Thread: The Big Question: Should the U.S. help with Greece's bailout

The Big Question: Should the U.S. help with Greece's bailout?

By Sydelle Moore - 05/07/10 12:23 PM ET
Comments 28

Some of the nation's top political commentators, legislators and intellectuals offer their insight into the biggest news story burning up the blogosphere today.




Today's question:

Should the U.S. participate in the International Monetary Fund bailout of Greece?

Background reading here. http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/8 ... ce-bailout

Bernie Quigley, Pundits Blog Contributor, said:

No. The IMF, The World Bank, the Clintonization of the world are ideas that time has passed by. Decentralization is the rising forum here, there and everywhere. In economic reality world there are new countries – China, Israel and India, for example – and old countries like Greece and England. The old are finishing off long arcs of irrelevance. It is especially hard to see how relevant Greece has been to globalization except as a resting place for rich New Yorkers. The new people have new energies; the old are tagging along. Greece should be its own place with its own currency and its own way about itself. And so should everyone. Let the Germans be Germans and the Greeks be Greeks. EU was always destined to be a poor knock off of the U.S. The very idea of globalization is simply a theme of the Americanization of the world since post-war victory in Europe and Japan. Time’s up. New century rising.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said:

Yes, but the condition should be that Greece gets out of the euro. Greece's biggest problem is not its budget deficit, it's that it can't compete given its current wage and price structure. It can either adjust through a very long and painful process of deflation or it can adjust by devaluing its currency. The latter requires leaving the euro. It simple, easy, and fun. (OK, maybe not, but it sure beats a decade of double-digit unemployment.)

Peter Navarro, professor of economics and public policy at U.C. Irvine, said:

Don’t even go there. We’ve got huge budget deficits, and this is the eurozone’s problem. Any “U.S. supportâ€

Don't we pay into the IMF? Isn't the IMF contributing to the Greek bailout? Then the answer is we are already contributing to the bailout of Greece.