Tuesday, May 11, 2010

A Trillion Dollar Bailout: A Crisis Averted Or Crisis Delayed

When it comes to addictions -- whether it be alcohol or drugs -- many continue their life deteriorating habits because of "enablers" who are typically friends or family members that, in sympathy and misguided-love, give money to sustain the addict's habit.

In a way, the proposed trillion dollar bailout of those failing E.U. countries is no different than the "enablers" who feed an addict with the money needed to continue their drug or alcohol addiction. However, in this case, you have much of Europe who is addicted to costly social programs, expensive government worker pay and benefits, and job and economy-killing taxes. And, despite the trillions in bailout aid, my guess is that none of these countries will really implement the hard changes that will be needed to get them on track to fiscal responsibility. For that reason, I think that, in a year or two, we could see a revisiting of the pending crisis that caused this massive bailout in the first place.

I'm not the only one that believes that: (Click to See Full Story: Trillion-dollar euro rescue won't solve low growth). From the aforementioned article, I quote: "But the EU still needs to find ways to keep its member governments from spending their way to bankruptcy.." All the European Union did is kick the can down the road; except that, the can is getting bigger by the day. Eventually, there won't be a boot big enough to kick it any further.

Update: Since writing this entry, yesterday, I ran into a news article this morning that reaffirms my opinion as expressed above: (Click to See Full Story: Euro, Stocks, Commodities Retreat as Bailout Optimism Ebbs).

No comments: