Considering Investment Advice Today

Someone who I have gotten to know and respect on-line recently recommended a book of investment advice. Certainly, there are people who understand investments better than others and can clearly explain that understanding. I have no reason to doubt the usefulness of the book if my friend thought it was good.

I did have a problem, however. The advise offered in the book came from decades ago. What about today? Certainly the principles of economics haven’t changed, ever. But the economic and legal context for investment could have.

What isn’t in these books, not the one suggested by my friend (which I haven’t read but he did not mention the subject) nor any of the others I have looked at, is a discussion of their assumptions. I am not referring to their metaphysics or epistemology. I am assuming a basic I mode for these people, otherwise there would be no hope that the investment advise would or could work. Further, I am not referring to the economics fundamentals of how markets work or the ethics of investment. No, I am referring to what you might call the range of decision making within the economy.

One way to open up what I am trying to consider is to ask these questions: Where would the advise in the book work? We know it wouldn’t work in Cuba. How about Venazula? Egypt? Mexico? Sudan? Turkey? Saudi Arabia? Obama America?

I am not just looking at the legal system in these examples, or even the safety of the investment (against nationalization or another kind of thief). I am wondering about the legal ability of the business manager, the people who will ultimately determine if a business succeeds or fails, to understand the conditions and make the decisions and execute those decisions.

For example, in Europe and the U.S., there has been a drive since the last financial crisis to add additional layers of regulation and regulators to the financial services industry. Many of the areas that major banks were relying upon for profits and growth are being eliminated or curtailed. This process is ongoing. The major law expanding banking regulation in the U.S., Dodds-Frank, has something over 350 new areas of regulation. As of last week according to a recent news article, the government and the various agencies have missed 63% of the deadlines stipulated in the act. Many of those new regulations have yet to be finalized. Further, there are another 36% of the act which the government has yet to address. Five years after the crisis and three after the passage of Dodds-Frank, the industry is still uncertain as to what is going to happen. Whatever the results, the banks are all going to have to function in the same, regulatory approved method, about which no one has any real world experience. Expect stuff to go wrong in many different ways. Expect the banking system to function less efficiently, and investment decisions to be less reliable.

Then there is the larger size of the Federal Government in the economy. Its annual deficit and demand for funds has been soaking up the capital of the country. This astonishing level of spending is expected to continue, regardless of the activity or lack there of in the real economy.

There is the continuous effort by the Federal Reserve Board to manipulate the economy into growth by completely destroying any meaning to the pricing of capital. Interest rates mean almost nothing now for the business decision maker. He has no tool to determine if his capital project is going to be profitable or if the capital he needs is actually there.

A business decision maker might also be concerned with the changes in the level of new money being introduced into the market. He might be concerned about the lack of stability in what the Fed and the rest of the government is doing or can be expected to do. He has no idea or source to understand what is going to happen. But to him, the difference between 2.5% and 3% interest on loans is not as significant. You can readily see that since 2009, there has been no rush to borrow and invest as interest rates were lowered and have remained at historic lows.

I have seen commentators and business people point out that current profits are from cost cutting, not from new investments coming on line. They point out that there is only a limited amount of costs that can be cut and that point is being reached. There is a certain amount of growth through merger and acquisition, which isn’t economic growth, but still cost cutting. There may be some investment due to the need to replace plant and equipment. But there is little growth.

None of this is similar to the economic context in the U.S. since the end of WWII. Except for the inflation years ending in 1982, business has had sufficient confidence in the future to invest and grow. That isn’t the case today or for the last five years.

Could confidence return and get us going again? I don’t think we can know until the situation calms down and the government stops tinkering. It is possible that the government won’t stop. It is possible that the restrictions on action will overcome the American businessman. That will happen at some point. We just don’t know.

But we do know that the situation is sufficiently different today so as to make application of successful personal investment policies from the 80s and 90s uncertain. The context has changed. That is a major deal. If you are serious about your investments, you have to recognize the underlying premises about how the economy functions.

