“The referendum will take place as scheduled, next Sunday, whether our partners want it or not,” he said.

Allowing this to go to the people was an act of insanity and demagoguery, not an act of leadership.  But demagogic delusion with a complete abandonment of true moral leadership is the heart and soul of leftism.

So you have the leftist Greek prime minister just flat-out flagrantly campaigning on a completely altered state of reality.  You have this leftist turd Alexis Tsipras – or as I prefer to call him, the Greek Obama – making the most insane promises in the history of the world.  And like the American Obama, the Greek Obama is leading his nation and his people straight to a very painful hell.

Just like the United States is headed straight to a very painful hell.

When Obama deceitfully campaigned for president, he told a lot of the same kind of sick lies and made the same sort of delusional fool promises.

Obama promised a “reset in relations” with Russia.  He said a weak America that would not pose a threat to Russia would be the foundation for this reset, and that Russia would obviously respond to the fact that America was no longer any kind of a threat to Russia with love and a determination to disarm and become weak in response.  He said the same thing in relationship to Iran and that nation’s steadfast determination to possess nuclear weapons with the ballistic missile capability to deliver those missiles at both the little satan Israel and the great satan America.  He said the same thing in relationship to the “war on terror” which he renamed “the overseas contingency operation” to broadcast how minimal it would be under his regime.  He promised us that the only reason our enemies hated us was because we were too strong and too dominant and pushed our weight around too much.

History has already proven what an abject fool Obama was in every sense of the word in terms of his foreign policy.

In the same way, on the domestic front, Obama made all kinds of fool promises about his giganotosaurus-government stimulus package.  Obama demanded – and got – a $3.27 TRILLION stimulus that he promised would fire up the engine of American growth.  Over and over and over again, Obama promised his stimulus would create “shovel-ready jobs.”  History proves that it in actual fact did the precise opposite.  Ultimately Obama actually admitted that:

“Shovel-ready was not as … uh .. shovel-ready as we expected.”

Obama’s promise to pay back the $3.3 trillion he demagogued America into putting on its credit card bill is as good as Greece’s promise to pay that $270 billion they wanted but just didn’t want to actually pay back.

Greece’s $270 billion of other people’s money worked just as well for them as Obama’s $3.3 trillion in other people’s money worked for us.  It didn’t.

We now have a Great Depression level of actual unemployment that isn’t counted as month after month, basically TWICE as many people abandon hope of getting a job and drop out of the rigged-statistical-shenanigan that is our “unemployment rate calculation” for everyone that actually gets a damn job.  Just as Obama has created only one job for every two immigrants he allowed to flood into this country:

  A record 93,626,000 Americans have stopped looking for work in an economy that managed to create only one job for every two immigrants the government let in from 2000 to 2014.

But what the hell: just keeping making those, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor and if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan” promises, you lying turd.  What we have now is an ObamaCare failed system – characterized by the five billion dollars that couldn’t even build a successful damned website – that is a true socialist-fascist crony capitalist system that enriched the giant insurance companies at the expense of millions of Americans.  Which is why that LA Times article titled “Obamacare cash fuels healthcare merger mania” begins by pointing out:

A gusher of Obamacare money is fueling a merger frenzy in U.S. healthcare.

The latest jolt came Thursday when Woodland Hills insurer Health Net Inc. agreed to be bought by Medicaid insurer Centene Corp. for $6.8 billion.

And more billion-dollar deals are in the works as health insurers, hospitals and drug companies bulk up in size so they can seize on government spending in Obamacare exchanges, state Medicaid programs and Medicare Advantage for the baby boomers.

Riding high on Wall Street and flush with cash, big health insurers in particular have been on the prowl for deals. Atop the shopping list are companies that boost their government business.

“The Affordable Care Act is really driving this merger mania,” said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “There are billions of dollars pouring into the system, and it’s money to buy insurance.”

These giant companies, both big pharma and the giant insurers, supported Obama, and paved the way toward his never-seen-in-all-human-history more than two billion-dollar campaign warchest that he used to destroy all political opposition.  And now they’re really going to let us have it, points out CNN.

Everything about Obama and his supporters and his political party -EVERYTHING – is based on and built upon LIES.

The same kind of lies based on the same flagrant disregard for reality and the consequences of reality ignored that we’re seeing unfold in Greece.

Just thought I’d point that out to you as you watch Greece crash and realize it’s a preview for what Obama has done to America.

Here is the entire LA Times article on the Greek ‘no’ vote:

In landslide 61% to 39% vote, Greece says ‘no’ to bailout deal
By Henry Chu  contact the reporter
July 5, 2015, 7:50 PM |reporting from Athens

The resounding rejection of an international bailout deal by voters in Greece raised fears Sunday of the collapse of the country’s banking system, a catastrophic government default, an eventual exit from the euro and potential social unrest.

In a surprising 61% to 39% result, Greeks said “no” in a referendum on a rescue package that would have kept their debt-ridden country afloat but subjected it to additional austerity measures.

The landslide delivered a sharp rebuke to European Union leaders who had warned that the plebiscite was, in effect, a vote on whether Greece wanted to remain a member of the Eurozone, the group of 19 nations that share the euro currency.

The EU is now confronted with one of the gravest challenges to its mission of “ever closer union” between member states.

How deep a hole is Greece in?

Jubilant crowds of “no” voters thronged Athens’ main square into the early hours of Monday to celebrate what they said was a chance for Greece to reassert itself and achieve a better deal from creditors. Motorists honked their horns, and triumphant chants of “Oxi! Oxi! Oxi!” — “No! No! No!” in Greek — rose in the balmy Mediterranean air.

But there were already signs of a backlash from angry European officials that could make any new bailout agreement even more difficult. If a deal is not struck quickly, Athens could find itself broke, forcing it to default on its debts and triggering a slide out of the Eurozone.

The left-wing government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, which campaigned for a “no” victory, had “demolished the last bridge on which Europe and Greece could approach a compromise,” Sigmar Gabriel, the German economy minister, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the leader of the Eurozone’s finance ministers, described the poll result as “very regrettable for the future of Greece. For recovery of the Greek economy, difficult measures and reforms are inevitable.”

An emergency summit of Eurozone leaders is to be held Tuesday.

More urgently, officials at the European Central Bank are to meet Monday to review the emergency aid that has propped up Greece’s nearly depleted financial system for the last few months.

If the European Central Bank decides to cut off that lifeline or make it costlier, Greek banks are likely to run out of cash within days. Business would grind to a halt, shops could run short of basic supplies and increasingly agitated residents could find it hard to buy fuel and medicine.

Greek banks have been closed since June 29 on order of the government, and customers limited to about $67 a day in ATM withdrawals. Officials insist that the banks will reopen Tuesday, but analysts doubt this can happen unless the European Central Bank maintains or increases its assistance.

“Our immediate priority is the rapid restoration of the functioning of our banking system and the restoration of our economic stability,” Tsipras said in a nationally televised address Sunday night. “I am certain that the ECB fully understands not only the general economic situation but also the humanitarian dimension which the crisis has taken in the country.”

Tsipras also said the referendum result had given him a mandate to press international lenders — mostly other Eurozone countries — for a “sustainable” bailout package for the Greek government that would address its staggering debt load and free the country “from the vicious cycle of austerity.”

The Greek economy has contracted by a breathtaking 25% since Athens began accepting emergency loans in exchange for brutal spending cuts in 2010. Tsipras’ radical-left Syriza party swept to power in January on an aggressive anti-austerity platform, setting up the current standoff with Greece’s creditors.

He said Athens was prepared to return to the negotiating table immediately. But with relations at an all-time low, it was unclear whether any of Greece’s European partners would show up and, even if so, whether an agreement could be hashed out before the Greek government runs out of money.

A major debt to the European Central Bank falls due July 20. If Athens fails to pay — as it already did with a loan from the International Monetary Fund last week — and bank coffers are empty, Greece could be forced to introduce a parallel currency and eventually quit the Eurozone.

Financial analysts say that this is not a threat in the next few days, but warn that the probability of a “Grexit” down the line has increased considerably because of Sunday’s vote.

Before the ballots were cast, a parade of European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, said they would interpret a win for the “no” side as an expression of Greece’s desire to quit using the euro.

But Tsipras insisted that the vote “did not answer the question ‘in or out of the euro.’ That question must be removed definitively from the discussion.”

Polls consistently show that an overwhelming majority of Greeks want their country to remain in the Eurozone and, by extension, the 28-nation European Union.

Merkel and other European leaders must now ponder whether to let Greece go bust and drop out of the Eurozone or whether such a course would inflict irreparable damage to the credibility of the euro and to the project of greater European unity. The Greek debt crisis is the severest test the euro has faced since it was introduced more than a decade ago.

To try to entice his Eurozone partners back to the bargaining table, Tsipras is apparently considering shuffling his negotiating team to include a broader spectrum of members. Several European officials have said openly that they no longer trust Tsipras or his Syriza party; a Greek delegation with some members drawn from other parties could be more palatable.

“That will show that Greece does not want a conflict,” said political commentator George Papageorgiou. “If there is a consensual approach from the Greek part, that could facilitate a consensual approach from the other part.”

Dijsselbloem, the Eurozone finance ministers’ chief, said the first move was Athens’. “We will now wait for the initiatives of the Greek authorities,” he said.

The size of the victory for the “no” campaign came as a surprise both inside and outside Greece after a flurry of opinion polls showed voters to be split down the middle. Bitter disagreement over the significance and possible effect of the plebiscite cleaved living rooms and workplaces across the country.

Just over 62% of the country’s 9.9 million voters cast a ballot, easily surpassing the mandatory threshold of 40% for a referendum to be considered valid.

Surveys suggested that young people voted “no” in droves. Many agreed with Tsipras’ contention that the bailout proposals on offer from Greece’s lenders demanded too much austerity on top of years of brutal spending cuts and would hit the poor and elderly disproportionately hard.

