Game Over (Part 2)

The recent riots and anger of the Greek people signs a next step in EU dismantlement. The NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard)  is still your friend, my dear Europe . The Greek financial-economical disaster is not a “pure” Greek product. Many Eastern-European countries including Italy. Germany, United Kingdom are co-responsible for the Greek’s mess. A European country that cheap to have holidays “hot deal” with low costs, no receipts in a large number of restaurants, bars and other facilities. We (the Western Europeans) were happy to have a cheap holiday liaison right next door in Europe.

Further the entrance of Greece into the EURO monetary union wasn’t tidy checked. Or should I say was “accepted” behind knowledge of some “rounded” numbers.

Greece is the first fine example of unconfined, wild-west financial speculation globally where few players hold all the cards and the countries are the poker money. Watch the US-based rating agencies firing down European and other countries due to their “opulent” debts. What about your backyard my US friend?

Let’s stop this illusion about a Europe in “five minutes” (why weren’t we so hot to enlarge the EU to 27 meanwhile we knew our differences not to be settled when we were only 12?). Who pushed Kohl, Ciampi, Mitterand and other leaders to stipulate and realize the EURO zone.

As long as Europe is still in NIMBY state all efforts will be vain.

What we need is younger politicians with innovative ideas. Why do we target on innovation on labour market, in economics but not in politics? Why do we need to support statements of  Old Men who already saved their big pensions for the next 2 generations.

And now look what all this is brinhing us to… People of an EU country burn the national flag of another EU country. My dear Europe, I think you have a big problem.

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To the Greek Ambassadors in all EU countries:

Dear Sirs,

I am indignant about the fact that Greek people burn the flag of my country. We, the people of Germany, often do not agree with our government and especially with tax rising decisions. I completely understand the anger and frustration the Greek people pass in these days. Further I do believe that your country is undergoing any possible solutions to light up the dark of debts your are swallowed in but. But burning in rage a nations flag is not an excuse to that. Think about we would burn your flag in German cities? Wouldn’t you tag us immediately “NAZIS” or xenophobists?

 

 

The Spill and its Bill

Recently we were all victims that huge cataclysm caused by humans have no limit. As long as we go on with our philosophy to be “greater and richer” despite the limited resources we have and ignoring the (must) security measures to apply to certain processes of resource exploiting icidents like this will ever happen again. What we need is to calculate the benefits, the risks and the ecological impact of our actions. As economy is driven my making money there is no space to think about precautions or similar actions. And as soon as things go well the benefit for all of us is tangible (Oil, Gas, my car runs!). But the grown competition and the consequently shrinking margins in earning money are tracking the way to strategies where conglomerates and big companies decide “in the twinkling of an eye” what to do to keep pace with competitors.

This strategy is no longer valid in a media long-term run. We the folks are partly responsible of this bloodshed global extraction companies apply to several sites on this planet, most of them in located in unique and sensitive ecosystems (see Louisiana).

I don’t know how many millions of gallons spilled into the Gulf of Mexico since the drown of Deep Water Horizon and what this means in economical impact for BP’s accounting. And the other side is how many money (if to reset all the mess might be payable by money?) is needed to clean the beaches and help out the wildlife and communities that live in the affected area. No one else than the government of the United States can be once more a forerunner to change global behavior and be more responsible to mother nature.

After the financial crack down and the bail-out ob billions of dollars, and under the scene of the oil spill disaster still to be calculated in financial and economical damage we are still not convinced to change from root (we the people) to give a chance to new approaches in living a better life now and in the future.

I think that BP will never be intentioned to pay the full amount in economical costs of the Oil Spill and I rarely believe that Washington will be able to impose a new policy to the oil industry to be more responsible. At the end the Spill-Out will be relayed to the taxpayer like we’ve seen with the financial Bail-Out. At the end it is partly blamable to the taxpayer itself because we all wanted to live a “real life” on credit and driving big cars consuming lots of gas.

