This weekends meeting at Camp David of the G-8 national leaders ended on a flat note yesterday. Barack Obama entertained his guests but no real solutions for improving the economy resulted during the discussions. Of course, Obama claims that an ′emerging consensus′ has begun to take shape. But the reality is that France′s new president, Francois Hollande, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are still miles apart on the subject of what is best for the European Union and its economy. Obama is more largely concerned with how the Euro-Zone will effect the United States economy and his own reelection bid this November. The news, however, is quite grim.
Greece is essentially at a point of no return. The latest from there is that the Greek Parliament either wants the country to be completely bailed out by the rest of the EU, namely the German banks, or they will simply default. There seems little left for any solution that keeps Greece in the EU for the long run.
Add to that the drama of Spain and its banks the past two weeks. The Spanish government has already taken over some banks, including nationalizing the fourth largest one about two weeks ago. Credit agencies like Moodys have also been busy downgrading a long list of banks in Spain. About 19 Spanish banks were reduced to junk bond status just this past week.
France is looking like it is in more trouble than the previous administration let on. A German economic minister is now predicting that it may take another two years at least for the EU to crawl its way out of the current debt crisis. But all of that will go down the drain quickly if France abandons austerity measures and raises taxes on their productive citizens to 75%. Why bother working?
The G-8 meeting at Camp David this weekend wound up another failure for Barack Obama, once again proving his amateur status as a national leader. He may have enjoyed meeting a fellow Socialist, Francois Hollande, but no real plan for success was achieved. Angela Merkel holds all the cards but her grip in Germany may be slipping as the economic pressures of Greece, Spain and other European Union members squeeze the German banks, and people, too much. If the Euro-Zone continues on its present course, it will soon dissolve, dragging the United States down with it. New leadership is required here to prevent that from occurring.
May 20th, 2012 at 6:20 am
Looks to me like everyone is just waiting it out to see who falls first.
Thats not stopping them from trying to make it look like they’re feverishly trying to work something out.
Just another few million pee’d away for a little R&R and photo ops with meaningless captions.
Whats the matter Barry ?
The earth not healing quick enough ?
The Oceans not receding enough ?
You couldnt just meet by surprise at some obscure location or get on Skype ? Save buck or two.
You guys are pathetic in thinking its another meaningless few million.
Its the little wasteful sht like this that adds up and has a way of creeping into our debt incognito.
You fckers dont care. Any fool knows you’ve all already covered your asses if worse coms to worse
May 20th, 2012 at 8:22 am
Obama is talking again. I will hold my breath for all of his solutions.
May 20th, 2012 at 8:59 am
did my post get removed,or I did I never submit it ?
May 20th, 2012 at 11:05 am
BillyRay wanted to hang out with the new frenchie preezy.
Waste of time and money…Nothing new there.
May 20th, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Boy, it seems like that Obama fellow just can’t do anything right. How unfortunate. Thanks for bringing us the news, Andrew.
May 20th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Depends on what you think is right.
Past Presidents at the same function usually got ragged by everyone whos at least over 50 years old knows what a joke these functions are a Camp David.
Its like the forest, the birds, the quiet serene surroundings of log cabins is supposed to transform everything into a kumbaya fest.
Everythings all hunky dory
How many times have Arabs participated at Camp David for peace process and cease fires ?
Arafat gets a noble prize and then Sadat gets assassinated.
Its a fckin joke, especially with Carter or Obama there thinking somehow the ambiance will change minds.
Reagan coulda met them at a Starbucks and it would render the same pessimism.
G-8 wont come to anything even encouraging.
May 20th, 2012 at 7:41 pm
Germany abandoned the Deutsche Mark kicking and screamine (as they should have) and will exit the European Union sooner than later.
If you read Time Magazine (yeah, that yellow rag) from a few weeks ago it reports the unemployment figures for much of Europe.
An upside down demographic, a ghettoized immigrant population and stagnant growth in addition to everyone over 50 being retired will not work.
There is no fixing it and there economies (which are, in reality, separate) do not have the size or credit to borrow at affordable rates.
Betting against a European recovery is a good idea.
May 20th, 2012 at 7:45 pm
Even more troublesome is the inevitable slowdown in the Chinese economy as it matures.
It has already lost jobs to Vietnam and now Indonesia, Sri Lanka among others are siphoning off manufacturing positions.
There economy was never designed to survive stagnation and it is predicted to have a slowdown of over 4% over the next 10 years.
That is not good for us or the world.
May 20th, 2012 at 9:12 pm
“There is no fixing it and there economies (which are, in reality, separate) do not have the size or credit to borrow at affordable rates.”
well then I suggest you write your congressperson and Obama asking them to please not loan any money to Greece or France.
We’d have to borrow something like 9 billion from China at 40 cents on the dollar.
The IMF and us are likely to never get paid back.