“These measures would worsen the situation,” said teacher Paula Andriotaki, 33, after casting her vote in a local school on a bright and warm afternoon. “We try to see light, but we get worse and worse.”

“Yes” supporters had urged Greeks to join them in order to guarantee Athens’ continued place in the Eurozone. They said that membership in the wider European Union could also be at risk and that Greece could not afford to be isolated.

A 40-year-old man named Giorgos, who declined to give his surname, blamed Tsipras for passing the buck.

“I would have preferred the referendum not to have happened,” he said. “I believe it is a political alibi. We are being asked to take a decision that should have been taken by someone else.”

The ballot paper was the subject of some criticism, because the question it asked was wordy and couched in jargon and the check box for “no” was above that for “yes.”

Moreover, the bailout deal referred to was technically moot. The offer from Greece’s creditors expired Tuesday night, after talks with Athens collapsed over Tsipras’ surprise decision to call a referendum. Creditors say that negotiations on a new agreement must start from scratch.

Because of the convoluted ballot question, and the conflicting claims of whether the real issue at stake was the future of Greece as a member of the Eurozone, many Greeks complained of confusion over just what was being asked of them.

“I don’t know what result I would like to see,” said a 19-year-old voter named Dimitris, who was still undecided as he prepared to enter a voting booth. “It would be a disaster to leave the euro, but it would also be disastrous to accept more austerity measures. ‘Yes’ is a bad choice, but ‘no’ is also suicidal.”

Sunday’s referendum was Greece’s first in 41 years. In 1974, Greeks were asked to decide whether their country should retain its monarchy.

The answer then: also a resounding “no.”

Special correspondent Pavlos Zafiropoulos contributed to this report.

One of the things that the left loves to do is hang all the consequences of “austerity” on the heads of conservatives.  On their view, the crisis has NOTHING to do with the $270 billion they borrowed in Greece and now refuse to repay; it’s because of “austerity” that the economy has collapsed.

Every leftist is a morally sick individual who essentially whines, “I want a mansion and a yacht, and if you don’t give them to me, it’s your fault I’m poor.”

And then there are the lies from the liars: at the heart of the “austerity” that the European Union is imposing on Greece is the demand for Greece to raise taxes.  HOW MANY CONSERVATIVES DO YOU HEAR CALLING FOR TAX HIKES????  This has NOTHING to do with conservatives, either the sick and diseased and insane borrowing or the attempts of the lenders to get their fool money back.  Rather, this is socialists European Union liberals trying to get their money back from socialist Greek liberals who are crazier than they are.

Conservatives call for LOW TAXES because LOWERING TAX RATES PRODUCES MORE REVENUES.

It’s like I have always said:

Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues

Please keep in mind that true conservatives like myself write articles such as this one that is particularly relevant given what is happening right now in Europe:

If Raising Taxes Would Get America Out Of Trouble, WHY IS THE EURO ZONE IN SUCH DEEP SH!T???

So from now on, any fool who blames Republicans or conservatives for failed “austerity” seriously needs to get a punch in the mouth.

What we are seeing in Greece is nothing more than the abject failure of socialism to deal with the crisis created by socialism.  Which is of course hardly surprising to anyone who is capable of thinking.

If Spain Collapses, Europe Collapses. And If Europe Collapses, America Collapses. And Terrified Spaniards Are Bailing Out Of Spain As I Write This.

Be afraid.  Be very, very afraid.  Because to paraphrase Obama’s demonic reverend for 25 years, the chickens of socialism have come home to roost:

Fears Rising, Spaniards Pull Out Their Cash and Get Out of Spain
Published in the New York Times: Monday, 3 Sep 2012 | 9:22 PM ET By: Landon Thomas Jr.

After working six years as a senior executive for a multinational payroll-processing company in Barcelona, Spain, Mr. Vildosola is cutting his professional and financial ties with his troubled homeland. He has moved his family to a village near Cambridge, England, where he will take the reins at a small software company, and he has transferred his savings from Spanish banks to British banks.

“The macro situation in Spain is getting worse and worse,” Mr. Vildosola, 38, said last week just hours before boarding a plane to London with his wife and two small children. “There is just too much risk. Spain is going to be next after Greece, and I just don’t want to end up holding devalued pesetas.”

Mr. Vildosola is among many who worry that Spain’s economic tailspin could eventually force the country’s withdrawal from the euro and a return to its former currency, the peseta. That dire outcome is still considered a long shot, even if Spain might eventually require a Greek-style bailout. But there is no doubt that many of those in a position to do so are taking their money — and in some cases themselves — out of Spain.

In July, Spaniards withdrew a record 75 billion euros, or $94 billion, from their banks — an amount equal to 7 percent of the country’s overall economic output — as doubts grew about the durability of Spain’s financial system.

The withdrawals accelerated a trend that began in the middle of last year, and came despite a European commitment to pump up to 100 billion euros into the Spanish banking system. Analysts will be watching to see whether the August data, when available, shows an even faster rate of capital flight.

More disturbing for Spain is that the flight is starting to include members of its educated and entrepreneurial elite who are fed up with the lack of job opportunities in a country where the unemployment rate touches 25 percent.

According to official statistics, 30,000 Spaniards registered to work in Britain in the last year, and analysts say that this figure would be many multiples higher if workers without documents were counted. That is a 25 percent increase from a year earlier.

“No doubt there is a little bit of panic,” said José García Montalvo, an economist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. “The wealthy people have already taken their money out. Now it’s the professionals and midrange people who are moving their money to Germany and London. The mood is very, very bad.”

It is possible that the outlook could improve if the European Central Bank’s governing council, which meets Thursday, signals a plan to help shore up the finances of Spain and other euro zone laggards by intervening in the bond markets.

But right now, if anything, Spain’s picture is growing dimmer.

On Friday, the government’s bank rescue fund said it would need to pump up to 5 billion euros into the failed mortgage-lending giant Bankia, which the state seized in May. And on Monday, Andalusia became the latest of Spain’s semiautonomous regions to ask the central government for rescue money.

The wider prospects for the euro zone are also still bleak. Moody’s [MCO 39.72 0.12 (+0.3%) ] Investors Service said on Monday that it had changed its outlook on the AAA rating of the European Union to negative, and that it might downgrade the rating if it decides to cut the ratings on the union’s four largest budget contributors.

Spain’s gathering gloom comes despite a gradual return of capital to banks in Greece and the relative stability of deposits in those other euro zone trouble spots, Italy, Ireland and Portugal.

The continued exodus of money and people from Spain could be a warning to European policy makers that bailing out the country — a step now widely expected — may not stem the panic as long as the Spanish economy remains in a funk.

It was a lesson learned in Greece, where despite successive European bailouts, about a third of deposits have been withdrawn from its banks since 2009, as the public worried that Athens might have to return to the drachma.

Spain is still a far cry from a nearly bankrupt Greece: it has a much larger and more diverse economy, lower levels of debt and a bond market that is still functioning.

It might be more accurate to say that money is leaving Spanish banks at more of a jog than anything close to a sprint.

Although retail and corporate deposits are down 10 percent compared with those of July 2011, the country remains relatively rich in savings, with 2.3 trillion euros in overall deposits, according to data from Morgan Stanley.

But once under way, the flight of bank deposits can easily overwhelm rational facts and analysis.

Setting off the flight was the failure of Bankia, which came as a shock to Spanish savers who had been assured by government officials that the bank was in good shape.

Instead of calming fears, the state takeover prompted comparisons to Argentina in 2001, when peso bank accounts denominated in dollars were frozen in order to stem the flight of deposits.

The corralito, or corral, as the Argentine action is known, has become part of the public conversation in Spain. The million-plus Argentines who have since immigrated to Spain have provided ample and gory stories of desperate legal battles and wiped-out savings.

Eduardo Pérez, a Spaniard who was working in Argentina during that period, remembers the events all too well. He said he lost four-fifths of the money he had kept in an Argentine savings account, though he declined to say how much money was involved.

“Some of my friends lost everything,” Mr. Pérez said. “So yes, everyone in Spain knows about the corralito.”

Recently, Mr. Pérez, who lives in the northern city of Bilbao, removed about a third of his euros from his Spanish savings account and sent them to Singapore, converting them to Singapore dollars.

Having lost his job at a multinational company a few months ago, Mr. Pérez, 48, is trying to make ends meet by focusing on his travel Web site and blog, which aggregate Spanish-language travel videos.

But as the job outlook worsens, he is contemplating following in the path of his savings and starting a new life in Singapore with his wife.

“Two years ago, we never would have thought of this, but now I have real fears that there will be a breakup with the euro,” he said. “And when you keep hearing people saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not going to happen’ — well, that is when you have to start worrying.”

Analysts said that the record-high outflow from Spain in July was probably spurred in part by July’s being a taxpaying month for many corporations, which prompted them to withdraw cash from deposit accounts.

Also playing a role were investment funds that moved cash reserves to foreign banks in light of the credit downgrades at Spanish banks.

Still, as the examples of Mr. Vildosola and Mr. Pérez show, individual deposit flight is becoming more pronounced.

Some people are willing to fly to London for the day just to open an account there, as most banks in the city require such transactions to be made in person.

Spanish bankers working for British financial institutions say they have been hit with a barrage of questions about how to open savings accounts in London.

“It seems as if everyone I know in Spain is getting on an easyJet to come to London and open a bank account,” said one such banker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing his company’s policy.

That is what Mr. Vildosola did before he took the more drastic step of moving his family to England.

“It’s sad,” he said. “But I just don’t think there is a future for me in Spain right now.”

This story originally appeared in The New York Times

You want scary?  CNBC reported that the withdrawal rate is equal to 52% of the entire GDP of Spain:

The flight of capital from Spain is now worse than what Indonesia, one of the hardest hit countries during the Asian financial crisis, experienced in the late 1990s, according to analysis by Nomura.

