Dawn -- Operation Phoenix

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Subject: Dawn

Author:
Allen Currie

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Date Posted: 21:14:13 04/27/12 Fri

Dawn
Yes Spain is definitely in trouble and unfortunately it is probably among the "to big to fail." Greece, (definitely with further to fall regardless of how grim it already is) has already bled the parts of Europe able to respond, pretty dry. It might be arguable that if Spain were the first in this row of dominoes that it might not be "to big to fail" (I don't agree) and if countries like Germany had not rescued East Germany and Greece they MIGHT have the capacity to somewhat do a Greek type rescue of Spain. Despite all the propaganda, France, England, and almost all the newer members of the ECM are not in any shape to do any rescuing of anyone including themselves.

It is interesting to study Iceland who somewhat quietly went under. In my mind three very interesting factors have enabled Iceland to recover from deathly grim results to survivable living quite quickly. (Definitely NOT the land of milk and honey but survivable.) First, Icelands primary developed natural resource, thermally generated electricity, didn't suddenly come to a stop as many of the high tech oil extraction facilities will in a collapse. Firms like the high energy component aluminum companies still had world demand for their product and their production barely hiccuped. Secondly apparently, somehow, a fairly significant percentage of the population was in a position to emmigrate and did so. While the economic pie was indeed much smaller, there were less slices required to feed the remaining populace.

Thirdly, and most importantly in my mind, Iceland took its medicine immediately rather than kicking the can down the road like the rest of the world seems intent on doing. They let the privately owned banks go under. The rest of the political world was horrified. Governments immediately think of their own treasuries as necessaty to maintaining their power. Their banking sytems control all their money and therefore their treasuries. The Icelandic government did what it had to and stepped down. They should be given the highest honors mankind is capable of bestowing on them. The first rule of holes is to stop digging.

Allen

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