Years ago I was a single parent. Before that I was a parent in crisis who turned to the grandparents looking for help. My mom took my kids when they were toddlers. She even potty trained one -- a fact for which I am eternaly grateful. But she made clear that this was not a long term solution. The boys' grandfather on their mother's side would take the youngest as a baby, but only in an attempt to give his new wife a child. Usually our parents are not the solutions for our progeny. I was a single father in a working class job trying to go to college and improve our lives.
I was broke but not broken.
Family may have helped, but family never solved the problem. Student loans also helped -- a lot actually. But these are loans I still have no means to pay off, and my only hope to discharge them is through public service. My boys are doing ok. Not great. Just ok. I will always feel that I owe them for what I could never provide.
Not one of us can truly repay what we owe. We all owe something to our forebears, to our compatriots, to our fellow human beings. We will never be able to pay that loan.
My meaning lies below he fold.
When I first heard of the concept of the Euro I thought it was a great idea. How better to dispel animosity and bring people together than having a single currency? But then there were rules. Who made these rules? Bankers, of course. Austerity was the foremost rule from the beginning of the Euro, largely driven by the most powerful banks in Europe.
As many of us now know these same banks didn't practice anywhere near the same austerity measures they required of governments. They were more than happy to finance poor economies, bad mortgages, entire nations on the margin as long as they had government guarantees. These banks used their political influence to convince governments to back their bad investments. All profit, no risk.
Remember the 2004 Athens Olympics? Remember the cost overruns? The talk about things not being completed in time? The first inklings that there was no way that a small nation like Greece could ever pay for this first took hold then. Yet the Olympic Committee approved this venture to provide us all entertainment. The 2004 Olympics might not be the only cause of this crisis but it is certainly a prime example of the stink at the head.
Who benefits? Who pays?
Working people in the rest of Europe pay. They fund their governments, who fund these banks, who paid off the companies that built things like the Greek Olympics of 2004, and who contributed to the mortgage crisis worldwide. Taxpayers in the US here also paid, but to a lesser extent as our government was able to force our banks to pay US interest instead of the other way round.
To not mention the corruption of FIFA here would be incomplete. Where does this money come from? Qatar is spending hundreds of millions to build castles out of sand. Yet retirees in Greece are the enemy of the rest of Europe?
Think of the people that are actually promoting austerity? I don't see any dirt under their nails. I bet they have never even changed a diaper.
Stand strong Grecians! Some of us stand with you. We know when forgiveness is needed.
Bankers never forgive -- yet their transgressions are beyond forgiveness.