On a three-month rolling basis, portfolio and investment outflows from Spain totaled 52.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), (that’s) more than double the outflows from Indonesia, which reached 23 percent of GDP at the time of the Asian crisis, Jens Nordvig, global head of G10 FX strategy at Nomura wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday.

Spaniards and foreign investors have been pulling money out of Spanish banks as the economy has worsened in recent months, and Nordvig said without the single currency and the flows from the ECB, Spain would already be going through a major currency crisis. (Read More: Depression, Suicides Rise as Euro Debt Crisis Intensifies)

We would stress that the broad-based nature of the capital flight, which involves both banking claims and securities and flows from both residents and non-residents, makes for a rather extreme overall outflow, and one that raises serious concerns about the implications for banking sector stability and economic growth,” Nordvig wrote.

For the record, the French are fleeing France and they are making it very clear that they are fleeing France because of the socialism that France just chose for itself:

Indigestion for ‘les Riches’ in a Plan for Higher Taxes
By LIZ ALDERMAN
Published: August 7, 2012 763 Comments

PARIS — The call to Vincent Grandil’s Paris law firm began like many others that have rolled in recently. On the line was the well-paid chief executive of one of France’s most profitable companies, and he was feeling nervous.

President François Hollande is vowing to impose a 75 percent tax on the portion of anyone’s income above a million euros ($1.24 million) a year. “Should I be preparing to leave the country?” the executive asked Mr. Grandil.

The lawyer’s counsel: Wait and see. For now, at least.

“We’re getting a lot of calls from high earners who are asking whether they should get out of France,” said Mr. Grandil, a partner at Altexis, which specializes in tax matters for corporations and the wealthy. “Even young, dynamic people pulling in 200,000 euros are wondering whether to remain in a country where making money is not considered a good thing.”

A chill is wafting over France’s business class as Mr. Hollande, the country’s first Socialist president since François Mitterrand in the 1980s, presses a manifesto of patriotism to “pay extra tax to get the country back on its feet again.” The 75 percent tax proposal, which Parliament plans to take up in September, is ostensibly aimed at bolstering French finances as Europe’s long-running debt crisis intensifies.

Europe is imploding.  Spain is one of the PIIGS (the ‘S’ in PIIGS, in fact) who are leading that collapse.  And Obama is pushing for an economic and environmentalist model that most copies collapsing Spain.

And liberals are DETERMINED to do the same thing here.  Go to Illinois, the king of the deadbeat states.  You watch a 60 Minute Story and you will be PISSED at what slimebag Democrat cockroaches have done.  Go to California, where Democrats have created a $500 BILLION unfunded pension black hole of doom.  Look at America under Obama and take note that America just passed the $16 trillion mark that was $10 trillion when Bush left office.  Barack Obama DEMONIZED George Bush for increasing the debt by $4 trillion over eight years – look what that Marxist weasel has done in HALF the time by piling on $6 trillion in debt in only FOUR years!!!  Oh, and America’s REAL debt isn’t a paltry $16 trillion; it’s actually a supermassive $222 trillion.  And all that debt was created by Democrat boondoggle-takeovers of what should have been privatized.

Democrats have murdered America.  And we are merely waiting for our turn to completely implode before the Antichrist comes and the Book of Revelation prophecy becomes the news story account of the end of human history.  You can hear the hoofbeats of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse riding hard toward us even now.

The last couple of years, as Europe has slowly imploded, the dollar has been given a boost as terrorized Europeans seek some haven from their weakening Euro.  But if Europe goes – and it WILL go – America will fall right afterward because Europe is our largest trading partner and there won’t be anybody to buy our stuff from us.  And because Obama has spent the last four years racing us toward that same direction and that same catastrophic collapse.  And when America goes the dollar will flush down the toilet right down with it.  And you better take a look at the terror on the faces of Spaniards; because YOU will have that same look on YOUR face soon thanks to your vote for Obama and Democrats in 2008.

In 1980, the last year of Jimmy Carter’s failed presidency, 300,000 businesses filed for bankruptcy.  In this last failed year of Obama’s failed presidency, 1.4 million – very nearly FIVE TIMES as many – businesses have filed for bankruptcy.  If we vote for Obama, we vote to die as a nation just as Spain previously voted to die and just as Europe previously voted to die.

Everything about this failed president is Marxist – including his damn Marxist slogans:

New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism
By Victor Morton – The Washington Times
April 30, 2012, 06:56PM

The Obama campaign apparently didn’t look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, “Forward” — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.

Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name “Forward!” or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called “Forward (generic name of socialist publications).”

“The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications,” the online encyclopedia explains.

The slogan “Forward!” reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.

The Obama campaign released its new campaign slogan Monday in a 7-minute video. The title card has simply the word “Forward” with the “O” having the familiar Obama logo from 2008. It will be played at rallies this weekend that mark the Obama re-election campaign’s official beginning.

Vote for Obama.  March “forward” right into hell, you fools.  Because that’s what you’ve got to look “forward” to under your demonic false messiah Obama.

You just watch what will happen to the DOW the day Spain goes the way of the Dodo bird.  And you realize that we’re going down hard in our own day of reckoning because we chose the same stupid and immoral course that Spain chose.

What’s Obama’s “strategy” to deal with this crisis???  To try to call on Europe to not collapse until after he’s reelected so he won’t have to face the voters’ wrath over what hell has befallen America under his failed leadership.

The collapse is coming.  Democrats gave us that when they voted for Obama and let him kill America with his socialism.  The Antichrist is coming.  He’ll be riding in on his white horse to save the day from the disaster and collapse caused by the previous false messiah Obama.  And Democrats will welcome the beast even more enthusiastically than they welcomed Obama and they will worship him and they will take his mark.

Get ready for hell on earth.  And then get ready for hell itself.  Because the beast is coming.

Obama – The Prez Who Says He’ll Screw America To Help Russia If They Wait Till He’s Reelected – Demands Europe Not Save Itself By Booting Greece Until After Election Day

I’ll just re-post the whole article for you on what Obama said to the Russians first:

You want to talk about a hard punch right in the gut of American national security.

Allow me to sum this up for you: Obama is telling the Russians, “I assure you that I’m going to cave in to you like the pandering weakling that I am. But I can’t do it yet. If I sacrifice American security before the election, the American people will rightly turn on me and I’ll be out – and you’ll have a strong leader to deal with who will confront you as an obvious opponent rather than the Neville Chamberlain-style Appeaser-in-Chief that you have in me. If you give me ‘space’ to get re-elected I promise you I’ll bow down before you the same way I’ve already bowed down so many times before. I’ll even apologize to you for America’s ‘aggression’ if you want me to. Heck, I just got through apologizing to the people who murdered American soldiers! So you KNOW I’m good for it!”

Hot mike moment: Obama overheard telling Medvedev he needs ‘space’ on missile defense
By NBC News’ Shawna Thomas

SEOUL, South Korea — It was a comment not intended for public consumption, and another lesson for President Barack Obama on the importance of being careful about what you say around microphones, especially in an election year.

At the end of a 90-minute meeting between Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday, journalists rushed in to hear remarks from the leaders about the content of their talks.

Journalists spied the two leaders leaning close together and talking in hushed tones. According to those in the room, the conversation was difficult to hear but the videotape revealed Obama asking the Russian leader to wait until after the November election before pushing forward on the topic of a planned missile defense shield.

“Pool” videotape provided more information about the conversation between the two leaders:

Obama: This is my last election…After my election I have more flexibility.

Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

While most journalists didn’t catch the rest, one Russian reporter managed to record the context with his equipment.

Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.

Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

Obama: This is my last election…After my election I have more flexibility.

Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

The planned anti-ballistic shield system has been one of many sore spots between the two world powers in the last few years.

Obama says US can reduce nuclear stockpile

Moscow says it fears the system would weaken Russia by gaining the capability to shoot down the nuclear missiles it relies on as a deterrent. It wants a legally binding pledge from the United States that Russia’s nuclear forces would not be targeted by the system.

That’s actually NOT what Moscow wants. Yes, it is their rhetorical posture to make them sound “reasonable,” but the reality is that Russia doesn’t just want some “contract.”

Moscow wants the United States to abandon this missile defense system altogether. Moscow wants to throw a monkey wrench into the entire system that the United States says is necessary to protect America from the now very real prospect of a nutjob Iranian ballistic missile attack.

You need to understand what current American policy is. And then you need to realize that Obama is signalling the Russians that he is going to abandon his own policy and undermine American security if Russia just gets off his back so he can get re-elected. Because getting re-elected is all that Obama cares about. And he’ll violate any trust no matter how sacred if it will purchase enough votes.

To frame it in terms of the title below, if Obama was going to “stick” to the missile shield as is official US policy as of just a few months ago (December 2011), he wouldn’t have anything to be afraid of. Which is to say that Obama is already planning on appeasing Russia; he just needs “space” to betray America:

U.S. sticking to missile shield regardless of Moscow
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON | Fri Dec 2, 2011 2:37pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama Administration plans to complete an anti-ballistic missile shield to protect European allies against Iran ”whether Russia likes it or not,” the U.S. envoy to NATO said on Friday.

Moscow’s objections to the project, which includes participation by Romania, Poland, Turkey and Spain, “won’t be the driving force in what we do,” Ivo Daalder, the ambassador, told reporters at a breakfast session.

The U.S. estimate of the Iranian ballistic missile threat has gone up, not down, over the two years since President Barack Obama opted for a new, four-phased deployment to protect the United States and NATO allies, Daalder said.

“It’s accelerating,” Daalder said of the U.S.-perceived threat of Iran’s ballistic missiles, “and becoming more severe than even we thought two years ago.”

“We’re deploying all four phases, in order to deal with that threat, whether Russia likes it or not,” he added. At the same time, he urged Moscow to cooperate in both to deal with Iran and to see for itself that, as he put it, the system’s capabilities pose its strategic deterrent force no threat.

If the perceived threat from Iran ebbs, “then maybe the system will be adapted to that lesser threat,” Daalder said.

