The Big Question: Should the U.S. help with Greece’s bailout?

Bernie Quigley, Pundits Blog Contributor, said:

No. The IMF, The World Bank, the Clintonization of the world are ideas that time has passed by. Decentralization is the rising forum here, there and everywhere. In economic reality world there are new countries – China, Israel and India, for example – and old countries like Greece and England. The old are finishing off long arcs of irrelevance. It is especially hard to see how relevant Greece has been to globalization except as a resting place for rich New Yorkers. The new people have new energies; the old are tagging along. Greece should be its own place with its own currency and its own way about itself. And so should everyone. Let the Germans be Germans and the Greeks be Greeks. EU was always destined to be a poor knock off of the U.S. The very idea of globalization is simply a theme of the Americanization of the world since post-war victory in Europe and Japan. Time’s up. New century rising.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said:

Yes, but the condition should be that Greece gets out of the euro. Greece’s biggest problem is not its budget deficit, it’s that it can’t compete given its current wage and price structure. It can either adjust through a very long and painful process of deflation or it can adjust by devaluing its currency. The latter requires leaving the euro. It simple, easy, and fun. (OK, maybe not, but it sure beats a decade of double-digit unemployment.)

Peter Navarro, professor of economics and public policy at U.C. Irvine, said:

Don’t even go there. We’ve got huge budget deficits, and this is the eurozone’s problem. Any “U.S. support” would really be funded by our mortgage banker, the Chinese…

 
John F. McManus, president of The John Birch Society, said:

Let me re-phrase the question.
 
Should a nation already possessing the largest indebtedness in the history of the world bail out some other nation from its profligacy?
 
The answer has to be NO.
 
There is a great deal of discussion today about Obamacare, cap and trade, illegal immigration, energy dependence, and more. But the issue that should be uppermost on the minds of any American who wants this nation to continue as an independent entity should be our government’s catastrophic indebtedness.
 
The Obama administration admits the current fiscal year’s shortfall will greatly exceed $1 trillion. This will duplicate or exceed last year’s red ink total. We are allowing our government to mortgage the future for today’s children (and ourselves). Independence is on the line and current leaders are doing nothing to block the loss of sovereignty.  Instead, they are assuring that the day of reckoning will be sooner.
 
That anyone would even consider bailing out Greece disqualifies him or her from being consulted for input in any decision-making.

Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, said:

Put another way: Is Greece too big to fail?

We are being blackmailed once again. Remember it was the bank(sters) who railed that if we didn’t give them multi-billions they’d take the rest of us down with them, and this time they’re saying exactly the same thing. Yet the bad loans made by these banks will have to be sweated out of the economy somehow, by someone, sooner or later — why not now?

The US is in no position to bail out anyone. Those dominoes are falling, whether we like it or not: all we can do is postpone the day of reckoning. Borrow and spend, borrow and spend — it has to come to an end. Because you have to ask yourself this question: Who will bail US out? The Chinese? Don’t bet on it.

The Obama administration will be sorely tempted to monetize the US debt, i.e. print money in such quantities that the problem is “solved,” albeit very temporarily. But this will merely make things worse: We’ll get hyper-inflation, Weimar-style. And then — watch out.

Damon N. Spiegel, entrepreneur and writer, said:

Absolutely not. It is time for the United States to focus on it’s own economic health. If the United States ignores the consequences of our current fiscal irresponsibility we will find ourselves in the same position that Greece faces today. In addition, if and when the United States falls into an economic tornado if despair who is going to come to our rescue?  

It is time for the bailouts to cease.  Sovereign nations need to let free markets correct themselves. Bailouts are no different enablers…the problem won’t go away.

I feel for Greece and I feel for those that are suffering the pain of economic mismanagement but it is time for those to take responsibility for their own misguided actions.