Thursday Thump – Delusional Systems Kick Back In

It's what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart. ” -Thomas Pynchon

If we're worried about Europe again, it must be Thursday, right?  

We did get some morbid GDP numbers out of Europe and – spoiler alert – their economy SUCKS!  Why does it suck?  Oh, I don't know – maybe because they practice a wacky little thing called AUSTERITY – which has been, over and over and over again, proven to be the absolute WORST thing to do when your economy is slowing.  

I know this is a very hard thing for Conservatives to understand because it involves FACTS, but austerity does not work and has never, ever worked.  In 2011 the IMF commissioned a very serious study that looked at 173 episodes of fiscal austerity enacted by "Advanced Economies" over the past 3 decades and found 0 incidents in which austerity was linked to expansion.  So let's not get all shocked that Europe's GDP sucks – this was the GOP plan for America if Romney had been elected playing out across the Atlantic.  

These are not opinions – these are facts.  Europe is right where they are projected to be two years into an austerity program – losing tons of jobs and losing profits.  Even US companies that do business in Europe are feeling the impact – but this is not news – not to us, anyway.  We've been pointing this out since last summer and just last Thursday we were discussing which Nigel Farage clip best summed up the disaster that is Europe.  

This one is relevant to today as Farage slams Francois Hollande for the economic decisions he's making in France and, lo and behold, today we get the disastrous French GDP data.  In fact, I have mentioned for the past week that we were betting on a downturn based on the fact that the Euro has gotten too strong and the Dollar has gotten too weak – as summed up by Farage in this clip.  This morning, in Member Chat, we took advantage of panic…

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