[…]

Daalder said the sides remain at odds over, among other things, Russia’s demand for the legally binding pledge, before any cooperation, that its nuclear forces would not be targeted by the NATO elements.

“They have gotten themselves quite hung up on our unwillingness to put this in legally binding writing,” he said.

The administration was not convinced that such a pledge would be ratified by the U.S. Senate, he said, nor should Moscow be convinced that even if it were, “we wouldn’t necessarily at some point walk away from it,” as the George W. Bush administration did from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the only U.S.-Russia missile defense pact.

That withdrawal opened the way for the creation of an anti-missile defense shield that the U.S. government says is designed to protect the United States from countries like Iran and North Korea.

Daalder said that if the United States ever were placing interceptors to counter Russia’s nuclear missiles, “we wouldn’t deploy them in Europe. We would deploy them in the United States.”

The physics of missile defense intercepts make it “easier and better to approach an incoming missile from the opposite side than it is to try to chase it down.” he said. “That’s the way that it works.”

Russia knows full-well that we wouldn’t build a system designed to protect America from Russian missiles in Europe. What Russia is trying to do is create difficulties that will make the missile shield politically impossible to build altogether. The Russians also very much like the idea (which is why Russia has helped Iran develop its nuclear program to begin with) of America being vulnerable to Iran which very obviously gives Russia more influence and power over US policy. At least unless we build a missile defense shield.

And ask yourself whether the threat from Iran has gone up or down given that Iran was just caught red-handed scrubbing evidence of a nuclear weapons program at its Parchin facility.

But Barack Obama is worried about the Iranian threat. Obama isn’t worried about millions of Americans being murdered. Obama is looking out for #1. Obama is worried about his re-election and he will betray America if that’s what it takes to keep his job so he can continue his “fundamental transformation” of America from a constitutional republic into a Marxist banana republic.

This has always been a nation that was determined to protect itself. Barack Obama wants to “fundamentally transform” that. He just needs “space” to do it so he can betray the American people with impunity.

You see, it really isn’t about 320 million Americans or their pitiful national security.  It’s about Obama and his election.  You suck; Obama actually is a messiah and ergo sum Obama is the only being that is worth a damn on Obama’s view.

The current news item about Iran is that they have massively expanded and progressed on its nuclear weapons program.  And they are just as feverishly working on intercontinental ballistic missiles.  But what is silliness like that compared to the re-election of the most marvellous being who ever existed or who ever will exist? 

Obama supporters assure their fellow liberals, “After November, Obama can do anything he likes without bothering to care about the pitiful American people or worry about their stupid votes.”  We’re not talking about some mere “president,” people.  We’re talking about an emperor – a Führer!  Who are you, you insignificant little pissant gnat, to stop such greatness?

And so this same Obama is telling Europe, “With all due respect, please remember that only I matter.  You can save your continent and preserve the hundreds of millions of peasants who live there, but just don’t do it until AFTER I’m re-elected:

 Obama asks eurozone to keep Greece in until after election day
US officials are worried that if Greece exits the eurozone, it will damage President’s election hopes
Oliver Wright  Friday 24 August 2012

The Obama administration will pressure European governments not to let Greece fall out of the eurozone before November’s Presidential elections, British Government sources have suggested.

Representatives from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission are due to arrive in Athens next month to assess Greece’s reform efforts.

They are expected to report in time for an 8 October meeting of eurozone finance ministers which will decide on whether to disburse Greece’s next €31bn aid tranche, promised under the terms of the bailout for the country.

American officials are understood to be worried that if they decide Greece has not done enough to meet its deficit targets and withhold the money, it would automatically trigger Greece’s exit from the eurozone weeks before the Presidential election on 6 November.

They are urging eurozone Governments to hold off from taking any drastic action before then – fearing that the resulting market destabilisation could damage President Obama’s re-election prospects. European leaders are thought to be sympathetic to the lobbying fearing that, under pressure from his party lin Congress, Mitt Romney would be a more isolationist president than Mr Obama.

The President discussed the eurozone crisis with David Cameron during a conference call on Wednesday and both welcomed statements by the European Central Bank that it was “standing firmly behind the euro”.

The ECB is expected to present a plan in the next few weeks to help indebted countries like Spain and Italy by buying their government bonds.

Today, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras will travel to Berlin to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel, and to France tomorrow for talks with President François Hollande. He is asking that Greece be given more time to meet its deficit targets and implement its reforms as its economy is struggling through a fifth year of recession.

But Germany’s Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said it was only months since creditors drew up a second bailout package and agreed on a massive debt write-down for Greece.

Britain is understood to have pressed the Germans to ensure that if eurozone leaders decide Greece’s position is unsustainable the financial “firewall” around Spain and Italy is made stronger. Officials are worried that if Greece was to exit the eurozone, the move could result in dramatic increases in the cost of debt for other weaker eurozone members – making their financial situation unsustainable.

Allow me to translate that part that says, “European leaders are thought to be sympathetic to the lobbying fearing that, under pressure from his party lin Congress, Mitt Romney would be a more isolationist president than Mr Obama.”  It’s pretty much the same thing as saying that Obama has assured Europe that he’ll promise to screw the American people to give Europe whatever bailout it wants as long as Europe doesn’t interfere with his re-election.  It’s pretty much the same promise Obama gave to Russia to screw American national security if Russia didn’t do anything to interfere with his re-election.

Greece, of course, has long-since proven that it is a giant black hole of bailouts.  Greece is a country that will promise anything to get the next bailout, then completely renege on its promises, then come begging for another bailout.  And given that it’s already worked so many times for them before, they’re going to keep doing it until Europe is a dry husk.  Greece is one of those cancers that has to be surgically removed or else the patient dies.

Not that Obama cares.  Obama is worried about the most important thing that ever existed or ever will exist: Obama.

I frankly don’t know whether Obama didn’t get his ass kicked nearly enough when he was a kid, or whether he got his ass kicked way too many times.  It was clearly one or the other, given the malignant narcissist he’s become.

Greece’s economy, Europe’s economy, hell our own economy, are all teetering and will very likely go over the brink.  But what matters any of that if Obama is re-elected?  His sheer wonderfulness is really all that ought to matter to anyone with the proper perspective.  All of the rest of us are but dust before him, and we ought to remember that.

Move Over Greece. Obama Taking America To Bankruptcy: U.S. Debt-To-GDP Now Exceeds 100 Percent While Obama Spends $2.52 To Get Us A Lousy Dollar

At the moment I accessed the U.S. national debt clock, our public debt was listed at $15,689,952 trillion (as of 3:33 pm PST, April 27).

The most current figure I could find for the U.S. GDP as expressed in dollars was $15,609,697 trillion (International Monetary Fund).

And … we’re officially Greece, thank you very much.  Because that gives us a debt-to-GDP ratio of 100.5% by my calculation based on those figures.

Tyler Durden has a slightly different figure (100.8%) which is clearly based on slightly different figures.  The numbers are exploding upward so damn fast no human being can keep track of them, anyway:

Big GDP Miss: 2.2% Vs Expectations Of 2.5%, Composition Even Uglier
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/27/2012 08:41 -0400

So much for the +3.0% GDP whisper number. Instead of printing at the expected number of +2.5%, the first preliminary GDP data point (two more revisions pending) came out at 2.2%, a big disappointment for a quarter which had a substantial boost from the weather. And while of the 2.2%, Personal Consumption came in strong – as expected, as it was precisely the factor most impacted by pulling in demand forward courtesy of “April in February”, 0.59% of the 2.2% was an increase in inventories, something which was not supposed to happen as it means that the quality of the economic growth in Q1 was far worse than expected. Cementing the ugly composition of Q1 GDP was fixed investment which added just a paltry 0.18% – this is the number which is critical for ongoing cashflow generation and unfortunately, the very low print means that growth outlook for Q2 is now even worse than before and we expect economists will promptly trim their already bearish predictions for Q2 GDP. Finally, government “consumption” subtracted just 0.6% from the total number, a decrease from the 0.84% in Q4, which means that once again the government is starting to become less of a detractor to growth – a dagger in the heart to anyone who claims there is “quality” in GDP growth. And the number you have all been waiting for: At March 31, US Debt/GDP was 100.8%.

Now, the fact that our debt-to-GDP ratio now exceeds 100 percent is bad, really, really bad.  But it’s actually an awful lot worse: because as this quarter’s economic report shows we are adding debt at such a massive level compared to our GDP that it isn’t even funny.

Durden also has a chart that shows just how vast is the Obamanomics discrepancy between massive government spending and meager GDP based on the numbers from the latest GDP report out April 27 (see it put into quick perspective here):

That’s right: the great big giant red bar is Obama’s spending.  The tiny little blue bar is our gross national product.  Obama is foolishly spending massively to give us next to nothing by way of return.

Let me describe this with a picture: the great big giant sumo wrestler is Obama’s spending and the debt it is generating; the little tiny kid is Obama’s economic performance:

Who do you think is going to win (I know liberals will say that Obama is lean and wiry and he’ll take the giant out with his lofty rhetoric)???

Obama is taking the American people $2.52 deeper into debt so he can boast about the dollar he “gained” for us.

And that super-massive 252 percent discrepancy between Obama’s spending and Obama’s GDP guarantees that America is on it’s way to a quick collapse.  You’ve simply got to be demon possessed to believe that this is sustainable (which is why I now understand that “Democrat Party” is shorthand for “Demonic Bureaucrat Party”).

Here’s another chart which essentially measures the rate of our spending that gets really, truly frightening when you consider its implications:

Remember how Obama viciously demonized George Bush over his debt ceiling increase?  Only to himself push through the three highest debt ceiling increases in the entire history of the human race?

