Germany wrote the 130 billion Euro check, but Greece has already blown it on ouzo, cigarettes and KY Jelly...
Governments Gone Wild
Governments have been borrowing, spending with profligacy, buying votes with welfare payments, and debasing national currencies in attempts to hide what they are doing. Some governments in the EU borrowed from private banks with abandon on the assumption that the European Central Bank would be forced to bail them out, which it has by reluctantly printing euros.
Does this sound like a crisis of capitalism/free markets/economic freedom? No. It is a crisis of profligate government. (Eustace Davie - Did Capitalism Fail?)
Keynesians Give Keynes a Bad Name
The Keynesian fallacy is in essence one of getting something for nothing. By Keynesian fiscal stimulus, normally involving spending more money though occasionally through tax cuts, providing they avoid the annoyingly savings-prone rich, we are supposed to produce additional economic output whenever there is an "output gap" from full employment, that is, in all conditions save those of a raging boom, when resources are scarce.
Keynes himself recommended such stimulus only at the bottom of deep recessions, and suggested that it should be balanced by running budget surpluses in times of boom. Needless to say, his disciples have neglected the disciplines he recommended.
In the 1930s, US president Herbert Hoover's reckless expansion of government spending, including loans to cronies through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, caused further slowdown in the economy, which was exacerbated by his dreadful early 1932 increase in the top marginal rate of tax from 25% to 63%.
In the US case, the Barack Obama stimulus converted a vigorous recovery into an anemic one; only in the third quarter of 2011, after the effects of stimulus had begun to wear off, did output begin to accelerate and unemployment trend down... (The True Cost of Keynes)
Bend over, we're next...
