We are today on the fifth day of the critical ten day period that will determine whether the euro will be saved, which the Financial Times, the well-versed authority on financial issues, said had begun on the 29th of last month when 17 ministers from the Euro zone met to discuss measures to rescue the single currency. FT also spoke about other meetings at the highest levels, votes to take place in European parliaments and diplomatic talks. However, I see that saving the euro does not need all this effort. Instead, it is sufficient for me to decide to spend the upcoming Western holidays in France, for the euro's exchange rate to rise on the eve of my trip, and throughout my stay there. This has been my experience in the euro in the past ten years. Each time that I have travelled with my family to the south of France in the early summer, the euro's exchange rate suddenly rose against the pound sterling or the dollar, and stayed that way until I returned to London. I am trying to be sarcastic, because I have nothing else to suggest with regard to the euro, which I hear is teetering on the brink, although its exchange rate remains high against other currencies. Then I read that the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has warned in his annual Autumn Statement that Britain is heading towards six harsh years that will see a contraction in incomes and rising unemployment, in tandem with unprecedented cuts in government spending- and this in a country that is not in the Euro zone to begin with. Perhaps the Arab reader does not find this information all too intimidating. However, I'm an anxious person by birth, if not a “scaredy-cat”. For this reason, I have never in my life borrowed a penny or taken an advance. Instead, I would either buy a home in cash or live in a tent - or a car in cash or I walk instead. Now I read that Japan's national debt is 219 percent of its GDP, with the figure being 181 percent in Greece, and 103.6 percent in the United States - or 15 trillion dollars. How can these people sleep when they are languishing under trillions of dollars in debt? Compare this to how I refused to sign monthly installments on the first Volkswagen I bought in Beirut for 125 Lebanese liras. I will not preach to the choir or claim that I know more about the global financial crisis than governments, central banks and commercial banks do. However, I do claim that I am a diligent reader. I was living in the United States in the eighties when the savings and loans crisis started, a crisis that was considered at the time to be a major one, while it is now considered “child's play” compared to the present crisis. In Washington, I thus started reading the Wall Street Journal before the other papers after the crisis in the eighties, and in London after that, I started to read the Financial Times, even before the Telegraph and the Times, after the crisis of 2008. What I know is that the deregulation of the banking sector in the eighties was one of the roots of the subsequent crisis. I started reading after that phrases that said that the bank know better or that this or that bank is “too big to fail” (tell that to the employees of Lehman Brothers now). What I also know is that Bill Clinton, the very intelligent man, followed in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, the B-list actor and politician. Clinton, despite his intelligence, thus urged banks to lend money to people with middle to low-income and the rest is history. Their banks started giving 100 percent financing to whoever wanted a flat or a house, and even 110 percent, based on the premise that the investment value would increase to eventually cover the value of the loan. Of course, the investment value does increase, but sometimes also it decreases and every economic boom is usually followed by a downturn. Yet, greed which financial regulation in the eighties had unleashed has made some businessmen, in the West again and again, act as though the boom would last forever. Perhaps it would have, were it not for George W. Bush's presidency. Bush is so far is the stupidest and most ignorant U.S. President, and we know that he borrowed from China to wage war in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror. This made his administration the third-and last- nail in the coffin, after the decisions taken by the Reagan and Clinton administrations, which I mentioned earlier. Why do I and the reader have to pay for the mistakes of the successive U.S. administrations, and the collusion of Wall Street and international banks along with them? Their crime comprises all the seven deadly sins together, which are wrath (the anger of the Occupy Wall Street Movement), greed (and its source is clear) sloth (in addressing the abuse), vanity (in not admitting mistakes), envy (the wealthy envy those who are wealthier), and lust and gluttony, which both require one to be very rich. May God never forgive them. [email protected]