What is frightening is that everybody agrees that Bush’s spending was insane.  If you put an angle measure up to that chart, you will see that the angle during the Bush presidency increases at a 50 degree slope.  Democrats demonized Bush for his spending and conservatives agreed that it was beyond crazy.  But now do the same thing to Obama’s spending: and Oh my God it is at 80 degrees.  Ninety degrees is straight up.  WE ARE ALMOST HEADING STRAIGHT UP to a very explosive ending followed by a very long descent into the fish food genre. 

The level and extent of Obama’s failure is simply staggering.  We are going to die.  And it’s going to be a very painful death at that.

And the only possible way to at least prolong that coming agony is to get this disgrace out of our damn White House.  Because next term he’s going to kill us.

If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would actually be kind of funny.  If this was Russia or China or Iran or North Korea, I would be laughing my ass of at these numbers.  But it’s us – and it is our enemies who are laughing their asses off at our expense.

Get Ready For Europe To Get Real Sucky Again (Socialism Failed There Something Fierce, But Hey, Obama Wants To Repeat Their Failure Here Anyway)

Let’s consider the recent happenings in Spain:

Spanish banks’ bad loans hits 18-year high
Published 11:58 PM, 18 Apr 2012 Last update 5:06 AM, 19 Apr 2012

AAP
The ratio of bad loans at Spanish banks shot to an 18-year high in February, official figures showed Wednesday, as the banks struggled with a mass of deteriorating property-related loans.

Spanish banks are a key concern on financial markets because of the declining value of the huge loans they allowed to build up during a property bubble that collapsed in 2008.

Doubtful loans in February amounted to €143.8 billion ($188 billion), rising to 8.15 per cent of total credits – the highest ratio since 1994 – from 7.91 per cent in January, the Bank of Spain said.

A loan is categorised as doubtful when the borrower has not made a payment for at least three months.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government has made cleaning up the banks a priority and is requiring them to set aside more than €50 billion to boost their balance sheets.

The Bank of Spain approved the plan Tuesday, obliging banks to allocate 29 billion euros to bad loan provisions and €15.6 billion to raise the proportion of rock-solid core capital.

Those sums are in addition to €9.2 billion in provisions already set aside by the banks last year, bringing the total in extra capital to €53.8 billion.

Banks are being told to find the money for the new provisions from their own profits or by issuing new shares, although the central bank has not ruled out state intervention.

The new, tougher balance sheet requirements must be met within one year, or two years for banks undergoing mergers.

Many analysts doubt, however, that the new rules will be enough, warning that the real bad loan figures may be far worse because banks are reluctant to fully realise the declining value of their loans.

As banks stagger under the bad loans, businesses widely report that new credit is hard to come by.

Spain’s banks turned in huge numbers to the European Central Bank, which has offered more than one trillion euros in cheap three-year loans to eurozone banks.

Borrowing by Spanish banks from the ECB hit a new record in March at €227.6 billion, up from €152.4 billion euros in February and €133.2 billion in January.

Much of that money, however, has been invested in Spanish government bonds instead of loans to business.

The Bank of Spain estimated that the total value of banks’ problematic loans, the value of which is uncertain, amounted to €176 billion in June 2011, the latest date for which those figures are available.

And that’s bad news for the ten-year bond sale in Spain tomorrow:

Investors fret ahead of key Spanish bond auction
By David Williams | AFP – 2 hrs 33 mins ago.

Investors showed deep concern ahead of a Spanish government bond auction due Thursday, fearing Madrid could be thrown back into the centre of the eurozone debt crisis.

Markets have punished Spain sharply since an April 4 government bond auction drew only feeble interest, with the state barely raising the minimum amount targetted.

That weak sale, coming shortly after the government unveiled an austerity budget with spending cuts and tax increases of 27 billion euros ($35 billion), reawakened doubts over the sustainability of Spain’s financing.

A similar result Thursday, when the Treasury aims to raise 1.5-2.5 billion euros, could compound concerns that Spain might end up needing the kind of a debt bailout already afforded to fellow eurozone strugglers Greece, Ireland and neighbouring Portugal.

“Investors remain nervous ahead of tomorrow’s 10-year Spanish bond auction,” said equities analyst David Morrison at trading group GFT in London.

“If yields jump back over 6.0 percent, then the European debt crisis will return centre stage, with Spain the leading lady.”

Spain’s bad debt is actually higher than it’s good debt.  And this in the fourth largest economy in Europe and the twelfth largest economy on the planet.

And then there’s the rather bad predictions – especially given the fact that a Spanish bailout will massively dwarf the pain and fear created by the Greek collapse:

“Not if, but when” for Spanish bailout, experts believe
By Luke Baker
BRUSSELS | Wed Apr 18, 2012 5:54am EDT

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Economic experts watching Spain don’t know how much money will be needed or precisely when, but some are near certain that Madrid will eventually seek a multi-billion euro bailout for its banks, and perhaps even for the state itself.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has repeatedly said Spain doesn’t need or want an international bailout, and the European Union, which along with the IMF has already rescued Greece, Ireland and Portugal, also dismisses such talk.

But economists believe that Spanish banks will have to turn to the euro zone’s rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), for help in covering losses caused by a property market crash which has yet to end.

Likewise, investors are fretting about how Rajoy’s centre-right government can enforce deep austerity while reviving a recession-bound economy at the same time.

“They’re going to need EFSF money to recapitalize the banking sector,” said Carsten Brzeski, a senior economist at ING in Brussels. “I think we’ll only see a real end to the Spanish misery if the real estate market stabilizes.”

Madrid is likely to hold out for some time. “The underlying picture in Spain is dramatic, but is it dramatic in the way that it needs a bailout package tomorrow? No,” Brzeski said. “But if you look ahead, let’s say the next six months, I would not be surprised if they (the banks) have to get some kind of European support.”

Market concerns about the euro zone’s fourth largest economy have deepened in the past week. Yields on the government’s 10-year bonds, which reflect the risk investors attach to owning Spanish debt, have risen above 6 percent, a level that has proved a trigger point for other troubled euro zone countries.

At the moment the EU is backing Madrid. Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers, said Spain was taking the necessary steps to get its economy back on track, despite a recession and unemployment at 24 percent.

“I don’t think Spain will need any kind of external support,” Juncker said. “I would like to invite financial markets to behave in a rational way. Spain is on track.”

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble also rejected comparisons with countries which are already on bailout programs. “The fundamental data in Spain is not comparable to those in the countries that are under a program,” he told Reuters. “Spain needs to work to win confidence, however, if the positive developments are to continue.”

SUSTAINABLE SPAIN?

Markets took fright earlier in the year when Rajoy relaxed his government’s targets for cutting the budget deficit.

However, not all economists are so pessimistic and some say the four-month-old government is starting to knuckle down to meeting the new targets, which still demand deeply unpopular austerity, and tackling the economy’s structural problems.

“We’ve seen more progress in a few days than in four months,” said Gilles Moec, a Deutsche Bank economist. “It’s a country that’s intrinsically sustainable, but it’s a country that needs to make decisions.”

Others beg to differ and fear Spain will drag in Italy, which has suffered similar problems with rising borrowing costs.

“As I look at my screen and Spain 10-year yields are up at 6 percent – things are starting to get worrying again,” said Peter Westaway, chief economist for Europe at Vanguard, an investment management firm overseeing $1.8 trillion in assets.

“If they go up to 6.5 to 7 percent, that could become very problematic, and if Italy started to go back above Spain again, then that would be really serious.”

Spain has one thing on its side. It has already raised nearly half the 86 billion euros it needs to borrow from financial markets this year, sucking up some of the 1 trillion euros of cheap three-year loans that the European Central Bank has pumped into the euro zone banking sector.

This means the government could hang on for months before having to turn to the EU for help with its own funding needs.

A 380 BILLION EURO PROBLEM

However, that still leaves the banks. One of the critical “unknowables’ for Spain is just how bad a situation its banks are in. The Spanish housing market, once a driver of the economy, has been in turmoil for more than four years, but prices still haven’t fallen as much as economists think is needed to squeeze the air out of the bubble.

Only when prices have bottomed will assessors be able to calculate how just much bad mortgage debt is sitting on the banks’ balance sheets, and therefore how much extra capital the sector requires to return it to health.

“Prices have dropped by about 15-20 percent from peak to now and they will probably have to drop another 15-20 percent before they reach bottom,” said Brzeski. He estimates Spanish banks may need as much as 80 billion euros of extra capital once all bad mortgage debt is accounted for.

In a paper published this week, Daniel Gros and Cinzia Alcidi of the Centre for European Policy Studies estimated that the total accumulated overhang in the Spanish property and construction sector is more than 380 billion euros – equivalent to 37 percent of GDP. (here)

“A housing overhang per se does not have to lead to an acute financial crisis if it was financed by domestic savings,” they write. “Unfortunately this is not the case in Spain.”

As a result, economists expect Spain’s banking sector will have no choice but to recapitalize.

The government is unlikely to fund such an operation while it is trying to slash the budget deficit, and private investors are reluctant to invest in such a troubled sector.

That leaves the European Financial Stability Facility as the most likely option for the banks – and possibly also for the government eventually.

“Spain is not going to run out of cash (yet) and it’s pre-funded its borrowing requirement,” said Megan Greene, a senior economist and euro zone specialist at Roubini Global Economics. But she added: “There’s a chance that the banking bailout could come sooner, but I really think it’s going to be next year.”

Even if it does hang on until 2013, Greene still expects Spain to need both a banking and a sovereign bailout – a program similar to that provided to Ireland or Greece.

“The banking sector is only one piece of the puzzle in Spain,” she said. “A banking bailout could deal with one part of the problem, but eventually the sovereign is going to need a bailout too.”

WHAT TO DO WITH ITALY

Doubts persist that the euro zone is any better placed to handle a rescue of Spain than it was two years ago, despite having already bailed out the three other countries and having set up an 800 billion euro fund to tackle the problems ravaging the region’s economy.

“When it comes to deciding how to deal with Spain, I really think they are back to the drawing board,” said Greene. “They basically haven’t learnt anything from the first three bailouts.”

