A Short Essay on the Greek Crisis, Again
As I said last week, the European diplomats were acting foolish last week when Greek bonds were reduced to junk. They scheduled a meeting next week, as if nothing bad could happen in the time between.
Tomorrow will probably be a bounceback—but the problem is NOT simply European. It is also American, and there isn’t any blame Obama or blame Bush that brings us closer to solving the problem—unless you believe that asking lawyers to fix an economic problem is like asking a roofer to fix the plumbing. (I do hold that belief.)
The problem comes from a lack of definition regarding wealth. It’s not gold and hasn’t been for a while. And while the price of gold goes up when no one is selling, you will see gold drop like….and ounce of gold (32 ft per second per second) when, like a contagion, everyone decides to sell.
The fact is that wealth is energy. Today fossil fuels. And anyone who can ‘harvest energy’, or control the technology to process it, controls wealth and therefore politics. Thirty five years ago the US should have launched a ‘space program’, a type of scientific focus concentrating on developing new energy and new energy technology. Because, as it stands now, the Western world, for the most part, is consuming wealth, not producing it. It is losing industry and business, not adding to it.
If it weren’t for Bill Gates and the Apple Steves, we might be tottering on the edge of the third world, starting over like India.