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Oh come on! They are bailing out the banks because the banks are insolvent and illiquid and Spain can't afford to do it. The Spanish banks took almost 40% of the total of the two LTRO fundings offered by the ECB. They used the money to buy potentially worthless sovereign debt in the quid pro...

Swan Noir, most private Greek money is already out of the banks. More than half of the Greek economy is government and they still keep their funds in the banks. Wealthy Greeks got their money abroad first. Yesterday, I heard of Greek money soliciting private equity for unleveraged placement...

Piezoe, achilles is basically correct in his comments on Social Security and you are completely wrong. There is no real assets in the Social Security Trust Account. All social security taxes that are collected are deposited in the general account and all social security benefits are paid from...

When your currency collapses that is what you do. You use something else as money, usually foreign currency that is available. That is what will happen in Greece if they try to go back to the drachma....it is not currency debasement in the sense of inflation; it is currency collapse; currency...

Zimbabwe has been growing for two years now...they use the U.S. Dollar for thier currency.

The way money is 'printed', is that the sovereign buys longer term debt from its banks with demand debt currency. The sovereign can only do that so long as there is a private market for its long term debt. The CB books a cash liabilty on its balance sheet then tranfers the cash liabilty to the...

So Homely, whose money do you want to use to pay Greece's pension promises...or those paid to your imaginary biker. What happened to the money that the biker paid into his pension?

Trefoil, your comments about current account differentials is just another way of talking about the failure to use revenue and debt, deficit spending, to grow assets, but instead use the funds to sustain and grow government spending on overhead consumption. Of course that would result in a...

Homely, what did they do with all the money they borrowed when times were so good? How did such bubbles in real estate develop in Ireland and Spain? You think that was all great in 2008 and could have gone on forever? What do you think brought the crises about; some random astrological event...

You're right about timing, BW and inflation. I appologize for not being precise. So what about the point of the comment? And by the way above when I wrote 'deflation', I obviously menat to write 'inflation.

The point of the comment was that there was accelerated deflation in the 1970's, during the time of the article and that the article did not address the effects of the inflation. I could argue with you about Bretton Woods but that would be a nit, and not on point. So, why don't you get back on...

The point is that the inflation started then. The comment is about the inflation.

Yes, the article ignores the rampant inflation that was unleashed when we broke the Bretton Woods agreement in 1970. Workers tried to keep up with COLA's to adjust wages with inflation but the progressive tax system just moved them into higher and higher tax brackets that were not indexed for...

One of my points was that your claim of 54T of revenue ignored the cost of capital and the expenses that applied to that revenue. You misrepresented the amount of profit that could theoreticaly be captured by nationalization. It is much less than 54T. You answered my question about whehter...

Bank of North Dakota acts like a secondary market for other private banks in ND. It buys loans they originate. I think it owns something like 600B of ND real estate loans. Not that different from FNMA. Good thing mineral rights and farm economy works well in ND...imagine what kind of shape a...

achilles, is the Gov going to simply seize the banks when they are nationalized, or will the Gov. pay for the equity in those banks? Is you 54T from the Fed just bank loans? Does it include investments in U.S. securities, Agency Bonds or loans to other banks? Does it include required and...

PocketChange, first they will attack the Universities and Churches for property tax.

Rioja is going to get to cheeper soon...demand the best! Only from the Priorat, and at bargain prices...much better than Greek wine. If I was growing wine in Spain, I would get it out of there and turn it into dollars that stayed abroad just as fast as I could.

I don't know why you have to smear a region or people in general; its so biggotted and faux elitist, so inadequate. I'm from New Jersey but I visited folks who lived in holler's in Eastern Kentucky; I have enjoyed shows at the Rymen Auditorium in Nashville, watched the ducks march in...

I guess that depends on who is doing the spending, whose money is being spent, and what it is being spent on. You don't think all spending is the same do you? The Greeks want the Germans to give them more money to spend on pensions and government jobs. How do you think that is going to work...