When I read some of the economic analysis offered by people with mainstream approaches, I see that they treat all non-communist economies the same, regardless of the level of government intrusion. In their mind an economy will continue going along somehow. They believe that the government’s impact is necessarily either minor or for the good of the economy. That is the same attitude of the standard works on investment: the economy is not going to change significantly when the government acts. But that is not true. You need to recognize that there is a point in which the government’s actions are making normal economic activity too difficult. That has been happening now. It might be temporary, I am not going to rationalistically say that we have reached the point of no return. Nor am I going to say that the current situation may calm down and people can work within the levels of controls we will have. But, it will happen. Don’t ignore it.

The Fiscal Cliff and the Whole Context

These days we are swamped with TV and internet coverage of the fiscal cliff scheduled to occur on January 1st. What the cliff amounts to is a reduction in government deficit spending, which in itself is a good thing. But, since the deficit would still be astoundingly and disastrously large, the cliff isn’t as big a deal as one would wish. That the “cuts” are in fact just reductions in the rate of spending increases and not reductions in spending, it is clear that the whole thing is mostly a sham (e.g., see).

On the other hand, since the reduction in the deficit would be mostly tax hikes, the pain would fall on the productive population. In the context of the economy, it is spending that needs to be reduced. An increase in taxes would be an additional drag on the economy, increase the rate of the decline of our standard of living, and enhance the movement toward destruction of rights and the importance of the individual in our society. What happens with the fiscal cliff could hasten the slide toward a fate like Greece or Spain. We really don’t want that to happen. Of the options that Obama seems to accept, i.e., no deal or higher tax on high incomes levels and no spending cuts, I find it hard to choose. There is some indication that BO wants a limited increase in taxes and increases in spending, which could be worse.

But the fiscal cliff is just part of the problem: the hoopla over the “fiscal cliff” provides a smoke screen covering additional pending disasters for our economy, namely, the beginning of the implementing of ObamaCare taxes and regulations, and the coming tidal wave of Dodd-Frank and other anti-business regulations.

Quite possibly the impact of Dodd-Frank will dwarf the fiscal-cliff. It has already drastically restructured parts of the financial community. There are many regulations still to be issued from Dodd-Frank (many are already late) and they all are intended on reducing the range of options of a financial institution, which will lower its profitability, more tightly limit its decision making capability, and reduce its ability to fund American production.

ObamaCare has many elements (some still little known) that will be instituted in 2013 that will raise business costs, lower employment, and cause further problems with health insurance and medical costs. All of these together, including whatever nonsense ends up as the “solution” to the fiscal cliff, will mean slower growth, or possibly recession for the US economy (which won’t be good for the world economy either).

Think what that will mean for the federal deficit and budget.

We have seen many projections as to when the federal revenue will equal the sum of interest payments on debt, Social Security, and Medicare, in other words, severe problems with funding the government and retaining the appearance of the safety of government debt. If you look closely at each, I expect that you will see that the assumptions include some growth in the US economy and that there will be a significant number of people paying the Social Security and Medicare taxes. But, with four more years of BO and the total number of people employed remaining low (as opposed to actually producing; and as opposed to the unemployment figures that are meaningless), tax revenue, including FICA, is not going to grow while the interest on federal debt, even at today’s absurdly low levels, Social Security and Medicare demands will grow rapidly. The only way to pay for defense and the astounding number of programs the federal government supports, is to constantly grow the deficit. It is also possible that Obama will try to raise taxes, but that may be too obviously destructive for today’s population.

The federal deficit will be the tipping point, but the real cause of death for our economy is the restrictions on doing business and producing. The arguments about spending and deficits need to begin including emphatic emphasis on the disaster of regulation.

For us, the unwilling and resisting passengers on this train into the tunnel of death, it means that we need to arrange our thinking to prepare personally and philosophically. I will leave to you the personal preparations (I am thinking about a potential blog post on this topic.)

