Don’t Fly Too Close to the Ocean, Icarus

The European region and the Euro are both tanking as a result of the unexpected in Greece. This has prompted a severe tank in the stock market.

If you are not up to date on the situation in Greece, the country has defaulted on some of its massive debts. The country has been talking to the IMF about whether or not a financial bailout is in order.

Under the pressure of uncertainty, the Greeks have taken to the streets in protest of the bailout, and the stock markets have tanked with the Euro, which has been in a spiral since November 2009.

According to an AP story, the Dow Jones Industrial dropped two hundred and twenty five points. This decrease was the biggest in months. Then again, the market has not been, in the words of C-3PO, “not entirely stable” for quite some time. It will gain modestly for a few days, and then tank back to the same level it was at the beginning of the process. Then it rinses and repeats.

However, this is a heck of a drop.

Not only was this drop caused by uncertainty with the Euro and with Greece, but by the fact that Ireland and Portugal might be next in line for a bailout. Meanwhile, many Germans and Hollanders are not happy that they are subsidizing Greece’s faulty monetary policies.

Also according to this same AP story, the market is quick to react negatively to such an event, consumer confidence must still be low, saying that “it doesn’t take much to rattle investors who are on alert for anything that could disrupt the economic recovery.”

As I stated in an earlier blog, the precedent of financial bailout is inherently flawed, and will only lead to further bailouts in the region. Look at what happened here. GM received billions of taxpayer dollars, and they are still not on firm footing.

In short, if Greece’s financial system were to fail, it would be a consequence of their own making, and bailouts should only be given conditional upon successful financial reform.

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Chris Buchheit

Chris Buchheit was born under the hot Floridian sun during some year in the 1980s. There he studied school matters until moving to North Carolina in 1999. Possibly due to the fact that his mom had enough of him being inside all the time, he quickly got involved in community affairs via the Boy Scouts of America, where he learned the values of citizenship, morality, duty to God and country, and that the biggest kids get to boss around the smaller ones. Chris attained the rank of Eagle Scout in 2004, and still values the rank as one of his proudest achievements. Beginning in 2006, Chris began attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he quickly learned the value of basketball and poplar trees. Since attending UNC, Chris has been double majoring in Asian Studies, with a concentration in Chinese, and Political Science. When he isn’t slaving over his honors thesis, looking up a bunch of Chinese Characters, volunteering, or mindlessly browsing the same websites over and over, Chris enjoys writing short stories and novels. Much to his roommates’ annoyance, he also spends his free time learning to play the guitar. Above all else, though, Chris values God, his family, and his friends. For the future, Chris plans to apply to Georgetown to further his studies in Political Science, hopefully with a concentration on China. Pending acceptance into Georgetown, Chris would like to study while gaining professional experience in a government job in Washington DC.

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