>>>>Money and credit expansion ultimately increase business costs. The federal government's initial response was to inject MORE money, until the fears of intense inflation become obvious. Of course, by then it was too late, and you had all the rampant selling leading up to the crash.
>...
>>>Now could you PLEASE educate Krugman and the others argueing for money expansion and more deficit spending for Greece and other EU countries ?
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>>Thomas, the problem is that it will take a decade or so before we know the right choice is made. Irregardless of all arguments, no-one really can see what the consequences are for european support (or lack of) to greece. Should we give mr putin a chance to build naval basis at the mediterranean sea? Because that might happen if the throw the greece out. OTOH, it might prove to be a bottomless pit to support the greek and an ongoing struggle for years to come.
>>
>>If you look beyond the emotions of taking you money away, which always takes away any objectivity, it is not difficult to see that it is a devilish decision.
>
>I am quite certain that anger of being separated from money currently under my tutelage is not my main motivation here - I argued against the bad precedence of Schröders red/green gov to escape repercussions from failing the Maastricht criteria together with France and later on to allow Greece to go bancrupt and subsidy some banks directly if it really was necessary. Similar to write off those current debts - AS LONG AS ONLY SO-DECLARED HELP IS GIVEN FROM THEN ON, NOT MORE "CREDIT" - which will increase taxes as gov debt is raised again if the the loss on the debt is realized now, as it should be, not hidden in the future at due points often moved back.
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>In the mid-nineties I was not too concerned, although Friedmans arguements were the ones ringing as probably true to my ears. But in the wake of eastern Germany switching to the € was politically unavoidable.
>
>> I'm realistic enough to say that I really would not know what the best one is, and that I'll leave it up to ones who do have better oversight.
>
>Here we differ a lot: I would prefer direct democracy similar to the swiss model, with the certain knowledge that some of those plebeic decisions will be classified as totally stupid by myself. "ones who do have better oversight" certainly are privy to more/better information, but that does not always translate into better decisions, as most investment funds fail to get better results than the market itself (even subtracted the cost of handling of ETF modeling)

I do not put too much faith in direct democracy with referendum (vox populi). Remember how JC was crucified. It is like asking two wolves and a goat what is on for diner: The tyranny of the majority, and since there are examples of minorities being suppressed for the decisions of referendums, I have more faith in that important decisions should be made by people we voted for to represent us: The ones we pay for to make such decisions.

Switzerland is an interesting country in many ways, including the direct democracy, but it has its own set of problems related to that. One problem area is immigration, the financial sector is another one since the start of the decline of bank secrecy.

And your right our decision makers might not always make the right decision, but leaving the decision up to the average intellect of the uninformed voters (including myself) is just like asking to throw darts to a yes/no choice blind folded, and worse even a comedian making jokes on the topic could have influence between yes and no. So no... IMO this is too important too leave up to the public.

Could you see Volkswagen to implement direct democracy in its organization? Would employees love it? I'm sure they would. But whether this is best for the company is an entirely different matter.

Walter,