Our recession was precipitated by the mortgage loan scandal. Too many banks lent too much money to people who had insufficient resources to service those loans. The banks should have known never to lend money to people who do not have the resources to pay it back. Simple?

Now compare that with the EU. Here are some excerpts from an article in the Telegraph, by By Bruno Waterfield:

“After a humiliating week of denying it needed help, the Dublin government succumbed to pressure from other euro zone countries and asked for a ‘very big’ loan.”

“On Monday Irish and euro zone governments will be watching the markets after Greece, which received a £94 billion bail-out in April, warned that the EU’s debt crisis was not finished yet.”

“Portugal has already warned that there is a “high risk” it might need economic help. If investors are unconvinced by the Irish rescue package, the euro could come under pressure while the cost of borrowing for the Dublin government could rise.”

“George Papaconstantinou, the Greek finance minister, warned that the Irish bailout would not be enough to plug the euro zone’s black hole of debt. ‘Even if Ireland is helped, it cannot prevent the debt crisis from continuing,’ he said ‘[It] will focus on other countries: Spain, Portugal.'”

Sound familiar? The EU, rather than using its own monetarily sovereign powers, and giving money to its monetarily non-sovereign members, it is lending money to these already insolvent countries, thereby adding to their inability to pay their debts — just like the U.S. banks did with their mortgage lending.

So now, the load falls on one of the few monetarily sovereign nations in the EU, the U.K. But wait. The U.K., which wisely did not adopt the euro, and so remained monetarily sovereign, doesn’t realize it’s monetarily sovereign, as witness this statement in the article:

“Douglas Carswell, the Conservative U.K. MP for Clacton, said that British involvement in the bail-out would anger eurosceptics who had voted Tory for a tougher line on Europe. ‘Yet again we see that the people we elected to run the country in May are powerless. All they can do is tell us how unhappy they are about it but they continue to hand out billions to Europe at a time of austerity for the country,’ he said.”

So Britain, which retained the unlimited ability to pay any bills of any size, now has opted instead for austerity, meaning money growth and economic growth will fall, leaving the U.K. headed for a second, easily preventable recession.

And finally,

“Negotiations have been tense as the EU and IMF impose tough conditions to force Ireland to cut public expenditure by £13billion (Â 15bn) and to increase taxation on the vast majority of people. Ireland’s last three budgets have already cut spending by £12billion. Trade unions are warning of ‘civil unrest’ on scale not seen for decades as leaks of the spending plan reveal that there will be sharp tax rises for the low paid and middle class families in order to increase state revenue.

Eamon Devoy, general secretary of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union, said: ‘I think there is going to be huge civil unrest. When the draconian measures being proposed are heaped on top of cuts already implemented, life in Ireland will be unbearable.'”

Austerity. Civil unrest. Massive increases in unsupportable debt by monetarily non-sovereign governments. All unnecessary and all linked to two false beliefs: The belief that monetarily non-sovereign governments can continue indefinitely without financial support, and the belief that a monetarily sovereign nation needs to institute austerity.

In the U.S., the debt-hawks created such debt hysteria, that the only way to recover from a recession and grow the economy — i.e. with federal deficit spending — was partially blocked in the past, and now seems totally blocked. If the debt hawks have their way, we soon will be, like the EU monetarily non-sovereign nations, wallowing in poverty and civil unrest.

Please contact your Congresspeople and your local media, and tell them to educate themselves on the meanings and implications of monetary sovereignty, before it’s too late.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

No nation can tax itself into prosperity. Those who say the stimulus “didn’t work” remind me of the guy whose house is on fire. A neighbor runs with a garden hose and starts spraying, but the fire continues. The neighbor wants to call the fire department, which would bring the big hoses, but the guy says, “Don’t call. As you can see, water doesn’t put out fires.”