Then the problem for euro zone policymakers will be what to do about Italy, the eighth largest economy in the world, with GDP 50 percent larger than Spain’s.

For months, Spanish government bond yields and those in Italy have moved in near lock-step, reflecting the twinned risk investors see in both southern European states.

“Spain and Italy are inextricably tied,” said Greene. “If Spain gets a bailout then the EU needs to be ready to provide support to Italy too.”

Did somebody say Italy?  Italy is the 8th largest economy on the planet and is half again bigger than Spain – and an Italian debt failure would be economic Armageddon.

Italy to miss budget aims, says IMF
Tuesday 17th April 2012, 8:00PM BST.

The International Monetary Fund is predicting that Italy will miss its budget deficit targets this year and next and will not balance its budget until at least 2018 – some five years later than government estimates.
 
In a report, the IMF said Italy would trim its budget deficit only to 1.5% of its output next year. Premier Mario Monti has promised to balance the budget by 2013, a centrepiece of his efforts to steer Italy out of its debt crisis.
 
The IMF however predicted that Italy would still carry a 1.1% deficit in 2017, the last year for which it made estimates.
 
Italy is due to publish its own revised economic figures on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, following Greece’s recent second bailout (because the first one ended in colossal failure with the Greek debt being like a black hole), things aren’t so rosy already:

March 16th, 2012
Oh no…the Greek bail-out is still not enough?
Posted by: CNN Anchor and Correspondent, Richard Quest

London (CNN) – The bail-out is a done deal, the International Monetary Fund has agreed its share and the Europeans have started to hand over the money. One of the ratings agencies has even upgraded the new Greek bonds.
 
So it is incredibly dispiriting to be reading more and more notes from economists and analysts suggesting that this is not over yet.
 
Paul Donovan, in his note from UBS, noted that the markets were not that impressed by the state of play. The markets, he said, were pricing in “the debate about when the next restructuring will take place.”

According to Societe Generale, it is “only a matter of time before Greece will need an additional package.” Citigroup reflects the same view, noting: “In our view, Greece requires further official funding beyond at least 2014, and we also see the need of further debt restructuring in order to get the country back on a sustainable fiscal path.”
 
It gets worse with the prognosis “the risk of Greece exiting the euro area remains elevated (around 50%).”
 
Hang on. “Next restructuring?” and “further debt restructuring?” What on earth have we been going through for the past three months if this isn’t going to solve the Greece problem once and for all?
 
You would be forgiven for a certain incredulity, given that no sooner is the ink dry on the checks being sent to Athens than the economists who know about these things say it’s not enough.
 
This is made all the more likely by European politicians who continue to call for even more austerity in Greece. This lemon is just about squeezed out, and if they don’t want to be facing riot and mayhem they would do well to recognize this.
 
This comes as Iceland announced it is paying back 20% of its IMF loans early. Yes….I said early. Iceland. Which also introduced austerity and borrowed money but – notably – let the banks go bust.
 
No one ever said going bankrupt was easy, but it still may have been the best solution for Greece rather than this messy, half-baked solution we are now witnessing.

If you do an internet search for “Greek bailout,” you’ll get a sea of optimistic-toned stories saying everything will be wonderful and then suddenly nothing.  And “nothing” means that things are starting to suck and liberals don’t want to talk about it.

At this point, Europe is so broken that nothing will do any good.  You hear all the whining about austerity cuts and how it will impact growth; but if they don’t do the austerity cuts absolute implosion and Great Depression is a 100 percent guarantee.

And we’ll be there real soon thanks to hopey-changey Barry Obamy.

Greek Debt Rocketship Ride Coming To Obama’s God Damn America Soon

This is rather amazing.

I’ve got a different Greek phrase to use: Ιερά χάλια.

Greek 1 Year Sovereign Bonds Pass 1000% – Opa!
March 5, 2012
Anthony B. Sanders

The Institute for International Finance (IIF) has released an opinion discussing how a disorderly Greek default would cost over $1 trillion Euros.

And the 1 year Greek sovereign debt yield breaks 1000%!

That is the YIELD, not the coupon rate. The 1 year Greek sovereign coupon rate is 4.1%.

While the Eurozone touts that they have solved the Greek credit crisis (at least for the moment), investors don’t seem too mollified.

Opa! Your economy is on fire!

For the record, Greece just officially defaulted on its debt.  But said debt default was couched in the financialese terminology of a “credit event” and of course barely reported.

You just watch and wait for the $600 trillion hell that Barack Obama and all his crony capitalist fascist pals are going to bring to America.

International Officials Declare Greek ‘Credit Event’ (Means Greece Just Defaulted On Debt)

Couple of interesting stories about Greece and the constant charade and the continual coverup of fiscal reality.  First there was this one:

UPDATE: Journalist Stands By Story That ISDA Has Declared A Greek Bond Credit Event
Simone Foxman|Mar. 9, 2012, 1:55 PM

Derivatives Intelligence (part of Institutional Investor) reportsthat the International Swaps and Derivatives Association has determined that Greece has triggered a credit event as part of its debt restructuring.

This would provoke credit default swaps—insurance contracts on Greek bonds issued under Greek law—to be paid out.

But we don’t know why they have this and nobody else does, and we can’t confirm. Therefore, we have certain misgivings about the veracity of this report. While everyone expects that this will be the outcome, the report is not currently out.

ISDA’s committee met today to discuss the issue, and said it would issue a statement on whether or not a credit event had occurred once Greece formally activated the collective action clauses it recently inserted into its Greek debt issuances.

Consensus is that activating the CACs will indeed provoke a credit event, however analysts have been waiting all day for a decision to be published here, to no avail (yet).

Now why on earth would this journalist have to “stand by his story”?  Because a lot of people don’t want other people to know the reality about the situation resulting in Greece living off of borrowed money.

The next obvious question is “what is a credit event”?

From Wikipedia: A credit event is the financial term used to describe either: A general default eventrelated to a legal entity’s previously agreed financial obligation. In this case, a legal entity fails to meet its obligation on any significant financial transaction (coupon on a bond it issued or interest rate payment on a swap for example). The marketplace will recognize this as an event related to the legal entity’s credit worthiness. A financial event related to a legal entity which triggers specific protection provided by a credit derivative (credit default swap, credit default swap index, credit default swap index tranche, etc.) The events triggering a credit derivative are defined in a bilateral swap confirmation which is a transactional document that typically refers to an ISDA master agreement previously executed between the two swap counterparties. There are several standard credit events which are typically referred to in credit derivative transactions: Bankruptcy Failure to Pay Restructuring Repudiation Moratorium Obligation Acceleration Obligation Default

So now Reuters is reporting:

ISDA declares Greek credit event, CDS payments triggered
By Daniel Bases
NEW YORK | Fri Mar 9, 2012 3:39pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Greece triggered the payment on default insurance contracts by using legislation that forces losses on all private creditors, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association said on Friday.

The decision by the EMEA Determinations Committee to declare a so-called credit event was unanimous, ISDA said in a statement.

Markets showed little reaction to the widely expected decision. The euro edged lower against the U.S. dollar while U.S. Treasury prices saw losses pared after the ISDA announcement.

The ISDA said the use of “collective action clauses (CACs) to amend the terms of Greek law governed bonds issued by The Hellenic Republic such that the right of all holders of the Affected Bonds to receive payments has been reduced.”

The “credit event” ruling means a maximum of $3.16 billion of net outstanding Greek credit default swap contracts could be paid out, though the actual amount is likely to be lower because bondholders are not losing all of their original investment.

ISDA said the auction will be held to determining the actual payout amounts on March 19.

Greece said it would use the newly passed legislation that included the CACs to force private creditors into a bond swap.

This follows creditors’ voluntary tendering of 85.8 percent of the 177 billion euros ($232.22 billion) in bonds regulated by Greek law. The use of CACs should boost participation to an estimated 95.7 percent.

($1=0.7622 Euro)

Now if you’re one of the fools who believe the economy is picking up and everything is going to be just wonderful going forward, BUY GREEK DEBT and put your fool money where your fool mouth is.

We have been hearing a load of lies on Greece and its catastrophic plunge into socialism – which Obama is replicating in America as we speak – for over a year now.  We get terrible news, then we get a ton of whitewash and a meaningless “agreement” of some kind and a bunch of lies about what the “agreement” means.  And that is followed by such a crisis that there’s another report with terrible news, followed by yet another ton of whitewash and another meaningless “agreement” and another bunch of lies about what that “agreement” means.  And so on and so on.  And maybe lemmings aren’t crazy enough to follow each other off a cliff and then plunge to their deaths, but humans sure as hell are.

Greece is going down in flames.

The only meaningful question is whether the next country to follow in Greece’s Dodo bird footsteps will be Spain, or Portugal, or Cyprus, or Hungary, or Belarus, or Ireland … or America.

One thing is certain: our time is coming.  And when it comes you’ll wish it was a ton of bricks falling on your head instead.

Vote for Obama.  Vote for a complete financial and economic collapse followed by a period of sheer human suffering beyond anything that the United States of America has even dreamed of.

The beast is coming.

US Per Capita Debt Now Actually Significantly WORSE Than Greece

One day, not all that long ago, the Greek people woke up to learn that they had a serious, traumatic debt crisis that they couldn’t fix without going through years of pain.  Mind you, it had been going on for years, but neither their political leadership or their mainstream media informed the people of the developing disaster.

One day, not all that long from now, the American people are going to wake up to discover the exact same thing.

We’ve got two things the Greeks don’t have to make us all the more morally culpable for our disaster: 1) the Greek disaster itself; and 2) the greater freedom of information that America had by right until we allowed criminal leftwing propagandists to usurp our constitutional freedom of the press to challenge the status quo and print the truth.

We’re not as bad as Greece; we’re WORSE than Greece.

And when we come crashing down, it will be from a much higher place to a much lower depth.  And there won’t be any European Union bailout to help us.

