Truthout has the interesting interview Levy Economics Institute President Dissects the Myth of the Greek “Success Story”.

I leave you with the concluding question and answer. It has an interesting alternative to Greece’s either leaving the European Union or staying.

If the economic “success story” of Greece turns out in the end to be nothing more than a politically constructed myth, and the prospects of the European integration project remain what they are today, why shouldn’t Greeks opt to leave the euro?

“I believe that Greece cannot leave the euro since the costs associated with an exit are very consequential.”

There is plenty of evidence that the success story is a politically constructed myth with the acquiescence of the European leadership. The question about the country remaining in the euro club is interesting and very important. I believe that Greece cannot leave the euro since the costs associated with an exit are very consequential. As I have written elsewhere, Greece has a number of options that it can follow, if the European leadership continues with its intransigence and continuing policy of the dangerous idea of austerity. If all other options fail, the introduction of a carefully designed parallel financial system is a very viable alternative in order to get a handle on both domestic financial market liquidity and employment growth and output. This is not a novel idea. The Greek government used a similar program in 2010, although very haphazardly conceived, but it was introduced nevertheless. It is not a crackpot idea and has been embraced by both conservative and liberal thinkers. This will address some of the most serious challenges the Greek economy and society face without endangering the country’s membership in the euro. So, there are other alternatives available before the unthinkable becomes the only option.

Just remember that The EU has the same kind of destructive plan in mind for the Ukraine as they have imposed on Greece. Perhaps the wisest people in the Ukraine are the ones that oppose what the US would like to impose on them.

The Boston Globe has a very interesting article How to solve climate change with cows (maybe).

Could better grazing patterns be the answer? A sweeping new theory divides the environmental world
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The core premise of their thinking is a belief in the overlooked importance of soil. Carbon, harmful at current levels in our air and water, is essential in the ground, where it makes soil rich and fertile. Our greenhouse-gas problem, they argue, began long before we realize, with agricultural mismanagement and other disruptions of land deep in human history, and solving it depends on restoring our soil to the point where it pulls immense amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere—possibly enough to reverse the effects of industrial emissions.

This topic is new to me.  It seems like an eminently sensible idea that we try many approaches to solving a problem as complex as global climate change.  It seems a little silly to get caught up in an argument about whether we should just try cutting greenhouse grass emissions or we should just try capturing the excess emissions. Trying both approaches at the same time increases the odds that the two approaches together will be sufficient as opposed to the odds for any one approach being sufficient.

Moreover, improvement of the soil is only one part of the idea of carbon sequestration.  So we aren’t just talking about a two pronged approach.  We are talking about considering as many good ideas as can be imagined.