{"id":187438,"date":"2011-06-29T19:10:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-30T00:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/06\/29\/greeks-approve-suicide-pact\/"},"modified":"2011-06-29T19:10:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T00:10:00","slug":"greeks-approve-suicide-pact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/06\/29\/greeks-approve-suicide-pact\/","title":{"rendered":"Greeks Approve Suicide Pact"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know, I was in the car, talking with my son about Greece, and I said that the Greek parliament had approved their own suicide pact by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/06\/30\/world\/europe\/30greece.html\">approving the austerity program demanded by the ECB and IMF<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>My son, ever the precocious almost 11-year-old, asked me why it was a suicide pact, and I explained that austerity causes the economy to contract, which makes you less able to repay your debts.<\/p>\n<p>I said that it was like demanding a salary cut so that you can better pay your debt.<\/p>\n<p>My son did not understand this at all.<\/p>\n<p>I explained that it was because they are stupid, and by &#8220;they&#8221; I mean the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and Angela Merkel.<\/p>\n<p>Charlie did not find this a satisfying answer, and, truth be told, I don&#8217;t find it a particularly satisfying answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know, I was in the car, talking with my son about Greece, and I said that the Greek parliament had approved their own suicide pact by approving the austerity program demanded by the ECB and IMF. My son, ever the precocious almost 11-year-old, asked me why it was a suicide pact, and I explained &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1017,978,985,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-international-finance","category-politics","category-regulation","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}