Philosophically, we need to emphatically tell anyone we can that the coming mess is not the result of capitalism or selfishness (maybe we can equate blaming the Jews in Germany after WW1 with blaming capitalists). That is in addition to the stuff we are already doing, e.g., focusing on helping ARI and other similar activities and aiming at the destructive educational system we have.

And now for a final comment that is going to be a theme for me:

Understanding the Objectivist philosophical method is vital to anyone concerned about his freedom, as well as his life in general, of course. Recently I have been getting my own intense reminder. I have been reading Understanding Objectivism and The DIM Hypothesis. I want to emphatically recommend these books. If you want to understand an individual’s mental functioning, UO is the book to read. It is also helpful in leading up to the other one. To better understand the trends and conflicts in our own situation here in the US, The DIM Hypothesis is absolutely necessary. It is very philosophical. But philosophy matters, and our conflicts today are philosophical. For your own sake, read them.

My Predictions

Although I originally began this blog with the idea of keeping track of inflation and potential results for prices and prosperity in general, I haven’t engaged in prediction. My focus has been on commentary. We are, however, at a point that offers some interesting prospects for the future and I though it might be interesting and possibly helpful to suggest a possible set of outcomes.

Specifically, at this point in late 2012 the governments in the major economies have either implemented or are poised to implement some massive monetary flooding, which they call “easing.” The U.S. Federal Reserve officials have announced an open ended $40B a month scheme that will continue until either employment begins increasing or the end of time, whichever comes first. In Europe, the European Central Bank is ready to create unlimited amounts of money, claiming that it has to reduce the spread in government bond prices (between Spain and Italy, who have had to pay high interest rates, and Germany’s very low rates). China is expected to begin more “easing” in that it is currently seeing a much deeper and more significant drop in economic activity than the government seemed to expect. Apparently they thought that they were a separate, insulated entity. In response, just as any Western mixed economy government would do, the Chinese are moving toward spending newly made-up money. Japan has just begun its own easing program and England began theirs a few months ago. There is a great orgy of money creation in progress.

Those countries with “strong” currencies are also involved. They really don’t want to see their competitive position undercut by having other currencies diving in comparative cost, making their own products much more expensive on the world market. One example is that Switzerland’s central bank been buying euros for several months to keep their currency in line. As has been said by others, there is something akin to the arms race growing where every country inflates their currency in competition with the others. This process could also lead to protectionism, with higher tariffs and import controls.

As long as our economic problems are seen as the consequences of low consumption or low demand (and demand is seen as just money and not production related), we can always expect that the government response will be to create more money. There is some fear of the new money increasing consumer prices beyond a certain level (generally at an annual rate of 2% - some poison is good for you apparently). This concern is an interesting hold over from a point where government economists had a closer contact with reality. But there is little concern about the prospects for unacceptable levels of price inflation. It is the case that the upward pressure on prices from constant increases in the money supply tends to be less when production levels are low.

Consequently, we can expect that we will soon see a lot more money being created and put into the larger, more industrialized economies and interest rate will remain extremely low.

The amount of money that actually comes into the U.S. economy is a question for which I have no good answer. There is certainly some, but not as much as you might think when you hear the Fed brag about its easing. The money created by the Fed for QE1 and QE2 is mostly still sitting at the Fed in the deposit accounts for member banks receiving 0.25% a year.

 

The money supply has continued to grow, but the pace is not as fast as one might expect.

 

You can see in the graph that the average dollar amount of growth every year has been somewhat consistent. That means that the percentage rate of growth is falling. To just keep the constant percentage rate, this graph would need to show a much larger constantly increasing dollar amount, as the total grew each year.

As a result, consumer prices have moved upward modestly in the last few years (by comparison) and asset prices are mixed (housing downward and equities upward, but less than the CPI). Only bond prices have moved upward, as the Fed has moved to force down long-term interest rates as well as short-term. Long-term rates are very low, especially considering the need for capital in our economy. There is no connection today between savings, investment, interest rates, and the capital markets.

