Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Watching the news lately, you’d be forgiven the impression the world is on fire. Of course wildfires are seasonal – as I duly noted just weeks ago in “Two-Headed Hydra of Climate Change Has California Burning, New York Flooding,” on July 13. But the devastation they’re causing is becoming increasingly apocalyptic. Here is how CBC… Read more.
It is making the mass migration John Steinbeck dramatized in The Grapes of Wrath look like a giddy gold rush. In fact, it’s often difficult to tell these days whether Europe is trying to cope with a migration or fend off an invasion. The EU refused to prepare for a predictable rekindling of the migration… Read more.
Fellow liberals upbraided me last week for arguing – in “Hello … China? Greece Calling,” July 6, 2015 – that: a) Greek leaders were delusional for holding a referendum on Eurozone bailout terms (i.e., instead of humbly accepting them); and b) Greek protesters were hopelessly misguided for expecting a no vote to lead to anything… Read more.
The people of Greece have presented the European Union with the greatest political crisis in its history after voters decisively rejected years of further austerity and effectively challenged Brussels to throw a member state into the economic abyss. The Syriza-led government in Athens celebrated what it called a victory of democracy over economic ‘terrorism’, as… Read more.
Greek banks and the stock exchange will be shut on Monday after creditors refused to extend the country’s bailout and savers queued to withdraw cash, taking Athens’ standoff with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to a dangerous new level… In the early hours of Saturday, Tspiras asked for extra time to enable… Read more.
Despite angry rhetoric and accusations of ‘blackmail’, negotiations were continuing in Brussels to find a last-ditch compromise to keep Greece in the euro zone to avoid a political train-wreck, economic chaos and financial market disruption. (Reuters, June 26, 2015) Time to give it up Europe. Besides, in a country famous for its ruins, leaving its economy in ruins might… Read more.
Yesterday, Greece finally held its anxiously awaited general election, which many regarded as a referendum on that country’s membership in the Eurozone. The consensus was that a win by the ruling New Democracy party, headed by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, would mean more of the bitter austerity medicine Greeks have been taking for years as… Read more.
I find it stupefying that Greece is causing so much existential angst in Europe. Mind you, I used to accept the prevailing view that, like JPMorgan Chase, Greece is just too big to fail; moreover, that if it failed others would surely follow. I am now convinced, however, that this transformative logic simply does not… Read more.
[T]he so-called “PIGS” (namely, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain) have been arguing that the sovereign debt crisis that is threatening to plunge their respective countries into bankruptcy is a burden all of Europe should bear. And everybody knows that a default by any of these PIGS will cause the disunion of the European Union. (A… Read more.
Greece may be the cradle of civilization but it’s being regarded throughout Northern Europe these days as little more than a beggars’ colony. This is because Greece is now looking to richer member states of the European Union, like Germany and France, to bail it out of an existential financial mess. No doubt many… Read more.
