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Oct. 29, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
09:06
2017 There Is No EuroZone Crisis, and Welcome Home to the Troops!

Your 9 minutes of truth, reason, philosophy and reality, from Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web.

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Time for your two minutes of daily reality.
I first of all wanted to thank everyone, particularly Sky and Joyce at Libertopia, for allowing me to come down, turning over the microphone to me for entirely too long.
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So, let's get to two of the big topics.
So, the Eurozone crisis.
They call it the Eurozone crisis, which is...
It's not true. It's not a crisis.
It's certainly not a debt crisis.
And a crisis indicates that some alternative possibility is available.
And this is not the case.
You're in crisis when you're having a heart attack.
You're not in crisis when you're dead.
And the European economy is dead.
Europe is not in a debt crisis.
Neither is it in a crisis.
Europe is bankrupt. Europe is completely and totally bankrupt.
Their unfunded liabilities are ridiculous.
Their deficits are enormous.
Their tax base is shrinking because of an aging population and because of a declining sort of Western educated native speaking kind of tax productivity livestock that is diminishing because Europe's fertility rate has been way down since the Second World War.
So, I mean, Europe is bankrupt.
It's not in crisis.
It's not, oh my goodness. And you know that nothing of any...
Reality is coming through in the news about this for the simple reason that they keep saying that they've come to a resolution about the debt crisis.
They've come to a resolution. No, they have not come to a resolution.
I hate to say it, but it's really true.
They've not come to a resolution.
You will know when Europe has come to a resolution about its debt crisis.
When they talk about everything that they have cut.
A bailout is not a solution to a debt crisis.
I mean, your credit agency phones you up and says, listen, you've got a $40,000 visa bill and you make about $8,000 a year.
What's your solution? They're like, I'm going to rob a bank!
Well, are they going to say, great, problem solved.
You're going to rob a bank for how much?
Maybe $4,000 or $5,000.
Well, you know, it doesn't really work.
So the fact that everyone in Europe is getting together and they are printing money as a bailout to bankrupt countries is not a solution to the problem.
The solution to the problem will come when they actually cut government spending, not when they print more money.
I mean, this is so obvious and so...
It's clear that it's natural that it should never be explained in the media in any reasonable way.
Relax about Europe. What they're trying to do is, remember, money makers, money changers, the new scum on the pond of statism, they make money in a time of volatility.
So for them, when they create artificial scares and then they create artificial solutions, they can short, they can manipulate their stocks and their bonds so that they can make a fortune.
Volatility is the scumbaggery trader's Leachy friend.
And so you are going to constantly hear about this disaster has been narrowly averted.
Oh, no, it's back. It's been narrowly averted.
Here comes another. It's like, you know, you're just playing ninja with slow moving imaginary matrix bullets the whole time.
And that's designed to get people to buy and sell shares so that stockbrokers make money and, you know, even just on commissions, but on other ways as well through volatility is the short term stockbrokers friend, the traders friend.
So, yeah, it's all nonsense.
You'll know that Europe has been solved when they say we've cut our government budgets by 40% or more.
And then you'll have some capacity to begin to be curious about whether the problem has been solved.
But if they say they've solved the problem just by printing some more money and handing it out in these big money bags, I mean...
It's like...
I don't know. It's like your bank calls up and says, listen, we're going to have to foreclose on your house.
And you're like, hey, listen, don't sweat it, man.
Don't sweat it for a moment. I got this.
Oh, man, I've got it solved.
I've got it solved. You know, I can go to a toy store.
And I can pick up a Monopoly game for like 12 bucks.
And you know in that Monopoly game, it's tens of thousands of dollars, so I'm just going to pay you tens of thousands of dollars because I found a way to turn 12 bucks into tens of thousands of bucks.
We're set! Well, they'd say, are you insane?
That's just counterfeiting. Well, this is all that's happening in the Eurozone.
So it's all nonsense, and it's just designed to buy another few days, another few months, while the Leaders convert their money to gold or something.
It's all nonsense. Anyway, on a slightly more serious topic, or a much more serious topic, I suppose, Obama has announced that he's going to pull, what, 50,000 troops out of Iraq in nine weeks?
That's going to be some pretty heavy-duty catapults, let me tell you, to get all those people out in time.
They're probably going to leave a lot of military equipment.
You can check eBay for where that's going to show up once it's left in Iraq.
But you don't hear a lot about why this is going on.
Why is this going on and why is this so sudden?
Well, the reality of why it's happening is because the Iraqi government has refused to extend legal immunity to the US troops past December.
In other words, the US troops are going to be subject to Iraqi law come January 1st.
And what does that mean?
Well, that means an A lot of them are going to get arrested for kicking in people's doors and for doing all the variety of nasty things that occupiers tend to do in countries when they stick around for a long time with lots of weapons.
So you don't really hear a lot.
And this is an interesting thing, right?
Remember, the whole purpose of the military, the status purpose of the military, was to bring law and order to Iraq.
Law and order to Iraq and democracy and the rule of law.
And the moment the Iraqi government says, hey, you know, Mr.
President, we're going to have to start subjecting your troops to the rule of law.
Ah, we must run!
Get the giant catapults for getting these people out.
Reentry might be a bit of a bummer, but trust me, it's safer than staying in a country where you're a subject to the rule of law that you're there supposedly created to enforce.
So, and of course, you'll always look...
I don't know. The weasel words are all there, right?
I'm bringing all the combat troops out of Iraq.
Well, what does combat troops mean?
700 military bases overseas from the U.S., just about all over Europe and the Middle East.
And in Japan, are those people considered combat troops?
No. So they can leave a lot of people there and say, well, they're not direct combat troops.
They're advisors there. So it's going to be a bunch of weasel words around that.
And of course, you just have the semi-private army of mercenaries that you're going to leave behind instead.
So, I mean, don't get me wrong.
I mean, I think it's great that there are some troops coming home.
And I, you know, if you're a trooper, if you're a soldier, I wish you the very best in your transition.
Please get some therapy to deal with the horrendous stuff that you've been through and the horrendous stuff that you've done.
So, you know, I wish you the best coming back.
And, you know, please, please, please get the help that you need to deal with all of the stress and trauma of readjusting after such an extended series of deployments.
It's been just murderous on these people's psyches.
So... I'm glad that you're not in Iraq anymore.
I think it's pretty sad that you're pulled out because you might be subject to the rule of law, and that would not be good.
But I just wanted to mention that it is actually not the worst thing in the world.
These people are coming home. I think it's great.
Circumstances could have been better, but the important thing is that you're getting people out of firefights and out of stepping on high EDs.
And who's not going to be happy about that?
Thank you so much for your time, as always.
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