In these conditions, I wonder what the Fed believes that more “quantitative easing” or lower interest rates, could achieve. They talk about lowering unemployment as if the problem is that jobs are not being created for of financial reasons. Here we have an excellent example of theoretical, rationalist thinking that doesn’t consider even the possibility of looking at the real world. At present, there is no connection between the interest rate (including the supply of money) and investment/growth decisions. For a business, the difference between 3% and 2.5% on a long-term, profitable investment is insignificant. The real question for businesses is whether the project could be profitable. Some companies have invested when they have cash on hand. Many are considering a merger or acquisition, which doesn’t add to our productive capacity (although it might improve efficiency). But U.S. companies see no justification in future profitability to make the investment needed to put over two million people to work. The Fed and the Government, and Romney and the Republicans just don’t see that.

Another upcoming set of events in the U.S that could have a negative impact on our economy is the end of the Bush tax cuts and the spending cuts required by law. These events, both scheduled for January 1, 2013, won’t improve the capital and investment situation, although the rate of growth of government debt will slow some. At least in the short-term, if the tax cuts do end and the rate of spending slows, the immediate result will be a drag on the U.S. economy.

I am not convinced that the supposed mandatory cuts in spending are particularly important economically. Some people try to make this situation seem cataclysmic by quoting a cut of over a trillion dollars. That is fraud, since that is a ten-year number. As is always the case with government cuts, they are loaded mostly into the latter years. I think that the 2013 number is closer to $69B, which is for the full year. When you are talking about a multi-trillion budget and a deficit of over a trillion dollars, sixty-nine billion is an accounting error.

But saying “cuts” is intended to be misleading. The Congress didn’t pass a cut in spending. They authorized a reduction in the expected growth of spending. It was a cut from what they thought current laws would require the government would spend. There is not going to be a cut in spending. Let me repeat: These are not cuts in spending but small reductions in the growth of spending. Even so, there may be some companies that will feel an impact in their expected revenue from government contracts. But, economically, compared to the total level of spending and the prospect of more “easing”, big deal.

Combined, the tax cut, possible cuts in the growth of spending, and the Fed’s money flood, mean that there will be less money in people’s pocketbooks, but more, potentially, in the banking system. Remember that the way the Fed’s money gets into the economy is via bank loans. If the banks continue to maintain their stricter standards there is not going to be a significant increase in bank loans. In fact, the current trend is for lower corporate profits, meaning that businesses will be less credit worthy than before (and stock prices should decline, instead of booming). In addition, ever since the beginning of the “Great Recession,” bank regulators have been constantly checking on the “quality” of bank loans. Unless regulators are willing to loosen the strings, banks aren’t taking any riskier loans. I don’t see much of the Fed’s new money getting into the economy. That is not to say that there won’t be an effect. As in the past, there is a tendency to some money to find its way into assets.

In addition, the final Dodd-Frank regulations have yet to appear and the costly ObamaCare provisions are coming into effect. All businesses, but especially banks, are legitimately confident that their costs will increase significantly and their range of action considerably curtailed. Startup businesses have declined. dramatically. For the economic/cultural pessimist, there is much support in the U.S.

In Europe, the central bank is being pushed into acting because the market for Spanish and Italian government bonds demands much higher returns to compensate for higher risk. Personally, I think that there is no uncertainty. Neither Spain nor Italy will be able to repay their bonds in the coming years. (I equate being given worthless money with not being paid.). So the higher rates are certainly justified. But enough of the euro country governments don’t like that. The higher rates mean that Spain and Italy would have to face their insolvency soon, which would be a big problem for the other euro government countries. So the euro block is pushing the central bank to create money to avoid reality. In this case the money will go directly into government spending and will have very negative consequences. Not the least consequence will be a lessening of the pressure on Spain and Italy to solve their problems. (Spain is expected to need the euro bank bailout. No one is currently talking about Italy, but its economy is heading the same direction.) By creating money to buy government bonds the European Central Bank is defaulting on the loans by directly creating inflation and thus reducing the purchasing power of the money that bought the bonds. Everyone in Europe is ignoring that fact. In addition, there will be a lot of upward pressure on prices and everyone will feel the cost. But, most of all, the importance of freeing their economies and being fiscally responsible can be evaded. The ultimate result will be greater disasters.

