From a comrade,
1. “Spain is not Greece.”
Elena Salgado, Spanish Finance minister, Feb. 20102. “Portugal is not Greece.”
The Economist, 22nd April 2010.3. “Ireland is not in ‘Greek Territory.’”
Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan.4. “Greece is not Ireland.”
George Papaconstantinou, Greek Finance minister, 8th November, 2010.5. “Spain is neither Ireland nor Portugal.”
Elena Salgado, Spanish Finance minister, 16 November 2010.6. “Neither Spain nor Portugal is Ireland.”
Angel Gurria, Secretary-general OECD, 18th November, 2010.7. “Spain is not Uganda”
Rajoy to Guindos… Last weekend!8. “Italy is not Spain”
Ed Parker, Fitch MD, 12 June 2012
.. it follows: “Europe is not United”
This is not really related to this topic, but I wonder what you make of this: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/06/14/there-is-no-link-between-the-size-of-the-state-and-growth/
The graph is rather misleading. It plots government *revenue* rather than government *expenditure*. Japan has a much larger state than the graph would suggest!! and is in debt to 300% of GDP which is future revenue to be found by confiscating wealth (either by “QE”/inflation or more openly through taxation).
Also there are notable omissions. China? India? they *spend* much less in terms of GDP on the state. Hong Kong? Singapore?
So the x-axis has been chosen to mislead & endebted countries cherry picked to fit a socialist world view/agenda that state spending is what ought to drive an economy. It is a misdirection, what we really should be debating is “What should the role of the state be?”
Economics shouldn’t even come into it IMO.
With there performance in the Football, it looks like Greece is going to be out of two Euros this year.
If there was ‘in-blog betting’ you might just have lost your stake.
What’s the betting that, aftr last night’s result, Voters are persuaded that they DO want to stay in the Euros after all?
But then: “Greece is not Spain”.
That made me chuckle a bit, thanks 🙂
“The UK is not Portugal/Italy/Ireland/Greece/Spain”
George Osborne, soon.