On Germany's fiscal greatness.

After reading young Mr. Ezra Klein putting down America -- "the way we fall" -- because the gig is up and the people refuse to keep let others continue buying on credit, with no idea at all on how we're going to pay for all these federal promises, short of raising taxes and reminding the rest of us "we're all in this together"...

I have to come right out and ask.

What did Germany do right, that the rest of the Westernized countries did not? You can joke about the PIIGS all you like (and grammatically, it makes no sense to call them the Portugal Iceland Ireland Greece Spain, so pretty much, give up the acronym, kids. Looking at you McArdle. Was cute the first time maybe, but it's wasn't greed that got Ireland, say, in trouble, 'twas the meddling outside bankers...)

So, could Germany's solution so many decades ago actually have "worked" in the long run? They are an insular nation, not open to open-bordered-immigration, very homogeneous, very Germany First, and only now "opening up" so to speak, to build diversity internally.

So is that it? Germany successfully kept out all the meddling bank players who successfully connived and creeped their way to the top in other lands? Bernie Madoff, I'm thinking of you. Afterall, you want a modern-day Hitler comparison, what the power of one man acting evilly can accomplish?

There it is. If you take a mindset that is willing to sell out the host country, in order to profit at its expense -- something they seem to have avoided in Germany, but not in Ireland -- there's no telling what the untold damage will be, until the criminal is finally brought out into the open and the lies and scandals exposed.

(Remember: the Irish voted successfully to stay out of the Euro deal originally. To go it alone, and not tie their troubles in with the rest of the continent. Sadly, they got talked into joining up. Somebody benefitted off the misfortunes of others. Where there is a loser, there's usually somebody pocketing their "earnings" too.)

Now I'm not saying this is particular to any group or subspecies. Not trying to bait the anti-Semites here. Just... is open borders, diversity for its own sake, and being too trusting of banking outsiders really the answer? Seems a lot of countries are now paying for the crimes at the upper echelons. And that's not even counting the guys like Alan Greenspan, not a criminal necessarily, but a man who surely fell short on the job, the long-term work, he was paid to do on behalf of the country...

Oh, and
Is Barney Frank a Jew too? He and his sure made out good while their housing deals circled the toilet...

I'll pass it on over to Mr. Klein, who's looking at German bonds lovingly now, and who forsees America's fall. Funny, but I bet he doesn't see himself as any evil outsider, unnecessarily (and unwisely) meddling in our domestic economy via his personal policy palliatives. But I wonder: did all the failed financial leaders in other countries ever see themselves as the problem either?

Previously, I’ve compared the debt ceiling to a bomb ticking away at the base of the economy. We don’t much notice it because it’s always been there and, despite a couple of close calls, it’s never gone off. But that doesn’t mean it won’t ever go off. Particularly if these sorts of showdowns become the norm.

And even if it doesn’t go off, Congress’s decision to make the risk of default more visible might well be enough to scare the markets. If you were an investor, would you want to put your money in a country that regularly held bitter partisan brawls over whether you would be paid back? Or would, say, German bonds begin looking like a comparatively better bet?

We have an increasingly polarized country. We have an increasingly dysfunctional Congress. One way to respond would be to make it easier for Congress to operate in a partisan manner and to work to reduce the risk that gridlock and grandstanding could harm the country. But that, of course, won’t happen, as the people who could rewrite the rules are part of that dysfunctional system, and answer to our increasingly polarized political parties. And so we’re raising the stakes rather than lowering them. We’re setting up the exact sort of catastrophe we should be laboring to avoid.

Hearing McConnell’s comments last night, economist Jared Bernstein was shocked. “This is not the way of great nations,” he wrote. I disagree. The political system that doesn’t modernize and eventually finds its vulnerabilities exploited by interest-group pressure, internal divisions and reckless politicians? This is certainly the way of great nations. It’s the way they fall.By Ezra Klein | 04:31 PM ET, 08/02/2011 | Permalink | Comments ( 0)

ADDED:
Speaking of unintended consequences, it's interesting to read some common-sense analysis on Mr. Klein's blog on the future failures of raising the Medicare age, thus shifting the older, unhealthy population into the same pool that we're soon going to be forcing the young, healthy non-consumers into, if the Court doesn't intervene on the Constitutionality of the ACA in the meantime:

One key consequence of the debt ceiling debate — raising Medicare eligibility to 67 — emerged from the battle an increasingly acceptable policy proposal. The White House offered it to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) during their negotiations, and it is widely expected that the Joint Committee will consider it in their deliberations.
...
But some health-care experts who support the Affordable Care Act have begun to worry that, though health-care reform makes raising the Medicare age more palatable, actually doing so undermines the law by causing premiums to rise on the exchanges as millions of older and sicker Americans flood into the new marketplace.

“It’s all interlocking,” said Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “You have to understand that raising the Medicare eligibility age would also have implications for coverage and cost in the exchanges.”

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation report found that premiums in the exchanges would rise about 3 percent if all eligible 65- and 66-year-olds enrolled. Medicare would see a similar premium increase, with its youngest, healthier subscribers leaving the program.

That bump in premiums could put the exchange marketplace in a precarious position, driving away precisely the subscribers it needs to thrive: young, healthy Americans with low health-care costs. “Every little thing that you do to increase rates increases the risk that young healthy people will pay the penalty or seek coverage outside the exchange,” said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Georgetown Health Policy Institute.

Practically speaking, the exchanges are already in a delicate position: Fewer than a quarter of the states have passed legislation that allows them to build the new marketplace, while more have seen bills to do so fail in this legislative session. Park contends that as states with some of the largest insurance markets, including Floridaand Texas, push back against the health reform law, the Affordable Care Act’s success hinges on making the new marketplace as robust and appealing as possible.

“Anything early on that makes costs higher than they otherwise would be, you get worried about the exchange being viable,” Park said. “Young people are already hard to get to participate, and with a change like this, they may be less willing.”

By Sarah Kliff | 03:51 PM ET, 08/02/2011

Smart one, that Sarah.
We can't carry the country forever, and we're darned sick of letting unelected folks like Klein decide policy, despite the will of the voting public. Seems, he still doesn't get what all the fuss is about. Never balanced a checkbook, or juggled paying bills, that one.

Just keep racking 'em up, and nevermind worrying about being on the hook when the bill's come due tomorrow... Perhaps, as often happens in blighted neighborhoods after all the profits have left town yet people still remain behind, Klein'll be long since moved on from his policy analysis -- "and lots of it" -- job.

A bit like Greenspan, still shouting his "wise" suggestions from the sidelines all these years later, as if his work product wasn't out there already for all of us to see...