United Liberty

Plagued by seemingly perpetual debt problems due to large welfare states, the Euro-zone, the 17 countries that make up the European Union, has fallen into a recession for the second time since 2009:

The euro zone debt crisis dragged the bloc into its second recession since 2009 in the third quarter despite modest growth in Germany and France, data showed on Thursday.

The French and German economies both managed 0.2 percent growth in the July-to-September period but their resilience could not save the 17-nation bloc from contraction as the likes of The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Austria shrank.

Economic output in the euro zone fell 0.1 percent in the quarter, following a 0.2 percent drop in the second quarter.

Those two quarters of contraction put the euro zone’s 9.4 trillion euro ($12 trillion) economy back into recession, although Italy and Spain have been contracting for a year already and Greece is suffering an outright depression.

A rebound in Europe is still far off. The debt crisis that began in Greece in late 2009 is still reverberating around the globe and holding back a lasting recovery.

Analysts said even the euro zone’s top two economies were likely to succumb in the final three months of the year.

Written by Daniel J. Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Posted with permission from Cato @ Liberty.

I’m not a big fan on international bureaucracies, particularly the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD, funded by American tax dollars, has become infamous for its support of statist pro-Obama policies.

You may have heard about that Greece will be receiving $146 billion from the International Monetary Fund and European countries to help bring the country back to financial solvency, provided the country make cuts in spending and increase taxes.

The cuts in spending and new taxes have led to mass riots and protests, including a strike by government workers, who have been hit with cuts in pension and pay due to the agreement with the IMF (overly generous government benefits are a problem that we’ll eventually have here in the United States).

American Taxpayers have endured much since the fall of 2008, from endless bailouts to private sector companies (financial institutions and automakers) that now know they are “too big, too fail” and can run to the federal government for a bailout, the passage of ObamaCare, plans to pass cap-and-trade and budget deficits as far as the eye can see. It has seemed like an endless assault.

It’s bad enough that our tax dollars are being used so irresponsibly, but what many taxpayers may not know is that they are on the hook to bailout Greece.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) explains:

G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors asked the United States, the IMF’s largest contributor, for a whopping $108 billion to rescue bankers around the world and the Obama Administration quickly obliged.