Re: More future history questions - USA

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There was a question about Greece perhaps getting out of its situation
or
the domino effect in the Eurozone. First, I suspect if Greece survives,
it'll be because Germany (and perhaps on some days France) paid for
that.
Second, it remains to be seen if the massive austerity measures and
protests in Greece cause governments to fall like raindrops which might
lead to the mess of a shattered Eurozone.

Greece is sadly only the worst of the lot. The Med is surrounded by
countries in trouble. And others further afoot (Ireland, even Britain
and
France) aren't 100% out of the woods. The whole Eurozone could just come
apart. Of course, the other point there is that the aggregate weight on
Germany could make her decide to throw off the chains and then everyone
is
up the creek.

To the US side, about 1/4 of the States are practically or technically
bankrupt. Canada and the US have states and provinces where state or
provincial debt per-capita exceeds by a sizable amount that of the
per-capita debt in Greece. There are some shell games going on to hide
this
fact or ignore it or make it hard to notice (see Eurozone) but that's
the
reality of things. Now, people keep touting how much better our
economies
are, which is, during booming times, totally true. With the current
issues
with exports and domestic markets, I remain unconvinced. And when goes
the
US, to some extent also so goes Canada. Ontario, as one example, is
getting
by on its good standing in the bond markets to allow its government to
operate as if being so far in debt was a viable fiscal policy. Wisconsin
actually had to pay cash up front to suppliers of ammunition to its
prison
guards to get bullets. There are a lot of actually or practically
bankrupt
municipalities across both Canada and the US as well.

And that's totally ignoring the massive househould debt that is not to
the
government in the US and Canada. If we tack that onto the per-capita
government debt, the per-capita debt situation looks far, far worse.

The worst part is the majority of this situation was brought about by
free
markets (with plenty of meddling by the people running the show) and by
people's natural greed to have more, own more, etc. Everyone seemed to
think they had an inevitable right to own outrageously inflating houses,
to
buy every new consumer good (iPhone2 trade up for iPhone3!, need a new
tablet!, etc), etc.

I listened to an economist talking about the current situation. He
pointed
out that markets do often have imbalances, but he said those typically
take
6-24 months to work themselves out. He said that true fiscal crises,
historically, take 7-10 years. And that's assuming we aren't busy
building
the next one already.

So, take a rough ride and reduced prospects over the next decade then
through in a couple of other major global crises we didn't see coming as
shocks to the system, and all bets are off on exactly who will fold or
what
key fiscal systems in North America will collapse.

And I'm not even really treading into the zone of future history here...
that's just where we are at now and looking at the immediate next
decade....

Tom