I expect that China’s new money will be similar to earlier efforts, which went primarily into government owned and controlled businesses, shrinking the portion of the economy that is private. It may also be more of a “consumption” orientation, which will mean less of a push in industrialization, and a move toward Western ideas of a consumer driven economy. That government decision would necessarily reduce the growth rate even without the normal consequences of asset booms and busts.

If more “easing” won’t help solve the unemployment problem (who cares about actual production?) and thus won’t help with economic activity, what will it do?

Well, the U.S. economy isn’t going to grow much, if at all. In fact, it could contract. If the new money just sits at the Fed as before, we needn’t worry about hyperinflation. The money supply will grow, but not significantly faster than before, although those numbers should be watched carefully.

I heard someone point out that since the first “easing” the Dow has risen 4000 points and since the second “easing” nearly 3000. I am sure that the Dow and other indexes will raise some more. The Dow has already gone up a few hundred points since the Fed announcement. What would a push by the Fed be without a serious increase in asset prices? Commodity prices could also rise. Some are saying that industrial commodities, such as copper, will not because industrial production is tending to fall. But the money being created will go somewhere. You just need to keep an eye out to see where that is.

So, if you want to put your money somewhere, based upon recent history, there you are! Just be careful about your timing and don’t lose perspective about the causes of the asset price rise and its duration. Be ready to short.

Of course, economic events are really harder to predict than that, especially in a controlled economy. Something will happen that we don’t foresee and things will happen differently than we expect. One thing we do know, whatever happens, it’s unlikely to be good.

Long-term, the consequence of all of this “easing” is to probably bring the day of reckoning closer, possibly by years. With unemployment staying down, Social Security and Medicare spending will continue to widen the gap between tax income and spending. The demands upon the Treasury will increase, meaning more debt. The low levels of production will mean that wealth is not being created and our personal wealth and standard of living will continue to fall.

I think that money can be made from the chaos and misallocation of resources. You just have to pick your method based upon the circumstances and pay attention to the situation.


P.S. I just listened to Yaron Brook on the Mike Slater show (via a notification from Lassiez-Faire). He says so much of what I just mentioned. I really did work it out before. But he says it well.

Germany and the Euro Problems

I think that there is one interesting aspect to the turmoil in Europe. Well, okay, two. The one I am not referring to here is the revenge of reality. Borrowing to consume, especially as a national policy is stupid. It can only be done as a direct result of determined evasion of the fact that you are still going to be alive, or be a country, in the next minute. We should be very familiar with this trend. It is what is happening in Washington today.

What I want to discuss here is what is happening within and toward Germany: what the Germans are thinking and doing, and how people are acting toward Germany as Europe grapples with Greece’s very high government debt.

In more than one news article Germany has been called the paymaster, that is, ultimately, it is Germany who will provide the funds for bailing out every stupid government, that includes not just the Greeks, the Irish, the Spanish, and the Portugese, but also, when their time comes, the Italians and the French, although even German isn’t wealthy enough to save them all. In fact, the French have pushed policies recently that would have required the ECB, the European Central Bank, to fund recapitalizing the banks in France and elsewhere. That really means that Germany would be the source of the capital. The Germans said no, do it yourself.

There are other European governments besides Germany that have been more responsible in their fiscal habits that would have money to offer, but they are all small. Combined, the other governments would be dwarfed by problems in Greece. No, only Germany is large enough and wealthy enough to have the capacity to bail out a small country like Greece.

This recognition also includes the understanding that it isn’t just money that is required. This understanding comes from Germany. Others, many others, both within and outside of government, are calling for the ECB to just inflate their way out of the current mess. On some level Germany understands that doing so would destroy their wealth, and they aren’t willing to do that. So far, the ECB has been controlled by the Germans.

