September 29, 2011
Greek tax evasion: not a new problem at all
In a New York Times article from last year, Suzanne Daley reported the rather amazing statistic from Athens:
In the wealthy, northern suburbs of this city, where summer temperatures often hit the high 90s, just 324 residents checked the box on their tax returns admitting that they owned pools.
So tax investigators studied satellite photos of the area — a sprawling collection of expensive villas tucked behind tall gates — and came back with a decidedly different number: 16,974 pools.
That kind of wholesale lying about assets, and other eye-popping cases that are surfacing in the news media here, points to the staggering breadth of tax dodging that has long been a way of life here.
H/T to Araminta Wordsworth for the link.
Charles de Gaulle as euro-skeptic
Conrad Black provides a thumbnail sketch of de Gaulle’s real intentions regarding European integration:
Charles de Gaulle was born in Lille in 1890, to the family of a monarchist schoolteacher. De Gaulle was a Flaubertesque haut bourgeois, as well as an officer of the French army when it was rivaled only by the German army as the greatest in the world, and was unrivaled as the most storied army of all. He was imbued with the middle-class concept of the value of savings, frugality, pay-as-you-go. To him, greatness and security could never be bought or sustained on the installment plan. And mere politicians, whom he considered a lesser breed swimming in a sticky fondue of moral weakness and opportunism, could never be trusted to resist the temptation to pander, devalue, or seek short-term gain.
De Gaulle’s farsightedness was not confined to national projections of household economics; he also warned of the dangers of Euro-integration. He was the chief architect of the Franco-German friendship treaty of 1963, and — as a veteran of the terrible hecatomb of the Battle of Verdun and a World War I prisoner of war of the Germans, as well as the founder of the Free French in World War II — he knew as well as anyone the horrors of the centuries-long conflict along the Rhine. He also favored a common market and the end of violent ancient rivalries among the many European nationalities. But he always saw a homogenized, centralized Europe as a dangerous fantasy. He believed that a Continental interest, composed of as many as 20 or 25 languages and cultures, would be only an alphabet gruel, blended and stirred by faceless bureaucrats from the little countries, and not representing any real popular interest at all.
He thought that the original Common Market of France, West Germany, Italy, and Benelux could be used by France, effectively maneuvering between the U.S. and the USSR, and between Germany and the Russians, to project and amplify France’s — and, more particularly, his own — influence. Up to a point, while the U.S. was mired in Vietnam, and before European Communism became too enfeebled to challenge the West (which de Gaulle also foresaw), he was correct. But he believed that an unlimitedly accessible Europe would become an incoherent Tower of Babel, governed by bureaucratic intermeddlers in the name of feckless politicians, and liable to excessive outside influence, including from the U.S.
H/T to Monty at Ace of Spades HQ for the link.
“The euro isn’t just a failed currency, but a language unto itself”
Jonathan Weil provides a sampling of Euro terms and their real-world meanings:
It’s bad enough for average Americans that most European leaders speak English with heavy accents. What’s worse, even when we can make out the words they utter, it’s almost always impossible to figure out what these officials are really saying. That’s because they’re speaking in Euro-ese.
Fortunately, there is an answer to their endless riddles: a Euro-to-English dictionary, excerpts of which I have included below. To truly see the meaning of the seismic events rapidly reshaping Europe, you must know what the following 10 Euro terms of art mean in plain American English:
1. Finance ministry: A house of worship where government leaders go to pray for bailouts, economic miracles, panaceas and other forms of divine intervention.
How to use in a sentence: Officials at the Greek Finance Ministry said they remain hopeful the country will receive its next batch of rescue loans in time to avoid a cataclysmic default.
2. Coordinated: Chaotic, unfocused, brain-dead, paralyzed to the point of nonexistence; even in its best moments resembling a hopeless klutz.
Example: Finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations last week said they were “committed to a strong and coordinated international response to address the renewed challenges facing the global economy.”
Quebec may create its own gun registry
Matt Gurney examines the Quebec government’s declared intention to create a provincial gun registry:
In July, Quebec’s Public Safety Minister Robert Dutil told reporters that his government was considering a “Plan B” in the (highly probable) event that the federal Tories scrapped the long-gun registry — the creation of a provincial registry. Quebec is particularly sensitive to crimes committed by firearm, and has been more wedded than most provinces to the faulty notion that registration provides public-safety benefits. The Supreme Court has already ruled that firearms registration is a federal responsibility due to the public safety nature of gun control, but Quebec could theoretically try to establish a registry for firearms that treats them as simple property, no different than dogs, cats or boats. It would be a political stunt only … but then again, that’s all the registry has been since the beginning: A costly act of political theatre in which politicians impose burdensome red tape on lawful firearms owners and proclaim society somehow safer as a result.
