Ominous Signs in Greece

The outcome of the Greek elections are even more worrisome than the French outcome.  What is disturbing is the rise of extreme groups on both sides of the spectrum, and the fracturing of power in the middle.  This polarization is reminiscent of Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s before Hitler came to power.   The left and the right battled it out in the streets.  And there is a new class of scapegoat in Greece, the immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.  Greeks look at their own wages and benefits declining and ask themselves why are there so many foreigners receiving assistance from the government? 

But the one thing that all parties on either extreme seem to agree on is their common loathing for austerity measures required to pay back the national debt.  The parties in the middle don't care for austerity either, but they are at least realistic in realizing that the spending can't go on and that they need to pay back their debts.
 
Greece appears poised to reneg on its deals with the euro zone, and is probably now solidly on the path to defaulting and exiting the Euro.  What then will become of the Euro?  Investors will continue to lose faith in the Euro and look for other safe havens. 

This could play well for the US as long as the American people are smart enough to remove from the White House by means of the election in November the idiot they idiotically placed there in 2008.  Obama and his band of loons have created so much economic uncertainty and so many threats of new regulation and oppression of small to midsize businesses that they are all playing a wait-and-see game.  There will be no more significant hiring until November or at least until the polls show clearly that Obama is going to be out.  If the polls show otherwise, businesses will start looking at the regulations and hire some lawyers, but not many workers.

This is what over regulation does for you.  You get an increase in lawyers and accountants, but that is generally not the core competency of most businesses.  And so you don't get growth;  you grow only in your ability to cope with the new regulations.

California is a shining example.  The regulations are so stifling that entrepreneurial people are leaving the state in droves.  California was recently ranked dead last among states for business-friendliness,.  The upshot is that you will ultimately get a situation like East Germany.  The innovative people left and the lazy people without initiative and eager to be dependent on the state, gladly stayed behind and let the state take care of them.

And yet this is precisely the sort of nanny state that Obama and his cohorts seem to envision.  But they are nothing more than demagogues.  They are only really interested in getting another four-year gig in the White House.