Then we have the people who explain the entire problem in terms of Germany’s scheme when the euro zone was established to construct it for their own benefit. The most consistent and clear statement of this view that I have seen comes from Stratfor, a private “intelligence” firm in the U.S. In a report, “Germany's Role in Europe and the European Debt Crisis”, published January 31, 2012, Stratfor argues that Germany engineered the agreements setting up the bloc and the common currency to make them wealthy.

[a cause] relates to Germany's status as the world's second-largest exporter. About 40 percent of German gross domestic product comes from exports, much of them to the European Union. For all their discussion of fiscal prudence and care, the Germans have an interest in facilitating consumption and demand for their exports across Europe. Without these exports, Germany would plunge into depression.
Therefore, the Germans have used the institutions and practices of the European Union to maintain demand for their products. Through the currency union, Germany has enabled other eurozone states to access credit at rates their economies didn't merit in their own right. In this sense, Germany encouraged demand for its exports by facilitating irresponsible lending practices across Europe. The degree to which German actions encouraged such imprudent practices -- since German industrial production vastly outstrips its domestic market, making sustained consumption in markets outside Germany critical to German economic prosperity -- is not fully realized.
True austerity within the European Union would have been disastrous for the German economy, since declines in consumption would have come at the expense of German exports. While demand from Greece is only a small portion of these exports, Greece is part of the larger system -- and the proper functioning of that system is very much in Germany's strategic interests. The Germans claim the Greeks deceived their creditors and the European Union. A more comprehensive explanation would include the fact that the Germans willingly turned a blind eye. Though Greece is an extreme case, Germany's overall interest has been to maintain European demand -- and thus avoid prudent austerity -- as long as possible.

This explanation is pure Maciovellan real politics and Marxist economics thinking that have been standard for a couple centuries. Supposedly, Germany could only become wealthy by sucking the wealth from others. Never mind that its best trading partners are other wealthy countries (or countries that are developing, like China). Never mind that the Greeks (and Spain and Italy, etc.) choose to borrow based on their own social welfare goals (that was the first cause that Stratfor mentions, but then ignores completely in its focus on Germany).

Also, in the same report, Stratfor states clearly that Greece and any of the others must stop this spending binge, without any hint of the supposed consequence to Germany. If they were consistent, they would be selling Germany short.

The Germans are well aware that they are going to be the paymaster. Even the man in the street understands the situation well enough to consider the wisdom of going ahead with the bailouts. The Greek bailout is especially irksome because the Greeks have pushed their wage rates above those in Germany (the monthly, legal, minimum wage in Greece is much higher than Germany’s, and all the other European countries), the Greeks have failed to follow through on the promises they made for the first round of the bailout, and the protestors in Greece have called the Germans names that no German can tolerate.

Which brings us to the attitude of the Greeks, themselves. A few have shown that they understand the situation. That seems to include a few politicians. To begin to move the government toward policies that Germany would accept, the Greeks had to make a man prime minister who was not a politician. When Germany demanded a lot more than promises, the politicians dithered for days. And when the vote was actually taken, many politicians in the largest parties voted against the bailout.

The Greek technocrat government does recognize that the country is bankrupt. The bailout offered by the other European countries is not to actually make them whole, but to give them the time to put themselves right. This isn’t a free lunch, just a little support. The support gives them the cash necessary to redeem debt falling due in March and the money to meet payrolls and continue operating without resorting to adding more debt to their total (and nationalize the banks). The Greek government must still find ways to spend less and income sources to pay off more debt. By 2020 it is suppose to reduce its debt from 160% GDP to 120%. For a country that does not produce much, in which the government accounts for about 40% of the economy, which has a culture of avoiding work and accepting corruption, and sees no connection between receiving money and production, getting the government to change its budget from a big annual deficit to a surplus is an overwhelming task. I don’t think that it can be done in a few months or a few years.