Something has to be left to fail or all these countries in Europe and the Middle East are going to take us down with them.
Weve paid enough money to these countries in the form of military protection so they can afford their progressive socialism.
Someone has to pay the piper soon and it better not be us who has a president thats talking about bailing out a country that made some of the exact mistakes he is making right now.
Its insanely absurd.
We should of brought home some troops from Europe instead of Afghanistan and Iraq.Let the Russians have them since they were so unwilling to help in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One wrong move and these countries will take down not just ours but the global economy.
Someone has to bite the bullit and do without anesthesia from us and the IMF.
The 12 steps to their recovery is analogical to AAs first step.
Admitting that socialism is a problem would be their first step
May 20th, 2012 at 9:15 pm
Whats up with moderation
I can swear like a drunken sailor, no problem.
When I behave I’m told to wait ?
May 21st, 2012 at 4:23 am
Max Keiser predicted in 2009 that China would go into a recession in 2014. His reasoning is based on the old curse of building the world’s tallest building. Every time a nation does so their economy goes in the tank.
May 21st, 2012 at 4:28 am
I don’t know, Micky, what is up with moderation of late? Klo is on perma-mod until he behaves himself. Since I’ve been sick the past week, I usually only get online once a day in the morning and check the ‘Pending’ comments out.
Heh! This comment went into moderation, too, LOL!
May 21st, 2012 at 6:56 am
Mention k-l-o and it is automatically flagged. Sigh.
May 21st, 2012 at 9:56 am
Patrick
Yeah, that one I figured out my own.
I’d examine my post for the usual suspects, there were none. But the same post quoting him by name, put me in moderation.
Whats up Andy, why you sick ? I’ll talk to the big guy up in the sky about this sht.
My sis threw a surprise party for me at her little beach house mostly used for vacation rentals.
A family friend, gay, started talkin about Obamas coming out over the marriage thing.
The conversation led from one thing led to another until I finally couldnt take it anymore.
Its the first time I ever totally destroyed a family gathering. I was tired of listening to this guy. He always found a way to say Bush is the worst ever and all republicans are pu$$ies,etc.
I figured people that stupid were far and apart and usually were just bloggers.
I was just amazed at all this man did not know while being an ideological bigot.
I ripped his ass so far apart he enjoyed it. In one minute I’d brought the party to complete silence and awe.
On one hand it felt good that he could not answer any of my questions. Cheney, Halliburton,Katrina, who voted for the wars,etc.
On the other hand it was very depressing to know that theres nuts like Klow in my family circle.
Later the majority of my friends all told me I shouldnt of done that.
I told them I did it on purpose. When asked why i said shouldnt we be allowed to discuss these things into an agreement ?
Anyway, I dont want to hijack the thread but I learned that people dont want to discuss these things. And thats the problem. Ideological bigots go into these conversations.
Theres no talking anymore, even to someone I’ve known for 40 years.
Legally the CIC can hire anyone he wants during wartime.
The dems voted for both wars almost as much as we did. If the Pope dies there will still be Catholics. Killing UBL is meaningless because theres just as many radicals now as there was before UBLs death who are spreading their crap all over the world.
I asked everyone if we could sit down, compose ourselves and talk about spreading these issues using facts and not morality or opinion.
Everyone looked down and just shook their heads and said “nah, its not a good idea”
That my freinds, is the perfect example of why this country is so sick.
Theres two groups of people out there that are very dangerous to our future.
The moderate independents in the middle will determine our next president.
And the others are the contemptuous prejudiced ideological bigots who there is no talking to.
Although the Klow crossed my mind many times last night because of similarities I still had a good time.
Yeah, I’m a partisan raunchy foul mouth b@stard but not everyone is automatically an idiot because of their beliefs.
The Prez has successfully managed to divide us.
If we dont stop this sht we’ll end up being two broke countries
May 21st, 2012 at 12:52 pm
Aahh! I’ll have to remember not to use the K-word. If I say his name three times will he vanish forever?
May 21st, 2012 at 4:45 pm
So Micky, what did your friend think of the party?
I only know that at family functions we have some discussion of politics, but since many of us have different opinions we stop after fifteen minutes or so.
I mean, what is the point? No one ever changes their mind.
Consider this, you designated the person you disagreed with as an idiot. That is why politics and religion are the classic cases of subjects that need to be left alone. Was there anything he could have said that would have changed your mind?
This did not start with Obama, by the way. You think these disagreements weren’t happening five years ago?
May 21st, 2012 at 5:29 pm
“I mean, what is the point? No one ever changes their mind.”
He thought it was great.
My point, which I made in front of everyone was that ideological bigotry is preventing people from talking to each other without burning down their own neighborhood. I asked him questions he refused to answer because he knew the answer.
“If the Pope gets killed will Catholicism disappear” ?
How does the killing of UBL stop or keep radical Islam at bay and manageable ?
