Yikes! That’s scary. I was expecting to see a spider’s web, instead we get an unequal pentagon. And the debt level of Greece, that’s gotten all the headlines, pales in comparison with the crushing debt burdens of Italy and Spain. Both countries owe over $1 TRILLION dollars to other European nations. a mind-numbing and depressingly high number.
But the other number that jumped out at me was the number 20. As in a staggeringly high 20% unemployment rate in Spain, and Italy owing a killer 20% of its annual GNP.
4, in modern social democracies the politicians have learned that the only way to get elected is to spend other peoples’ money on those who elected them. They shamelessly demagogue anyone who suggests anything that threatens to derail the gravy train, like fiscal responsibility. How do you get elected if you can’t buy votes after all? You are right it’s insane, but look at the history of the growth of the modern welfare state. They grow until they collapse.
It struck me as having parallels to the relationships what helped precipitate WWI. How can any single healthy economy extricate itself from unhealthy. Write me off as paranoid, but I sense a world-wide financial precipice in the not too distant future. Too much ‘prosperity’ based upon leverage.
You’re right. That’s exactly why I see this insane level of indebtedness as being so scary (#1).
RPP (#4),
You’re right too. And it’s not just our grandparents who knew it either. For many centuries Bible Jews and Christians have been warned and believed, [i]”The borrower is slave to the lender”[/i] (Prov. 22:7).
This reminds me of Charles Joseph Minard’s graph of the losses Napoleon incurred in his Russian campaign. Both striking, both tragic, both ultimately due to human hubris and greed.
Yikes! That’s scary. I was expecting to see a spider’s web, instead we get an unequal pentagon. And the debt level of Greece, that’s gotten all the headlines, pales in comparison with the crushing debt burdens of Italy and Spain. Both countries owe over $1 TRILLION dollars to other European nations. a mind-numbing and depressingly high number.
But the other number that jumped out at me was the number 20. As in a staggeringly high 20% unemployment rate in Spain, and Italy owing a killer 20% of its annual GNP.
Very scary.
David Handy+
Great graphic
So does anyone have any idea how much we owe to China?
Why cant these supposedly clever politicians not see what my grandmother could…that being in debt is not a pretty thing?
4, in modern social democracies the politicians have learned that the only way to get elected is to spend other peoples’ money on those who elected them. They shamelessly demagogue anyone who suggests anything that threatens to derail the gravy train, like fiscal responsibility. How do you get elected if you can’t buy votes after all? You are right it’s insane, but look at the history of the growth of the modern welfare state. They grow until they collapse.
It struck me as having parallels to the relationships what helped precipitate WWI. How can any single healthy economy extricate itself from unhealthy. Write me off as paranoid, but I sense a world-wide financial precipice in the not too distant future. Too much ‘prosperity’ based upon leverage.
graydon (#6),
You’re right. That’s exactly why I see this insane level of indebtedness as being so scary (#1).
RPP (#4),
You’re right too. And it’s not just our grandparents who knew it either. For many centuries Bible Jews and Christians have been warned and believed, [i]”The borrower is slave to the lender”[/i] (Prov. 22:7).
David Handy+
Buy silver, gold, and most precious of all…lead. Then, strap in, because we are in for a bumpy ride of reentry into reality.
This reminds me of Charles Joseph Minard’s graph of the losses Napoleon incurred in his Russian campaign. Both striking, both tragic, both ultimately due to human hubris and greed.