Good evening. I’m not Chevy Chase, and you’re not either. (Unless the real Chevy Chase is reading this, in which case: 1. Loved you on the original SNL, and 2. Stop being such a total dick.)
Take a look at this update: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel has mooted the idea that Greece should hold a referendum on the euro alongside its second round of elections next month.” Well, no use even pretending that the Greeks have a say in their own future, is there?
How bad will the Euro-collapse be? “This type of shock could produce instability at least as extensive as the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.”
Der Spiegel goes all Amityville Horror on Greece: GET OUT.
Speaking of prominent German media outlets slamming Greece (insert your own Cartman’s Mother joke here), can anyone tell me why the Greek finance ministry offices look like an episode of Hoarders? My German is a bit rusty to watch a 45 minute documentary, but what are in the garbage bags? Tax returns?
Spain’s housing bubble gets compared to Ireland’s housing bubble, including how it’s getting ready to drag down the banking sector. Actually, it also sounds an awful lot like Japan’s housing bubble. But Spain’s economy isn’t nearly as strong as Japan’s…
No matter what Greece does, “the country faces years of austerity after years of mismanagement, whatever the election result. Even at the height of the global financial crisis, it was obvious the museum-piece economies of Europe, weighed down by bulging public payrolls, entrenched welfare state systems and archaic work practices, faced greater upheavals and decades of poorer living standards than the US.”
I still think Monbiot is more loon than not, and Anthropogenic Global Warming more scam than threat (I think it possible that the earth has warmed slightly, but regard the case for this possible warming trend being man-made as far from proven). But at least some hardcore greens are beginning to realize that if you really want to reduce carbon emissions without wrecking the world economy, nuclear is the way to go.
On a related note, for my latest Japan update (including news on the Fukushima Daiichi reactors) go here.
Big-spending Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez recalled from office by an almost 9-1 ratio. Alvarez was a RINO that acted like a full-bore Democrat, hiking property taxes and giving big pay raises to unionized public employees. (hat tip: Dwight.)
In New York, unions protect state employees who sexually abuse the mentally handicapped, even when they know they’re guilty. “That’s our job.”
But I did think this bit caught in my spam filter over there was worth sharing: the text says “Please Donate To Japan’s Quake and Tsunami Victim’s,” but the link goes to “foxnews-boycott.com”.
It’s impossible to say definitively that a market has strayed into bubble territory until after the collapse. But prices rising out of the reach of average buyers is one indicator. Housing prices in the U.S. peaked at 6.4 times average annual earnings this decade. In Beijing, the figure is 22 times.
The figures get even worse when you consider that the “shadow market” (i.e., banks making “off book” loans) means the bubble is even worse than it seems:
Local governments and banks have set up off-balance sheet vehicles to conceal loans and keep the spending boom going. Fitch Ratings estimates that not only did banks exceed the central bank’s 7.5 trillion yuan ($1.1 trillion) cap on lending for this year, they made an additional three trillion yuan of these shadow loans.
Something that can’t go on forever won’t. That’s especially true of a housing boom in a country aging as rapidly as China (which Mark Steyn famously said “will get old before it gets rich”); and don’t forget that a rapidly aging populace was also a factor in Japan’s own “lost decade.”
The big question is whether China’s housing bubble or Europe’s Sovereign Debt Crisis pops first. The aftershocks of both will certainly be felt in our own economy…
A few bite-sized links of interest for the holiday season:
Michael Barone digs deeper into the census data. Among the tidbits: Five of the seven states with no state income tax gained the most population, and the other two each gained the most within their region, and immigration seems to have slowed in the last decade.
More on redistricting from lefty election wonk Nate Silver.
Here’s a story about how socialized medicine actually works.
National health care works great… so long as you’re rich enough to afford the premium level of government insurance and to buy multiple additional private policies; so long as you have influential relatives; and so long as you’re willing and able to brazenly bribe the doctors and bureaucrats who run the system.
And this is Japan, we everything (except the air) is amazingly clean, efficient and orderly compared to just about any American city. (Even the homeless people are neater than ours.) And socialized medicine still results in worse care for most people than ours.