NO ANSWER
You say the wars were illegal and unjust.
Then how come democrats voted yes on Afghanistan and two minutes ago you called the attack on Afghanistan “payback”.
What you’re saying is that payback is justified regardless of how illegal you think the attack was.
I told him “you cant have it both ways”
I walked away, came back 5 minutes later to say that the country is devided because of exchanges like the one we just had. I was the birthday boy so I turned to all my family and freinds and said “this is why things are so fcked up. We are not be able to speak our mind in fashions that produce fare enough compromise.
I got tired of being called a pu$$y by this guy at every family function only because we’d never talked politics at family gatherings before.
After years of tolerating this guy he had no idea that I was conservative. He thought because my mom was a liberal and I am a 2012 version of a 55 year old James Dean who still has hair down to his ass and dresses like Hendrix sometimes.
This guy was not aware of any facts, just headlines and bias media.
Theres no point in talking to each other anymore.
When a whole country feels like that its doomed
We should be able as a family to sit around the table and talk about these things without killing each other.
But, I digress. Most families dont sit at the table together and discuss anything,never mind politics
May 21st, 2012 at 6:09 pm
I do think that people are currently more polarized, but I believe that is more a result of cable news, blogs, talk radio etc.
Middle of the road is a ratings killer, so bombast sells, but people start to believe that outrageous rhetoric is not opinion, but is instead, fact. Add in a compelling personality and the general public is easily led.
I doubt that many of our news personalities truly believe all of their own commentary.
Additionally, 24 hours is a lot to fill, so little stories become big stories.
It is also why so many seem to think the “end is near”. As I have stated before, my 86 year old father lived through the Depression and numerous wars and finds our fixation on our “big”, “once in a lifetime” problems somewhat amusing.
Instant access to news is great, but an overwhelming amount, especially an exaggerated version, is not necessarily good for the American psyche.
May 21st, 2012 at 6:35 pm
Most people dont do what you and I do and are not aware of a ton of facts. No one in my family knows more than what they see on TV or Headlines.
We need to be more aware of what were voting for and that wont happen if the facts never surface.
At this point its not a liberal/conservative thing anymore. It seems progressivism has worked its way so far into parties that left and right are not distinguishable by their historic chrachteristics.
There was sooooooo much this guy did not know that if I wanted to I could humiliated him like silly putty in front of everyone.
I had to remind him who voted for the wars.
I had to explain to him that this recession was decades in the making of habits on both sides.
He had no idea that Ethanol was responsible for inflation in most markets or that overeaction to the mideast and the fact that we only get something like 20-30% of our oil from the Mideast makes these wars about oil.
But he is gay and Obama kisses the gay communities ass so his mind is made up.
His lover was there, so was his ex, who’ve been adopted calabash fashion to our family.
We go back 40 years.
Hes a walking talking example of whats wrong with America.
Focused on one issue, pot, gay,abortion whatever and not knowing anything else about the candidate except for the main surface issues which was enough for him to say some really nasty sht about someone he knew almost nothing about and very little about how each administration always inherits the same ocean the boat was in before their new captain
May 22nd, 2012 at 5:24 am
Perhaps because most people, in reality, are going to vote for issues that are most personal to them.
As I had stated before, I voted for Republicans in Michigan because it is good for my business.
I think your friends don’t list ethanol very high on their list.
May 22nd, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Ethanol is equivalent to selling bunk dope.
Its even more polluting and costly than the real thing.
You could cover the earth in corn and it wouldnt supply 10% of our needs.
But selling bunk dope will definitely get someone hurt.
In this case its those on the receiving end of a grain market that is so screwed up they’re starving to death by the hundreds every day.
And we pay/subsidize farmers to grow corn for ethanol only so come election time those who legislated the subsidization get their kickback from stockholders. As a result farmers are attracted to grow corn instead of wheat,rice etc.
Corn supply cannot meet todays demand in non-grain fuel industry.
Cows, Chickens,livestock cost more to feed so the price goes up or the manufacturing takes shortcuts like trimming meats less, infusing water into sausage and refined/processed meats, deceiving packaging, additives to retain color.
Same with sugar.
My island used to be covered in sugarcane.
But we have no refinery here.(think moonbat environmentalists and PETA)
The scrap makes excellent cattle feed but is not shipped back to us with the sugar we grew, that was refined in Ca. for table sugar or fuel. That extra shipping cost goes to you and I.
Here, in Hawaii, we pay 4.00 a lb. when its on sale and they no longer make the 5 lb. bag.
Please, just “EAT” the fcking food and stop fcking around with it.
Instead of synthetic or agricultural fuel just go get it where it is. Is that so fcking hard n simple to figure out ?
Ethanol…The environmentalists offshoot b!tch termite. You dont know is there before its too late.
Since its use as a fuel (think “rum”)