Weak with Greek

In big trouble this time

Recent development in a Greece default are rising up as Standard & Poor’s dropped Greeks bonds to “junk-bonds”. This in another fine example of how the carnivorous free market is feeding itself with a big nutrient called speculation. And European leaders and policy are not even helpful at all as they are divided (what a gap!) on how to handle the Greek question. Many people knew that Greece when added to the EU currency union it’s economical and financial structure is not up to the state-of-the-art of other nations. Negligence and tax evasion did the rest. European financial observers were surely up to the view about Greek’s national debt and status. And they played with it on the stock exchanges. Then there were all the tourists going to Greece having cheap holidays in an EU country (=means you have the security and stability of an EU country and can pay with your EUR money). I think none of the vacationers to Greece ever thought about the cheap services and meals you could get there and why in many places small restaurants neither had a cash desk(!).

And so we did have Greece it’s own ongoing despite the “strange” issues it has inside. Politicians are very cautious about their arguments they put on table. As long as Greece was able to handle it’s enormous debt it’s own way everything was fine. And I cannot believe the ECB never thought (at least a bit) about the huge debt and deficit of the Greek economy. Then Lehman Brothers bought more decline to the fragile Greek economy, suffering the last 10-15 years. Greece (I supposed) was hoping in stability entering the EUR currency club. But with no strange austerity and new procedures of optimization in public administration and spending this positive effect never came to work.

Nowdays we are witness to the market ruling Greece it’s own way. Markets will have Greece to fail to speculate on it’s default.

Yes, we need to reprove Greece about it’s household’s over the last 10-15 years. Yes, we need to blame our EU politicians because they never took an eyeball deeper into Greece to understand maybe future risks. Yes, we need to condemn unlimited speculations on state defaults.

The latest shout-outs about a “kick-out” of Greece out of the EU currency union are ridiculous. Even Germany (I suppose) was basically informed about the Greeks economical, social and financial weakness and the policies that came to work in the Hellenic country. Policies that didn’t target on efficiency and saving in costs of public administration and health care. So Germany is right to invoke strict rules if any help package should be sent to Athens. And Athens itself needs to confess it’s sin not be have worked as recommended on it’s internal problems. But Germany cannot almost kick out Greece of the European Currency Union because they are near default. This kick out might be a huge damage to the EURO. In fact, many think that the EURO know is running it’s real challenge since introduction in 1999. To find mechanisms and control strategies to deny further ASAD “a-state-almost-default” events. But Bruxelles and it’s member states are not really willing to touch deep issues on how to deal with this “Greek geek”. The EU European Union) needs finally to stand tall as one entity and to find ways to point out long-term policy goals and to win nationalism in it’s member countries.

As you can see, big institutions have the same behavior of human beings. We realize the “wrong” or the “emergency” only in case of it’s put into effect. So we skip smoking only when told by the medic we have lung cancer. Preventive measures we didn’t apply to avoid it. Ad that’s the same many deal recklessness with their money until one day the eviction letters flies in.

In big or small, we do it all (the same way like they do).

Internet and Vericity

Edited on Feb 2, 2010, 11:50 PM

Recently you can observe a more raising debate about the freedom of speech and the exspression of individuality on the web as never seen before. The core question discussed is: “How to preserve truth-realted contents from false ones?”. “How to direct individual spreading power over the word wide web, without cutting the space of free opinion and individuality, in save to truth?” Whether it is linked or to democracy or religion, or racism and extreme solutions to social problems. The instrument we have on our home desks no days is a powerfull Megaphone able to create and amplify and even to destroy (sometimes annihilate) structures (real ones or virtual ones!). Big companies are more and more dictating policy on how to “traffic” the web and how to direct it’s taffic based on their protocols and Software/Hardware solutions. Barely space for individual invention. Even the platforms to use are chosen by CEOs and staff of media conglomerates or big media companies rather than by the folks. The folks later are questioned if the new service might be remunerative to the creators by launching these new services often well or less accepted. Internet grew up too string and to fast so that proper mesaures to rule it falied to be approved and applied in time and, that’s more important than all I mentioned above, the place an appropriate education in how to use this new power in a reasonable way. What we now need is to divide true information and value adding contents to the web community from other contents like fake blog entries, tweets amd so on. Lately a new discussion stream started on NY Times and the Italian Economcial newspaper Il Sole 24 ore (www.ilsole24ore.com) that reflects the serious concerns about the web’s future first of all in terms of fidelity and verity. Please let us have more true and competent content rather than google counter-linked websites seen by many users as the “answer” to their google “question”. I don’t mind to demonize Google, but even in the Google CEO floors they start thiking about new algorithms to authenticate contents and link them to their real Keywords in a more accurate way.