Rtrorkt

I agree, we had Saddam contained and it cost a fraction of what the War cost. I'm more or less a Republican/moderate but I voted for Clinton twice. I thought he did an OK job, even if it took Newt Gingrich to drag him to the table to balance the budget ONE year.

BTW, the Clinton "surplus" for ONE year would not have paid off the debt. It "might" have paid off one year of interest on the debt.

large portions of the already WAY TO WEAK law have already been rolled back ...

False - with the 2000 recession, the "surplus" was already gone. And the TOTAL spent under Bush on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was around $1T. The rest was from simple over spending. The over spending accelerated under Obama.

When?

With Dodd-Frank Rollback, The Big Bad Banks Are Back - Forbes

GOP is aiming at the volker rule next.

Meh - they can invest in derivatives. Most derivatives are currency hedges.

Does that Clinton surplus include paying off the SS and Medicare Accounts Payable Trust Fund debt as well? That obligation was accrued by governmental overspending since 1968. That was the way the government hid deficit spending for decades or didn't U know that?

Yep, knew that. You may not adhere to the manner in which the government accounts for the money, but stone cold fact is the republicans single handedly put us in the crapper by foisting a war on us with no purpose other than ego enhancing for the cabal that dreamed it up in the first place. Medicare/Medicaid aside. There is a way to solve that problem which the administration started with the ACA.

Oh and let's not forget the repubs absolute confidence in the market to correct itself. There should be no limits on wonderful folks on Wall Street who all have our best interests at heart.

Hugh, it was signed into law July 2010 along party lines.

I could type forever, but just google "Republicans Dodd Frank" kind of says it all. You can sum up Dodd Frank in one letter: K, easily found on Google Maps.

https://www.google.com/#newwindow=1&safe=off&q=republicans+dodd+frank

Dodd-Frank is a joke and at least one of the sponsors (the one from Massachusetts) should be in federal prison for his complicency in what went on just prior to, during and after the 2008 crash.

We had an opportunity to enact real reform and the best our "leaders" could puke out was that? We ought to be ashamed and outraged. We should have gotten so much more in terms of putting us on secure, stable fiscal footing but we got diddly squat and more of the same - in fact we seem to have doubled down on some of it.

The biggest banks, and the largest corporations, are run by Democrats. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous.

OK, back to Greece.

Looks like the Greeks have been doing a remarkable job at extracting Euro's from their banking system, about 100 billion euro's (or around 11,000 euros per person) since 2010.

Now, this will not be evenly distributed and of course a chunk of it will have been consumed on goods and services, but there is a decent chance that there is much of this floating around in the form of cash or deposited in non-Greek financial institutions.

So, this is about 1/3 of their debt (not that has anything to do with the price of tea in China), but it could be the recipe for refloating the drachma if that was repatriated.

Needless to say, it will be the bottom 3 quartiles who pay the price, they will have most of the cash and the greatest options for taking wealth out where they need to and I am wondering why they need to?

Dennis

What the fk rock did you crawl out from under? This post is just vile putrid Liberal HATRED of anything that stinks of being Republican. THIS QUALIFIES FOR BEING A HATE CRIME,

Grexit? Did the EU leadership finally grow a pair (between them all).

Greece debt crisis: Eurozone 'gives Sunday debt deadline' - BBC News

Dennis

Like it was yesterday

2010
Goldman Sachs Shorted Greek Debt After It Arranged Those Shady Swaps - Business Insider


http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/banks-bet-greece-defaults-on-debt-they-helped-hide/


Greek Debt Crisis: How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt - SPIEGEL ONLINE


2012
Goldman Secret Greece Loan Shows Two Sinners as Client Unravels - Bloomberg Business


2015
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-06/who-biggest-winner-greek-tragedy

Post 2016 and it'll double. If anything, save the brass and DIY reload. :rolleyes:

The EU is unraveling, it was never a question of "if?" but when? and how?
Greek goes on de facto parallel currency using IOU's and now we have the "when" and some of the "how".

Greece is (likely) leaving the euro currency, not the European Union. How Greece fares will influence other countries' behavior. If Greeks' default and exit from the euro is painless, that will encourage similarly-minded parties in other heavily indebted euro countries. If the Greeks suffer deeply, that will discourage them. Greece will be used to send a message to the Spanish, etc.

EU and the Euro will not disappear soon. There are too many advantages, traveling without borders and the same currency everywhere is only the start.


But: it blows my mind that the EU is now talking to Albania about joining the EU. REALLY? What do they have of interest for the EU? Sorry, but adding every country to the EU is wrong. Some countries just dont qualify. And some are easy to spot.

The EU is a great idea executed poorly. It was compromised into a unsustainable business model.
The different tax rates and different payouts but having the same value currency?
Loans to countries that have no way ever to pay them back?
Like so many things, It could have been so good and could have worked, but It will not in the present form.
In best case scenario, It will be a shadow of what it is today, In worse case we will be back to Pre-EU with even more trade tariffs and government protected trade to prop up weak economies.