Farmer Diaries

So about 10 days ago the Parti Québécois (PQ) elected a new leader!  Mr. Peladeau, or PKP as he is better known is a rich (mostly inherited) guy from Montreal.  Unlike up his predecessor he speaks perfect English, he's smart, and sounds committed to the cause of separating Quebec from the rest of Canada. Reading about him in the English press you would think the guy is a failure, sure Quebecor World went bust, but by then PKP had sold virtually all the familly's interest in the business at a very attractive price.  He tried to do the same thing with print media....there he was too late, spending $1 billion and getting maybe $300 million back when he sold it.  That was maybe have been a bridge too far.  In a sense English canada's read of PKP is all wrong they confuse "separation" with left wing politics, which is not the politics of PKP, and frankly not that of the PQ either -- look carefully and you will see a corporatist strategy there. PKP's problem is ...

Nope! In a nutshell there is no reason for anyone to take hard decisions, especially since no one knows the consequence of these decisions!  The reality that is Greece's economic melt down (and that it has less then 24 hours of cash at hand) is that no one has any interest in pressing the trigger, and forcing an immediate exit from the Euro. The eventual departure of Greece from the EU monetary system (and maybe from the entire EU system) will be an error, a miss step, the unintended consequence of a "national interest decisions" that have little to do with Europe at large and everything to do with a probable internal policy breakdown. Several months ago, when I predicted (and wagered) that Greece would eventually leave the Euro, my timeframe was entirely based on not any one "important" event because politicians are weary of grand gestures -- for which they can be held accountable.  Rather 24 months were necessary for not only the element of the crisis to...