U.S. per capita government debt worse than Greece
February 23, 2012 3:03pm
by Conn Carroll Senior Editorial Writer

According to a new analysis by the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, the United States has a higher per capita debt burden than any European country, including riot-ridden Greece.

Using the most recent data available from the International Monetary Fund, the Senate Budget Committee found that U.S. federal government debt per capita is nearly $45,000. That is almost 15 percent higher than the per capita debt burden of Greece ($38,937).

The Senate Budget Committee also notes that our debt per capita would rise to $75,000 by 2020 if President Obama’s budget became law.

Earlier last month, the U.S. government’s total out standing debt, $15,419,800,222,325, surpassed the nation’s gross domestic product ($15,294,300,000,000).

Let me tell you something: it isn’t for nothing that the most prestigious prize in journalism is named after one of the world’s worst insults to “journalism.”

Barack Obama is leading this nation to a quick suicide that will result in a lingering and painful economic death and the media won’t report the truth.

The beast is coming.

America will fall very soon; and when it falls no nation on earth will have ever deserved to fall more.  Because we should have seen our death coming for decades and we refused to change our ways.  And because we chose as a result to consume a diet of constant lies and demagoguery from the propaganda media (and see another example here).

Jesus, speaking of God’s people Israel who refused to acknowledge reality and accept their promised Messiah, said:

“If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace–but now it is hidden from your eyes.  The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side.  They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you” (Luke 19:42-44).

We are just as determinedly blind as they were; and God will allow this nation to face a complete collapse as a result of our moral stupidity and our hostility to truth and reality.  And while God promised His special people the Jews that He would restore them, He made no such promise to America.  When we go down, there will be no coming back for us.

It will be after the collapse of America and as a result of the collapse of America that the world will be plunged into catastrophe and chaos unlike ever seen in human history as recorded in Revelation chapter Six.  The four horsemen of the apocalypse will ride in to plague the world, representing war, economic disaster, famine and the Antichrist.

The Antichrist will come riding in on his white horse to save the day and unite the world in the aftermath of the staggering disaster that Barack Obama is bringing.  He will be everything that big government liberals have ever dreamed of.  And you can be certain that the mainstream media will love him too.  But in only a few years his big government liberal policies will result in total hell on earth.

What Leftists Are Best At: Socialist Obama Blames Bush For All His Problems; Socialist Greece Blames Germany For All Its Problems

Barack Obama is entering the fourth year of his presidency blaming George Bush.  Think about that; the man has never once during his entire presidency taken personal responsibility.  Not ONCE.

But that’s really par for this golf course; it’s just what socialists do.

Greece thinks all of its insane spending and refusal to see the cliff rushing up on them while they stupidly continued acting like Democrats in America is all Germany’s fault.  Because, you see, Germany won’t give them more stupid money so they can keep being stupid.  The Germans have money; and of course you know the script: the rich are ALWAYS to blame.  Even if they’re in a whole other country:

Greece and Germany’s he said/she said over debt crisis
Berlin sees Athens as not living up to its end of the bailout bargain; Greece perceives a campaign of punishment by the Germans on its already-reeling economy.
By Henry Chu and Anthee Carassava, Los Angeles Times
February 14, 2012, 7:47 p.m.

Reporting from Berlin and Athens— To hear many Germans tell it, Greece is a land blessed with sunshine but cursed with a lying, cheating government that routinely breaks its promises and expects others to pick up the pieces.

The rest of Europe has doled out billions of dollars in emergency loans to keep Greece afloat, but Athens, the Germans say, has consistently failed to deliver on pledges to slash its bloated bureaucracy, sell off state enterprises, go after tax evaders and overhaul its uncompetitive economy.

Yet ask Greeks what’s happening to their country, and many respond with yowls of pain and anger — directed in large part toward Germany. Berlin, they fume, is a tyrannical taskmaster whose only motivation now seems to be to inflict as much punishment as possible on a country whose economy has already been pushed into free fall.

“What more do they want from us?” said Sophia Sigri, a 70-year-old pensioner in Athens. “This crisis has gone way beyond numbers, fiscal policies and austerity measures. Our national dignity now is at stake. Do they want to rob us of that, too?”

The divergent views have become the backdrop against which Europe’s long-running debt crisis, now in its third year, is playing out. And the fact that such attitudes appear to be hardening in Berlin and Athens, with animosity and distrust deepening on both sides, is complicating the search for a solution.

Finance ministers of the 17 Eurozone nations are scheduled to consult Wednesday in a conference call that investors hope will result in the provisional approval of a second bailout for Greece, worth about $170 billion. Without the rescue package, the country could slide into default by mid-March, with potentially disastrous consequences for the global economy.

But many in Athens believe that present conditions aren’t much better.

Though acknowledging that their government has missed some of the tough financial targets set by international lenders, they say the repeated rounds of stiff austerity cuts have resulted in a spiraling recession during which homelessness, hunger and suicide rates have all gone up.

Public outrage boiled over this week into some of Athens’ worst rioting since the start of the crisis in 2009, with dozens of buildings set afire and trashed by rock-throwing youths alongside a peaceful demonstration by thousands. Greek lawmakers swallowed hard and bowed anyway to the demands of their European partners, approving drastic cuts in wages and pensions and the elimination of 15,000 public-sector jobs this year alone, at a time when the unemployment rate already tops 20%.

German and other European officials welcomed the measures. But they warned that they are not enough for them to approve a second bailout Wednesday, insisting that Greece identify $430 million more in spending cuts and seal a deal with private investors on taking a loss on their holdings of Greek debt.

To those Germans who regard Greeks as mendacious, cavalier shirkers of duty, critics point to figures like those released Tuesday showing that, in the last quarter of 2011, Greece’s economy contracted by a whopping 7% compared with the same period a year earlier.

Many Greeks have already made heavy sacrifices as the result of one governmental austerity measure after another. The citizens of any other developed country, they say, would surely erupt in anger as well if confronted with the same calamitous drop in their standard of living.

Anti-German rhetoric and images are now a staple in Greece, where politicians mutter darkly of German jackboots and protesters call Chancellor Angela Merkel a Nazi.

“You’d think they would show some compassion for the fact that we went gentle on them after World War II. But no, they want to punish us now,” declared Fotis Stathatos, 56, an unemployed construction worker.

Germans bristle at such statements, even as they speak of the need to get even tougher on Greece. Athens is no longer a trustworthy partner but rather a huge sinkhole, many Germans say. They complain that Greek officials have happily accepted outside help while shrugging off solemn promises to lay off thousands of civil servants, privatize state assets and strengthen tax collection.

The lack of follow-through has prompted suggestions from Germany — unwelcome in Greece — that a European Union commissioner be given power over Athens’ budget and that a separate escrow account be set up to earmark government funds for repaying debt and not for frivolous spending elsewhere.

“The only thing we require is that Greece stick to its commitments,” Michael Georg Link, Germany’s deputy foreign minister, said in an interview in his Berlin office. “Nobody was forced into the European Union, and we will force nobody out of the European Union or the Eurozone. But once you’re in, you have to stick to the rules.”

Link said that Italy, Spain and Portugal have also made commitments to difficult reforms.

[…]

In Athens, residents stretched to the breaking point have grown tired of being repeatedly told to do more to atone for their financial sins. Further rage of the kind that broke out this week could await a country already teetering on the brink of economic ruin, some analysts warn.

“Greeks feel like they are being spanked for behaving badly. They’re still feeling the pain of that,” said Dimitris Mavros of the MRB polling company. “But once that beating stops or subsides … then they may strike back.”

Damn rich Germans who won’t keep pouring their hard-earned money down a sink-hole to fund liberals in their moral and mental insanity.

Of course, liberals call Republicans horrible stuff too, like “terrorists” and “demons.”  Because if you try to stop a Democrat from spending other peoples’ money, they get real nasty the way crack addicts get nasty when somebody is standing in the way of their crack.

But of course it’s even easier for Greeks to call Germans who won’t give Greece more of Germany’s money “Nazis.”

When you see all the rioting and burning and violence, you know that it’s just around the corner here as “Occupy” fascists plot the same kind of crap the Greek fascists are plotting now.

For the left, violence has ALWAYS followed the demonizing.

Let me tell you something: Greece didn’t have to come to this.  The problem was they kept seeing warning signs and kept on ignoring them.  Just as the Democrat Party and Barack Obama are doing right now in America.

If Greece had taken responsibility a few years ago and made relatively small and simple changes, they could have averted all of this terrible pain now.  But liberals in Greece demonized such modest reforms, just as liberals in America have been doing.  And as a result nothing got changed and then all of a sudden it was too late.  The same way that one day real soon it’s going to be too late here in America.

We either get these liberal vermin out of office, or we’ll be in the sad way that Greece is because IT didn’t bother to get rid of its liberals until it was way, WAAAAAAY to late.

Consider Social Security and Medicare: America’s actual debt is over $211 TRILLION.  There is no way in a thousand hells we can possibly ever pay that back.  Democrats cursed us with this mess; conservatives tried to warn them.  If you go back to the 1930s when FDR was ramming his political boondoggle ponzi scheme through Congress, you’ll discover that even DEMOCRATS warned it would ultimately be a disaster. Meanwhile, Medicare – the socialist takeover of health care began in the 1960s that Obama wants to now replace with his even BIGGER socialist takeover of health care – WILL go bankrupt no later than 2017 and cause catastrophic death in the population of seniors who depend on it.

Republicans have tried to propose fixes that would save both programs, but this is the thanks they get:

Democrats demonize Republicans – I mean LITERALLY demonize, given the whole “demons” thing – whenever we try to do the right thing.  They call us “terrorists” for trying to slow down the insane rush to spending.  I mean, how DARE we block the “progress” they’re trying to make.

