>>>>Calling him nobama simply negates him as a person and president because he has had a zero or deleterious effect on American and doesn't deserve the respect that is usually associated with the office of President. It is analagous to you calling GW -- Shrub....
>>>
>>>AFAIR even Kevin later had some criticism for GW later on. Getting further into debt at an alarming rate IMHO is stupid for Obama,
>>>but GW trying to run 2 wars (one of them clearly for wrong reasons if you believe in official utterances at the time) purely on credit
>>>is IMHO in the same league. And I don't think of myself as a liberal - even measured by US standards.
>>>
>>
>>I hope Angela and Nicolas don't get away with putting all of Europe on an economic austerity plan. That will snuff out any recovery in short order.
>
>It is a tad more complicated... What germany did in 2008/2009 was spending, but spending rather wisely,
>keeping industrial structures afloat and people employed, also steering more into work-people intensive infrastructure.
>
>The overdrawn PIIGS countries mostly have been either fueling bubbles (housing in Sapin for instance)
>or bought votes with not even building bubbles (pensions in greece) for instance.
>
>They must get some runaway deficits under control or a bigger bubble will blow when belief in money evaporates.
>The key is to make the population work as a whole - which for instance worked for the US in WW2,
>as the war effort employed more people per $ spent (on credit back then as well) -
>but too much of current spending is allocated to totally non-productive areas.
>
>And here "financial industry" is in nearly the same boat as giving out money to loafers without any work to compensate
>or even more costly reeducation schemes, more helping the stuctures teaching and work statistics than those participating.
>
>But keeping the current situation (funneling money into PIIGS until even german credit rating goes south)
>without curbing spending of other govs would be totally stupid and political suicide even in well ordered germany.
>
>Just as the FED was not strong enough after disassociating the $ from gold by Nixon (war time spending again)
>compared to swiss or other central banks (helped along by the fact that the $ was even more of a lead currency back then)
>the big mistakes were at first the hasty forced decisions coupling east german integration to european integration
>before things were thought through - some terms could have been balanced better.
>And even that balance was kicked by red/green german gov asking to lift automatic injunctions,
>which the other even less disciplined govs were too happy to grant.
>
>regards
>
>thomas

Regards to you as well. And I happily concede you know more about economics than I do.

Nonetheless -- ;-) You tell it from a strict German POV. Germany flourishes and the rest can go fly a kite.

What you describe has been called "the Austrian plan" -- tight restraint of government spending. I just don't buy it. That kind of thinking was exactly what led the U.S. into the Great Depression. It is the worst possible response to the engine having too little fuel in it. To beat the analogy to the point of exhaustion, it's like driving out in the country, knowing you're low in gas, and driving past station after station saying "We can't afford it." Guess what.

One of my very best professors in college gave two lectures on the Depression that I still remember. He was from Europe somewhere. I was like most college students, half paying attention to the lecture and half paying attention to the swelling sweater a couple of rows up. (Don't snicker; we're all young and foolish once, and should be). He went through the lead-up through the 20s, the aftermath of WWI, Germany being punished to the point of desperation. The world economy cratered again. We weren't spending and neither was anyone else. "And then a wonderful thing happened," Prof. Mokyr said. "Pearl Harbor was bombed. Everyone was back to work making planes, tanks, uniforms, munitions. Women joined the work force. The greatest prosperity in our history."