Then we have the Greek people. This is a democracy in the finest sense of the word. The population seems to think that it is fine for others to sacrifice and pay for the Greek life style. We have the government workers, who tend to not work, but spend their days shopping and sitting in cafes. We have the workers at government owned companies, who expect to be taken care of regardless of their lack of productivity and their willingness to cause disruption within the company and within the country. You have the employees of private companies who see government controls as the way to keep their job and income without regard to their productivity or the company’s financial health. You have the retired or the soon to be retired who were promised certain pensions and are angry that there is no money to meet those promises. These groups may not add up to the majority but they (and their relatives) are still a large enough portion of the population to be the deciding factor in elections. All of these groups have indicated they are angry about the changes required by the Euro Zone counties, led by Germany. What these elements of the Greek population think should be done hasn’t been reported that I know of. But, when interviewed, they all seem to think that their benefits should remain in place. How? Somehow!

So Germany is singled out for abuse. Memories (by people who weren’t there, for the most part) of past German sins are recalled. Ignoring the difference between sending troops to kill and providing money to maintain irrational finances, Germans are damned as dictators and Nazis. Some of the Greeks proclaim that the answer is communism, ignoring that it also failed the same way Greece is failing and that it has killed more people than the Nazis did.

One would expect that the Germans are angry about their treatment from the Greeks. I am sure that many Germans would prefer to just let the Greeks sink and be done with them. The more responsible of the Germans are not willing to do so. They do recognize that doing so would have very negative consequences for Germany for some time. I could argue that the long-run, self-interest of the Germans would be better served by unentangling themselves from their self-destructive neighbors, that their neighbors are going to continue to be problems and will require more and ever larger amounts of money. But that would be too selfish, and too painful in the short run, I suppose.

What Germany is looking at is that if Greece goes then Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and then Italy and probably France, too. They are thinking that solving the Greek problem will tend to prop up the others and they all can begin healing together. It is a pipe dream, but it is also the consequences of the premises with which Germany began. I do expect that Germany did expect the other governments to behave and control their fiscal budgets. That was a delusion and the Germans kept that delusion and tended to ignore what the other countries were actually doing. Germany is kind of an anomaly in that it is a social welfare state with a post WW2 tradition of some fiscal responsibility. It has even demonstrated how to absorb a backward country, East Germany, and grow. One has to have a certain respect for how Germany functions. Yet, they are still pretending that their own demographics problem doesn’t exist and they won’t have the same major debt problem as the rest of us. They still only pay attention to the next moment in time. They are still only a democracy that will tear itself apart under pressure. But they are holding themselves together much better than Italy or France.

So, to avoid the very nasty problems that letting Greece go to pieces, the Germans are willing to take on the obligations of bailing them out. The just completed bailout package includes sections intended to keep the Greeks on course, which the Greeks find insulting. Interesting isn’t it that the Greeks failed to follow through on their previous promises when they received money, and they are now insulted because their saviors don’t trust them.

The entire package is intended to assist the Greeks to lower their debt level from 160% of GDP today to 120.5% by 2020 (isn’t it interesting that they think that they can be so precise?). Usually, projections like this tend to have growth levels that can’t be maintained and the whole thing is fantasy. I expect that the projected growth levels in the bailout projections aren’t high at all, but I bet that the Europeans expect the Greek economy to begin growing sometime within the next couple years. I don’t know why. All of the capital within the country is either being soaked up by taxes or bonds, or has left the country. Who wants to invest in Greece? Is a Greek worker worth the effort? Has the Greek government actually made it easier or even possible for an investor to safely put his money there, let alone expect profits? According to online sources, manufacturing is only 18% of the economy. Production has been leaving Greece because of the business climate and the Greek worker. Why go back? As far as I can see, what has happened so far will not lead Greece to a growing economy and that means that it is going to continue to shrink, the government budget will not generate a surplus, debt will not decline (and will probably increase), the percentage of debt to GDP will not get anywhere near to 120%, and Greece will default with very messy consequences. Germany will have poured real money down a deep hole.