Nanny State

The Nanny State is defined as a government that makes personal and private decisions for people that might otherwise make for themselves. This sounds like the elaborate welfare model of Western Europe, and our President's model for our future.

We know this model is not working out so well for Western Europe, especially Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Their day of reckoning is now. For too long their productivity has not matched their spending so they just charged the deficit to their kid's credit cards. Now they are sub-prime borrowers so the vig (a loan shark term for interest) has become unaffordable. How do they climb out of this hole that they have been digging for so many years?

Unlike our Central Bank ( The Federal Reserve) which has printed trillions of dollars, and artificially and temporarily kept our interest rates low, their Central Bank does not have the authority to print money. The Maastricht Treaty, which created the Euro Currency forbids the ECB (European Central Bank) from buying their debt. The Germans have long memories of their post WW1 inflation. Therefore, Western Europe does not have a