Comment Re:Germany should pay war reparations for WWII (Score 1) 743
Countries that go to the IMF expecting to have to make the sort of changes to their economy that Western nations would expect in order to consider them for a "payday loan" level credit offering will do just fine. Just like a "payday loan" if you can survive without it, you should...If an IMF loan isn't going to force a country to do what it doesn't want, and be fiscally responsible...I'll bet if Germany had kept that money, they would have spent some of it on investments that have a real return...
German citizens were saving too much money. I saw the posters urging people to dig the Deutchmarks from their back yards and exchange them for Euro. Yes saving is good, but Euros buried in back gardens to not lead to new businesses or a vibrant economy. So Germany used their influence and encouraged the ECB to print money and lower interest rates. This worked brilliantl... for Germany. Their sluggish economy began to pick up. But the one-size-fits Germany fiscal policy punished savers and rewarded debt in all Euro countries including Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal. All this free money was floating around the EU, punishing savers in Greece and Ireland and blowing asset bubbles all over Europe. By time young Irish people had 10% down of a mortgage, the house had doubled in price. Everyone knew this was a bubble but saving was punished so severely that even those who opted for the fiscally responsible path are in worse shape then the 90% who spent money at a time when ECB policy punished fiscal responsible behavior.
The ECB, US Fed and other central banks use their tools to help themselves and those with first access to the money (wealth, banks, corporations). A wiser economic policy in the computer age would allow for a variety of currencies in different economic zones within a country. Lower Alabama and East Saint Louis should not have the same monetary policy as Manhattan and Beverly Hills. Germany shouldn't have the same monetary policy as Greece. The fictional fiscal world we create is punishing the young and poor The austerity already adopted by Ireland (the EU's golden-child) has a severe mis-allocation of public resources, rapidly increased homelessness and deaths. The fact is that people were punished for saving and then later punished for not saving.
"Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent." -John Maynard Keynes