Relieved
Greece
In the spring of 2009 I had lunch with a couple of economists in Fairfax, one of them was Tyler Cowen, an amiable man with a healthy sense of humor.
In today’s Herald Tribune Mr. Cowen writes:
“Greece is not the only country that suddenly feels poorer. Britain faces budget deficits at about 12 percent of G.D.P., and Italy has a debt-to-G.D.P. ratio of 110 percent. In the United States, the housing and job markets are recovering only in fits and starts and we face significant future Medicare liabilities. This is the era of the rude economic awakening, and Greece is simply an extreme manifestation. The new European bailout plan is a denial of this truth rather than recognition of the new reality that a lot of countries, most of all Greece, aren’t as rich as we used to think.”
If the crisis of 2008-20?? taught me one thing it is that I’m not as rich as I used to think. I’m somehow relieved that I’m in the company of Greece and the U.K.
Mr. Cowen's blog -
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/Bernard
And what about Belgium? Us? We are bancrupt, we only know to hide it very well.Mieke
Your family’s suffering doesn’t comfort me at all.Arnon
You are soo decent. Lot's of people in the village secretely laugh.Arnon
By the way, we aren't suffering.follow your US columns
Dear Arnon,i read your columns regularly. always interesting altho yr take on the US is typical of dutch journalist/writers. i lived/wrote there some 33 years and find yr cheerleading quality about how great it is there a typical romanticized blindspot. take yr recent piece on noam chomsky whom i also often read especially his political material. yes, indeed israel is in the wrong. but as you must know israel is basically the 51st US state and mirrors US policy to the tune of $5 billion annually. OK, that said, knowing people who have worked with chomsky and knowing how little he is actually heard in the US [simultaneously ironic and logical] wouldn't it be only fair to point out the fact that he is de facto censored / ignored by 99% of US media? this article sez a bit about this fact: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2006/05/chomsky_at_home_abroad_1.html
you are often right on about the world but when it comes to yr adopted home you have an incredible blindspot as big as slyvia witteman does. which goes some way toward undermining yr veracity.
thanx, yrs in amsterdam
bart plantenga
Mr. Plantenga
The last time I checked all of Mr. Chomsky’s books are widely available on amazon.Paul Auster has a higher standing in France than in the U.S. Would you call this censorship?
