Tuesday 25 May 2010

eclectic kool-aid acid test or unsolicited financial advice for the United and European Union of the Germans

I think it is interesting how the world's stock markets are given loaded animal symbolism but the verbs and adjectives that usually describe their movements, even on more upbeat days, reduce them to small and timid dogs shivering in the shadows. All this attribution feeds, also, the idea that the markets are something independent and other, like the roulette wheel estranged from the casino. As much as I would like to steer underwriters away from the DAX, Hang-Seng, FTSE and support real commodities whose value is measured more than just by change, like the evanescence rectangles of Newton's Calculus, it is a good thing for Merkel to lead the charge against blatant short-selling but one should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
The European economy is fundamentally strong, reinforced by prognosticators who wish to diminish the importance of the Eurozone in the overall hopes for economic recovery or sustainability, but states should not behave jump to curtail the social cushions that make European society what it is. Germany, for instance, could, rather than threatening to raise the retirement age or do away with Kindergeld, pattern a successful campaign from the French, where all workers had a two- or three-year holiday for certain holidays, giving up Whit-Monday as non-paid work day to replenish the coffers of public-funds. Putting people on a voluntary furlough can save a lot of money. Tuition for higher education could be increased, but just by a notch, and experimentally, to see what kind of profits are reaped. There German system of wire-transfers is very sophisticated and makes a lot of sense, but if there were just a slight increase to the tempo of remittances--perhaps disbursing dividends more than once a year, would be a boost to a marketplace that seems to float a lot of payments on trust and energia. The EU may not have had the requisite agility to deflect this first glancing blow, but EU members do not face the peril of internal solvencies. There's no quantitative easing, by definition, for countries using the euro, which is a dangerous and deceptive temptation where inflation and deflation are controlled by printing more money. Making the environment impoverished, warring Koreas, peak oil, or Big Brother are much bigger threats to livelihood, and the dollar and the pound should not be pull along the euro in the wake of tinkering with the monetary supplies.