They count on the American people with pathetically stupid brain-dead zombies with no intelligence and no memories so we won’t remember what Democrats were like when Bush was in power and he was trying to push through much-needed reforms:

The Left now acts as if this never happened. For instance, in a recent television appearance, liberal commentator Bill Press argued that–rather than noisy disagreement–”Americans want discussion” on health-care reform. Who could disagree with that sentiment–except, perhaps, the Obama administration, which pushed Congress to rush through legislation by early August? This timeline was clearly aimed at preempting discussion and presenting the public with a “done deal” on health reform. As one protester put it, the president spent more time choosing a dog than he did discussing health-care reform.

Likewise, Mr. Press complained that opponents hadn’t put their own reform plans on the table. “The people who are there to protest–what are they for? Are they for the status quo? The Republicans haven’t put any other plan on the table.” But did congressional Democrats offer their own alternative to President Bush’s 2005 Social Security plan? When a fellow Democrat asked Rep. Nancy Pelosi when their party would offer its own Social Security plan, her answer was “Never. Is that soon enough for you?” Democrats would not even negotiate until personal retirement accounts were taken off the table. Why should Republicans act differently today, regarding the “public option”?

Did you know that George Bush tried SEVENTEEN TIMES in one year to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?  You know, when reforms and regulations of the out-of-control GSEs would have actually prevented the implosion we had in 2008 that Republicans and conservatives had repeatedly warned us about???

We’re going to be Greece soon for the same reason that Greece is Greece now.  Because we’re just too damn stupid and depraved to get rid of our liberals.

Coming To America Soon: ‘Anti-Austerity’ (I.E., Pro-Reckless-Government-Spending Liberals) Protests Turning Violent In Greece

I just want to make sure you understand that the violence in Greece is coming from LEFTWING SOCIALISTS.  Which is the same that will happen HERE soon.

Don’t ever forget that liberals are dangerous, bad, violent people.

These people spend societies into bankruptcy, and then they riot because there’s no more “other people’s money” to spend.

Anti-Austerity Protests In Greece Turn Violent
by The Associated Press

Louisa
Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty ImagesProtesters fight with riot police during massive clashes at the
 central Athens Syntagma square on Wednesday. Thousands of protesters ringed the
Greek Parliament building as the government tried to push through its emergency
package inside and a general strike paralyzed the country.

June 15, 2011

Hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police in central Athens Wednesday as a major anti-austerity rally degenerated into violence outside Parliament, where the struggling government was to seek support for new cutbacks to avoid a disastrous default.

Tear gas blanketed the capital’s main Syntagma Square, where more than 25,000 people had gathered to protest a new package of tax hikes and spending cuts through 2015.

A few hundred youths smashed the windows of a luxury hotel on the square, ripped up paving stones to throw at police and hurled firebombs at cordons of riot police. Demonstrators said at least 10 people were injured, and they appealed to fellow protesters to stay calm and allow ambulances through.

The protests are the epicenter of a crisis that could end in a disastrous default that would threaten the future of the eurozone and shake financial markets just as the global economy struggles to recover.

Wednesday’s violence adds public pressure on the government at a time when Prime Minister George Papandreou also faces a party rebellion from within his governing Socialists over the new austerity. One of his deputies defected Tuesday, reducing Papandreou’s parliamentary majority to five. Another Socialist lawmaker said he will vote against the bill, which is set for final approval by early next month.

But the new bill, worth euro28 billion ($40.5 billion) must be passed this month if Greece is to continue tapping its rescue loans.

The stakes are high and the results uncertain — if Greece is cut off from its rescue funding, it will default on its debts, likely setting off a financial chain reaction that experts have described as catastrophic.

In Athens, sporadic clashes on the fringes of the rally gradually spread, scattering those in the previously peaceful rally. Cafe tables and chairs lay overturned as trash bins burned. Heavy clouds of tear gas hung over Syntagma Square and side streets. The choking chemicals wafted as far as the presidential mansion behind Parliament, where Papandreou met with the country’s president, Karolos Papoulias, to brief him on the severity of the situation.

Papandreou later spoke by telephone with the heads of opposition parties to seek support for the austerity package. The EU has been pressing for cross-party support, but main opposition Conservative party leader Antonis Samaras has insisted the bailout agreement must be re-negotiated instead.

Police had set up a massive security operation to ensure protesters could not carry out a pledge to prevent lawmakers from accessing Parliament. Some 5,000 officers, including hundreds of riot and motorcycle police, used parked buses and crowd barriers to prevent protesters from encircling the building, while a large part of central Athens was closed to all traffic.

The protests in Athens and in the northern city of Thessaloniki, where another 20,000 people rallied peacefully, were part of a 24-hour general strike, the result of months of growing frustration over the country’s slide.

“A national effort is required. Because we are at a historically crucial moment and a time of crucial decisions,” Papandreou told Papoulias, according to a transcript of their conversation released by the prime minister’s office.

“But on the other hand, everyone has to assume their responsibilities,” he said. “In any case, we will move forward with this sense of responsibility and the necessary decisions” to pull Greece out of the crisis.

In Syntagma Square, however, the mood was defiant.

“Resign, resign,” the crowd chanted outside Parliament before the clashes. The protesters included both young and old, and many brought their children, hoisting them onto their shoulders to shield them from the crush.

The latest austerity drive has brought many people onto the streets for the first time.

“What can we do? We have to fight, for our children and for us,” said Dimitra Nteli, a nurse at a state hospital who was at the protest with her daughter.  “After 25 years of work I earn 1,100 euros a month. Now that will drop to 900.  How can we live on that?”

Her 26-year-old daughter, Christina, said the situation in Greece had led her to leave for Britain to study conflict resolution.

“I have no job here. There are no prospects,” she said.

Police spokesman Athanassios Kokalakis said about 20 protesters were briefly detained.

The general strike crippled public services across the country, leaving state hospitals running on emergency staff, disrupting port traffic and public transport.

The Socialists’ popularity plummeted in recent weeks over the new austerity plan. A weekend opinion poll gave the main opposition conservatives a four-point lead over their Socialist rivals, the first time the party has been ahead in surveys since 2009. The next general election is scheduled for October 2013.

With its credit rating deep in junk status, Greece is being kept afloat by the EU and IMF bailout, but will need additional support to cover financing gaps next year as high interest rates keep it out of the bond market, contrary to what the original bailout agreement had predicted.

On Monday, Standard & Poor’s slashed Greece’s rating from B to CCC, dropping it to the very bottom of the 131 states that have a sovereign debt rating. That suggests Greece’s creditors are less likely to get their money back than those of Pakistan, Ecuador or Jamaica. On Tuesday, the agency also cut its rating for four Greek banks to CCC from B.

We’ve already started seeing the violence that the American left is more than capable of.  We saw it build and unleash in Wisconsin and other states whose governors and state senates and assemblies were forced to deal with massive public pension boondoggles.

California alone has a $500 billion unfunded liability in public pension debt.  But of course California elected Jerry Brown and that black hole of debt will be papered over until it utterly explodes the way we’re seeing it explode in Greece.  Elsewhere, even Democrats are beginning to stare into the black holes the unionized left have created and gotten scared enough to start trying to do way too little, way too late.

Barack Obama often talks the language of a “fiscally responsible” president.  Of course, his brand of fertilizer doesn’t walk.  When Obama submitted his budget, it contained SO MUCH RIDICULOUS OUT-OF-CONTROL SPENDING THAT THE DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED SENATE VOTED IT DOWN 97-0.

This is beyond insane, and Democrats are making it even MORE insane.  First, Democrats didn’t even BOTHER to pass a budget last year when they had the White House, The Senate AND the House of Representatives.  That was a shocking dereliction of their most fundamental duty as officeholders.  And they haven’t improved since; even as Democrats CONTINUE to demonize Republicans for trying to lead, they STILL have not bothered to pass any kind of a budget for this year (unlike House Republicans, who HAVE).

Barack Obama sold the stimulus – which will ultimately cost American taxpayers $3.27 TRILLION – with what we now know to have been a massive lie.  He claimed over and over again that it would fund “shovel-ready jobs” that would get Americans back to work and get the economy rolling again:

Now Obama is “joking” that “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”  Oops.  Sorry for that three and a quarter trillion dollars I pissed away and the three years of misery I caused.

Even Obama’s own chief-of-staff acknowledges that Obama’s policies are “indefensible.”

But Democrat crazy is the most corrosive kind of KoolAid of all.  Even as we now know for a DOCUMENTED FACT OF HISTORY that the stimulus utterly failed, we’ve got Harry Reid and the Democrats demanding MORE massive stimulus spending even as the CBO warns us of an economic meltdown if we don’t stop spending ourselves into collapse.

Allow me to explain a couple of rather important facts to you.  Number one, Democrats are responsible for virtually ALL of the unsustainable and reckless spending and policies that have led to our teetering on the edge of ruin and suffering unlike anything this nation has ever even had nightmares about, let alone experienced.  We are facing – and this according to a peer-reviewed IMF publication – $200 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities.  That should scare you into the fetal position if you have any intelligence whatsoever.  But it gets even worse than that; because liberal policies have contaminated the states, too.  Take California, which alone has $500 BILLION in unfunded public pension liabilities.

And yet here we are.  Republicans are trying desperately to cut spending before we collapse, and Democrats demonizing and fearmongering Republicans for pursuing sanity and demanding spending that will cause us to collapse all the faster.

I can’t say it any more plainly than this: if you vote Democrat, you are a truly EVIL human being.  Aside from your direct responsibility for the murder of 53 MILLION innocent human beings in America alone (and hundreds of millions more around the world), you are also going to be responsible for the unparalleled suffering of more than 300 million Americans when the crisis you first created and then refused to stop perpetuating comes crashing down all around us.

I know you are probably reacting like Cain and refusing to accept any responsibility for the horror you have done and continue to do, but one day you will find yourselves writhing in hell for the hell you helped bring about.  You can take that as a warning and get your priorities right before it’s too late or you can just take it as a prediction of where you’ll be spending the rest of eternity.