08:37 – The Greek parliament has once again voted in favor of complying with the Troika’s new “austerity” terms, which amounts to committing national economic suicide in aid of being allowed to remain in the eurozone. And it’s all for nothing. The Greek people seem to believe that staying in the euro guarantees that they will continue to receive the huge subsidies they’ve been receiving for a decade or more, allowing them to maintain a much higher standard of living than they earn. It doesn’t. Greeks will never see a cent of the additional money that the Troika may “lend” to Greece. Those funds will be used to benefit Greece’s creditors, and only the creditors. Meanwhile, Greece will continue going deeper and deeper into debt until it all finally collapses. Greece would be far, far better off departing the euro, defaulting on everything it owes, and returning to the drachma. Yes, that would mean that Greece would be unable to borrow money on the open market for at least a decade and probably two and that Greeks would suffer deep poverty for that same period, but that’s actually the best they can hope for.
On Jen’s recommendation, I started reading Ken Benton’s SurviRal last night. She said it wasn’t a great book, but it was worlds better than most of the recent PA fiction. She’s right. The guy writes competently, and the book is reasonably well edited. It’s a bit odd in that the protagonists are a married couple of anti-prepping clueless Denver suburbanites who are religious but not obnoxiously so, but have a well-prepared brother down in the sticks a hundred miles or so south of them. This is the first recent PA novel I’ve read that I haven’t wanted to start marking up with a red pen, put a circled D or F on the front page, and add a note to try again and get it right before submitting it.
More work on science kits today.