Vexcalibur
Proud to be smug as heck
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Joined: Jan 18, 2008
Posts: 5380
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 Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 8:33 pm Post subject: |
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You would think the US crisis had something to do with it.
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xenon13
Phoenix
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Joined: Dec 14, 2008
Posts: 3085
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| Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 8:37 pm Post subject: |
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| The Euro is a currency devised by right wing quacks... The US has their own problems with economic policy devised by right wing quacks, but the EU with their euro has a whole lot of trouble with Austrian-inspired lunacy. A currency where all that matters is to be able to hoard it, so keep it scarce so debts cannot be discharged, that's utter madness. The US at least has a currency based on the State Theory of Money that's historically sound and permits the US federal government complete freedom to finance government operations and permit it the freedom to end the depression at will. The existence of the insane debt ceiling (completely arbitrary and senseless) and politicians who think that the gold standard still applies and the US can run out of money is a huge problem in the US and a major reason why they refuse to get out of the depression. That and the fact that the US Right enjoys the depression and never wants to leave it, it's a perfect opportunity to utterly destroy as many people as possible as they are the worst misanthropes. For them, most people don't measure up to their lofty standards and if they aren't suffering horribly it's a great injustice. |
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zacb
Deinonychus
Joined: May 08, 2012
Posts: 343
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| Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Isn't Austrian Economics for a more open banking system? So the problem is not per se the Euro (although it has it's flaws), but the defacto monopoly that it has, thus not encouraging responsible policies by Central Bankers. Austrian Economist would thus eliminate the monopoly and establish multiple currencies (or at the very least a gold standard). So is it so much Austrian Economics, or the misapplication of those principles (that it should be based on scarcity, but they fail to allow the freedom to use other currencies)? |
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Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
Joined: Dec 18, 2005
Posts: 14174
Location: Omnipresent
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| Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 10:58 pm Post subject: |
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| xenon13 wrote: | | It seems to me that the people who drew up the Euro were highly influenced by Austrian quackery and that this "money exists to be hoarded only" mindset is destroying things over in Euroland. To refuse to see the Austrian fingerprints all over the debacle is to be a true believer, I suppose. The whole "inflation is theft" and "what is needed is a cleansing depression" mentality over there again is so Austrian... |
xenon13, why not accuse the Marxists of doing this?? I mean, seriously, that's actually much more plausible(despite also being absurd) simply because Marxists actually have political power in Europe, unlike the Austrians
xenon13, you've labeled EVERYONE IN THE THREAD EXCEPT *YOU* a true believer, regardless of their political ideology.
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Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
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| Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 11:00 pm Post subject: |
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........ You do realize this proves nothing about any ideologies at all. Basically, some pro-Austrian academic associated Menger with the idea of the euro. No other association is found anywhere. If you type in the word "neo-mengerian", you don't really get many hits. If you look for Menger across wikipedia on the Euro, or on his own wiki page, there is no connection drawn, meaning that if this is the major influence a lot of people have kept it secret. Your claim isn't that the ideology can be described in terms of Austrian economics, but rather that Austrian economics is to blame for the matter, but the paper only proves the former.
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Danimal
Snowy Owl
Joined: Jun 16, 2011
Age: 48
Posts: 156
Location: West Central Indiana
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| Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 11:52 pm Post subject: |
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I do have to admit that I am surprised the euro has lasted this long.
We in the US are hardly examples of thrift and sound economic practices, but our currency is over 200 years old. Even though we have 50 states, we have a common language and a common culture. No state is allowed to print its own money. Perhaps someone can explain to me how the euro has succeeded in spite of cultural and language differences. |
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Burzum
Indeed
Joined: Apr 27, 2011
Posts: 1205
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 6:32 am Post subject: |
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Wait, this guy's actually serious?
Excuse me while I die of laughter. |
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xenon13
Phoenix
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 7:18 am Post subject: |
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It's an objective fact that the Euro was modeled after Menger's idea of a currency, and it's also an objective fact that Menger was the godfather of Austrian economics. The Euro is an ultra-hard currency deliberately made scarce because of this idea that money gets value from scarcity (how many times do people say you can't print money it will automatically and under all conditions cause inflation). The euro is a de facto gold standard... the Austrians love gold standards, love going on about how currency X is worth 10% of what it was several decades ago as if it means anything to people in real life... they love neo-Wicksellian "natural rates of interest" that guarantee a large Reserve Army of Labour who must be crushed into the dust, claiming that to do otherwise will cause "malinvestment" and force the eventual cleansing depression also a convenient opportunity to crush millions of people into the dust... they are such lovers of mankind!
People totally underestimate the Austrian influences, the influences of Menger and certainly of Hayek, I mean Margaret Thatcher openly used him as her personal god! Some say that Hayek wasn't a pure enough Austrian... and that these Eurocrats are not pure Austrians of the pure cult, this isn't about the pure cult, this is about followers of Menger and his quackery. |
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CSBurks
Phoenix
Joined: Apr 30, 2012
Posts: 666
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 7:46 am Post subject: |
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Allow me to bring quietus to the issue. The euro is not a de facto gold standard.
