Monday, September 12, 2011

VOA News: 'Fears of Greek Default Send Asian, European Stocks Lower'

Source:VOA News- a look inside the Greek Parliament.

"Voice of America (VOA) is the America's largest[1][2][3] and oldest international broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress.[4][5] VOA produces digital, TV, and radio content in 47 languages which it distributes to affiliate stations around the globe. It is primarily viewed by foreign audiences, so VOA programming has an influence on public opinion abroad regarding the United States and its people.

VOA was established in 1942,[6] and the VOA charter (Public Laws 94-350 and 103-415)[7] was signed into law in 1976 by President Gerald Ford.

VOA is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an independent agency of the U.S. government.[8] Funds are appropriated annually under the budget for embassies and consulates. In 2016, VOA broadcast an estimated 1,800 hours of radio and TV programming each week to approximately 236.6 million people worldwide with about 1,050 employees and a taxpayer-funded annual budget of US$218.5 million." 

From Wikipedia 

"Asian and European stock prices plunged Monday on fears that Greece may be edging closer to default.  This followed a German official's suggestion that an orderly bankruptcy might be part of the solution to the Greek debt crisis. Greek protesters expressed their frustration on Sunday." 

From VOA News

What's going on in Europe especially in Greece right now, could easily happen to America, if we don't rebuild our economy and get our national debt and deficit under control. We can't do one without the other and America has no business bailing out other countries fiscal crisis's, at least until we get our own financial situation fixed. 

Europe needs to get their own fiscal house in order and if Greece doesn't like the restrictions that the International Monetary Fund and European Union are putting them, then they should go their own course and fix their own fiscal problems. 

The good news is America doesn't at least at this point, need an International Organization or a foreign country bailing us out, we have the ability to do this on our own and the plan is already there. But if we wait and don't take it seriously and our fiscal problems are serious enough now, that we have to not only rebuild our economy but address our fiscal issues at the same time. 

We have the resources and money in our economy and demand if we address it and we just need to put them to work. We have infrastructure repairs and expansion that we need to do that we can pay for in our economy. All of these storms and earthquakes we've had lately, is just more evidence of this that we have fallen behind on our infrastructure and we have the construction companies that can do this work. 

We have all the natural resources that we need to be energy independent, but we are not energy independent obviously right now. Which is why we import so much foreign oil and every time there's a new crisis in the Middle East, we automatically have to respond to it, because it effects our economy with the oil. We need to get to a point with our energy sector, where we are not dependent on OPEC to decide what the price of oil is going to be in America. 

So what we need to be doing is putting people back to work and we have the demand in our economy to create these jobs in the sense that the work is there to do but we haven't tapped into that. We obviously don't have much consumer demand right now, people aren't spending enough money right now to give us enough economic growth to create enough jobs. 

But we do have enough demand in other parts of our economy like in infrastructure, roads, bridges, airports, dams, etc and we could put unemployed construction workers back to work working on these projects and building new projects and we have demand in our energy sector like in oil, gas, solar, wind, nuclear, water. 

But since we don't have a national energy policy that would promote our own natural resources to create the jobs in these areas and we also at the same time have to have a fiscal policy, thats based on paying for things that government spends money on cutting back in areas, that we spend too much on or shouldn't be spending money on. 

And then reform, our social insurance programs and in national security. As well as tax reform, taxing more things but at lower rates. 

America is not Greece but we cold be its twin if we don't get our economy going again and President Obama's American Jobs Act is a good start. 

And the Bowles-Simpson Deficit Reduction plan is a good start with our fiscal policy. But we need to do more in both areas so we can have a strong enough economy. Other wise we'll never get our debt and deficit under control.

Liberal Democrat

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