Adam Smith
Special Report: Is the World Broke?
Updated
07/June/2010 11:00
Late last week I tuned into the Fox Business Channel and at the bottom of the screen was the tag, “Is the world broke?” What little time I listened to the discussion, it seemed that the participants were questioning the broke concept as in bankrupt. However when you consider the concept of bankruptcy you generally link the term with being or running out of money. In a world in which nations print their own money either individually as in the case of the United States, China, and most other nations of the world, they can always print more money and devalue their currency, so broke in their literal sense is impossible.
For the Eurozone going broke makes a little more sense in the fact that certain countries may run out of Euros and other countries or financial institutions fail or refuse to give them anymore. In that sense the Euro only will continue to work, if its support is linked to the willingness of all parties to adopt a somewhat consistent approach as far as spending and taxes.
In the United States we are told that it is impossible for the states to go broke literally, as in bankrupt. Since they cannot create their own currency however, that makes for the between a rock and a hard place a reality that many states now face, but as of yet are unwilling to create the austere conditions to bring into harmony unsustainable spending and limited revenues. This means that eventually they will come to the Federal government for funding not all that different from what is now faced by Eurozone countries.
However, there is another definition of broke, that as of yet none of the world’s political leaders, business moguls, spin merchants, or any other group that claims some sort of elitist power or authority, will admit. That is the world in which they say they created, know what is going on, or hope again to set on the right path is truly broke, like broken, it no longer works.
Last December in “Humpty Dumpty in a New Century” we describe Humpty Dumpty in American terms, but now we see that good old Mr. Dumpty has returned to his continental roots as well. Just as in the American story, the refrain remains pretty much the same. “If we, all the kings horses and all the kings men, all come together and work diligently we can surely put Humpty Dumpty back together again!”
The question no one is asking today is, “Could the reason Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall in the first place, is all the kings horses and all the kings men are responsible?” If that is the case and you just replace Humpty Dumpty on a shaky wall of the world’s financial condition, even if for the short term, things might get a little better, but there are really only two alternatives for a long lasting solution.
Read More...
Late last week I tuned into the Fox Business Channel and at the bottom of the screen was the tag, “Is the world broke?” What little time I listened to the discussion, it seemed that the participants were questioning the broke concept as in bankrupt. However when you consider the concept of bankruptcy you generally link the term with being or running out of money. In a world in which nations print their own money either individually as in the case of the United States, China, and most other nations of the world, they can always print more money and devalue their currency, so broke in their literal sense is impossible.
For the Eurozone going broke makes a little more sense in the fact that certain countries may run out of Euros and other countries or financial institutions fail or refuse to give them anymore. In that sense the Euro only will continue to work, if its support is linked to the willingness of all parties to adopt a somewhat consistent approach as far as spending and taxes.
In the United States we are told that it is impossible for the states to go broke literally, as in bankrupt. Since they cannot create their own currency however, that makes for the between a rock and a hard place a reality that many states now face, but as of yet are unwilling to create the austere conditions to bring into harmony unsustainable spending and limited revenues. This means that eventually they will come to the Federal government for funding not all that different from what is now faced by Eurozone countries.
However, there is another definition of broke, that as of yet none of the world’s political leaders, business moguls, spin merchants, or any other group that claims some sort of elitist power or authority, will admit. That is the world in which they say they created, know what is going on, or hope again to set on the right path is truly broke, like broken, it no longer works.
Last December in “Humpty Dumpty in a New Century” we describe Humpty Dumpty in American terms, but now we see that good old Mr. Dumpty has returned to his continental roots as well. Just as in the American story, the refrain remains pretty much the same. “If we, all the kings horses and all the kings men, all come together and work diligently we can surely put Humpty Dumpty back together again!”
The question no one is asking today is, “Could the reason Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall in the first place, is all the kings horses and all the kings men are responsible?” If that is the case and you just replace Humpty Dumpty on a shaky wall of the world’s financial condition, even if for the short term, things might get a little better, but there are really only two alternatives for a long lasting solution.
Read More...
Why Me? The General Governance Theory
14/April/2010 10:24 Filed in: Weekly
Column
As I was writing Monday’s post on “2 BIG 2 Work,” I
began thinking about the concept that perhaps the
problems now facing the United States and really
the broader world concept of globalization stems
from the reality all have gotten 2 BIG 2 fail and
simultaneously 2 BIG 2 work.
What a better closing paradigm for this “Why Me?” series! Failure isn’t my fault because everything just sort of quit working because of bad karma, and since I only think good thoughts about everything, except a few bad stuff moments, I am completely off the hook for all the bad stuff that happens.
Now I will have to admit the 2 BIG 2 Work concept was stolen from Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal. Whether it was original with him I do not know, but it surely does describe a whole lot of what is happening all around us. In the context that I heard from him, he was talking about the Federalization of too big to fail financial institutions, but what if the whole country at the national level is getting simply 2BIG 2 Work.
Albert Einstein gave us the Theory of Relativity, but he then spent the rest of his life trying to develop a scientific General Theory of Why, but was never able to get there. I would submit that without God it is a philosophic tautology, and with God it becomes undefinable, because of the natural limits of human created capacity. So if a real general theory is impossible for man, why not dumb it down and talk about just the universe of human governance?
We must begin in Ivy League prose where it goes something like, “The cognitive limited diversity of our educational paradigm provides incongruous perceptions of natural reality.” In the media perception of the Tea Party movement, “Wees’ jist don’t knows no betta!”
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What a better closing paradigm for this “Why Me?” series! Failure isn’t my fault because everything just sort of quit working because of bad karma, and since I only think good thoughts about everything, except a few bad stuff moments, I am completely off the hook for all the bad stuff that happens.
Now I will have to admit the 2 BIG 2 Work concept was stolen from Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal. Whether it was original with him I do not know, but it surely does describe a whole lot of what is happening all around us. In the context that I heard from him, he was talking about the Federalization of too big to fail financial institutions, but what if the whole country at the national level is getting simply 2BIG 2 Work.
Albert Einstein gave us the Theory of Relativity, but he then spent the rest of his life trying to develop a scientific General Theory of Why, but was never able to get there. I would submit that without God it is a philosophic tautology, and with God it becomes undefinable, because of the natural limits of human created capacity. So if a real general theory is impossible for man, why not dumb it down and talk about just the universe of human governance?
We must begin in Ivy League prose where it goes something like, “The cognitive limited diversity of our educational paradigm provides incongruous perceptions of natural reality.” In the media perception of the Tea Party movement, “Wees’ jist don’t knows no betta!”
Read More...