The euro is a fiat currency and just because individual nations can't inflate the euro, does not make it a gold standard. The ECB can inflate the money supply.
| Quote: | It is no coincidence that the civilized nations are striving universally
and urgently to introduce a gold currency. Gold is the money of
advanced nations in the modern age. No other money can provide the
convenience of a gold currency in our age of rapid and massive commod-
ity exchanges. Silver has become a troublesome tool of trade. Even paper
money must yield to gold when it comes to monetary convenience in
everyday life. A ten- or five-guilder gold coin would be more convenient
than our ten- or five-guilder note. Moreover, under present conditions
only a gold currency constitutes hard money. Neither a bank note and
treasury note nor a silver certificate can take the place of gold, especially
in moments of crisis.
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QUIETUS!!!!!!!!!!! |
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xenon13
Phoenix
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 8:21 am Post subject: |
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| Why is a gold standard so wonderful to the Austrian crowd? One, it's scarce so you can hoard it. You can say "it's worth just as much now as it was in 1920". Two, the value is not set by any state, it's free from the interference of states with their puny elected governments. There is one problem; on the first count, what happens if a major gold find takes place? Why, that interferes with the stable scarcity. But what if a gang of completely private actors shielded from any state were to introduce a currency that's kept completely scarce always, a more perfect gold standard? Where they'd keep it scarce no matter how much suffering its causes. That's the Euro for you. The euro is a more perfect gold standard. |
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WilliamWDelaney
Phoenix
Joined: Apr 27, 2011
Posts: 1201
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 10:38 am Post subject: |
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Nope! What caused the debt crisis was a low level of confidence among lenders that the countries would ever be able to pay back anything loaned to them. The problem economies never could get lenders to give them decent interest rates, largely because the idiots at the helm were, shall we say, "TOTAL SCREW-UPS."
Oh, but it's not the governments that did it! In the modern world, the government does not actually have all that much thrust at one time. The big CEOs in your major corporations make the really big decisions that affect YOUR future.
Don't believe me? How naive.
Do you really think that the Great Recession was caused entirely by President W. Bush? It wasn't. The companies that needed the Mighty Bailouts, my friend, are the real offenders, and they were from the get-go. They created the lending tactics and exotic assets that led to the financial meltdown.
Hey, the bad guy, people, was NOT the government or ANY MEMBER of the government. George W. Bush didn't force these big banks to merge into gigantic behemoths that WERE FREAKING DOOMED TO COLLAPSE UNDER THEIR OWN WEIGHT. George Bush didn't put them up to their AMAZINGLY STUPID AND IMMORAL predatory lending tactics. The crooks in our financial industry, my friends, made the problem themselves.
But what did you do? Instead of voting with your feet and pulling your money OUT of accounts with the companies who caused these problems, you stupid scum, you thought that changing the government you live under, NOT ONCE BUT TWICE, would solve ALL of your problems and make it all go away.
First, you decided maybe the Democrats would save you (from the Republicans), and then you called in the Republicans to save you (from the Democrats). It never occurs to you people that both Democrats and Republicans who BOTHER to run for office are mostly decent human beings who wanted to do a service for their country and make a difference in the world. Our politicians, for the most part, are not the source of our problems.
Then again, they are also mortal human beings. So they can't work miracles. So they have moments of moral weakness. That's human. That's you and me. We have got to stop blaming our civil servants for our problems, even if they are assholes.
The only way you can fix things, people, is to be careful who you choose to invest your money with. You can't always count on a bank to be using honest business practices, and you can't just assume everything will be alright just because you get good returns for the short-term. If you are dealing with a very crooked or badly organized bank, then someone, somewhere along the line, is being screwed, and it will come back to haunt you.
I mean, I refuse to do business with Wells Fargo. Why? Because they did this big, macho hostile takeover of Wachovia, and they then reneged on several promises they had made to their investors. They're doing big business for now, but I see a deep, dark hole in them. There might be something in there for me to gain for the short-term, but I'm not going to touch something that smells of evil.
Ultimately, the government is not the root problem. The only people who have the right idea, right now, are the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who are telling you to vote with your feet: pull your money out of accounts that are associated with untrustworthy banks. Put it somewhere else. If you are in bed with a villain, the stink of villainy will follow you wherever you go.
And stop blaming the government for every crappy problem you have. The only thing that really matters, with a politician, is that they are honest and trustworthy people who are willing to do their jobs and listen to their constituents. There is little else that truly counts. |
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Oodain
big chief wulla bamboom alakaway
Joined: Jan 31, 2011
Age: 23
Posts: 5022
Location: in my own little tamarillo jungle,
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 10:51 am Post subject: |
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luxembourgs status as a in-union tax haven doesnt help anything either.
last i checked some 20 billion british taxpayer pounds ended up there.
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Dox47
Consigliere
Joined: Jan 29, 2008
Posts: 5194
Location: Seattle Area
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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*Prepares massive short of Euro market*... 
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TM
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 04, 2012
Posts: 2122
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 5:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Dox47 wrote: | | *Prepares massive short of Euro market*... |
Get a leveraged broker account, short derivatives with built in gearing, and you're golden if it hits. However, keep in mind that return on stocks the last 10 years have been horrible, and that such things tend to be cyclical in nature, Furthermore, that provided that Italy and Spain do not get too bad, and there is an end to the prolonged torture of the financial markets by Greek morons and European moronic politicians in general, it could bounce fast.
We also do not know how much of a potential disaster is already "priced in". |
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xenon13
Phoenix
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| Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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| The reason why people don't think they'll be paid back from Euro countries is because the Euro is so scarce, they realise it would be impossible for people to pay off their debts. The EU people continue to demand that euros remain scarce because they claim that money gets its value from scarcity, an Austrian bit of quackery if I ever heard one. It's just so stupid. |
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