This House Would abolish the single European currency

THW abolish the single European currency

“Having been an early supporter of the euro, I now consider my engagement to be the biggest professional mistake I ever made.” said Hans-Olaf Henkel, the leader of economists who criticizes the use of the euro. Europe's single currency is the most ambitious creation of the European Union, and may yet turn out to be its greatest failure. It was supposed to promote economic convergence among its members, and ultimately greater political integration. Instead, the sovereign-debt crisis has exposed divergence in economic performance and competitiveness that lay hidden in the early years of the euro's existence. There are "indignados" on the streets of Spain and Greece; taxpayers in Germany, the Netherlands and Finland are indignant, too, at the prospect of having to bail- out crippled states. Is the euro worth the trouble it is causing, politically and economically? Seeing what the euro has caused until now, the answer for the question is likely to be negative. When the government is pursuing certain policy, they must clearly justify themselves in many different ways, but the most basic think they should prove is that rather the policy harms the nation and its public or not; in this aspect, although the euro has some benefits, the euro policy fails to justifies itself due to three failures: harms to nation, harms to individual, and harms to international society.

    Primarily, the euro policy harms member nations of EU themselves; shortly saying, since nations are refrained to use single currency that the government of single nation cannot simply print it out, member nations of EU cannot use monetary policy as an saving card and their price level became more vulnerable to outer affects of contiguous member states of EU. For instance, in case of Greece, they were renowned for their welfare system which covers every single public in its country. Since welfare infrastructures and systems were maintained by the government of Greece, the government spending naturally was great in Greece; and yet, reason why the Greece government could bear all these costs was because they were able to print out drachma, currency unit of Greece, out of thin air which is also called monetary policy. To simply put, because Greece was able to print out their own currency as they want, they printed out money and used them to fill up the government deficit. Nevertheless, after 2002 when the euro replaced the drachma, Greece lost their last hole card, the monetary policy; their monstrous trillion dollars of debt congregated throughout years of welfare spending started to surface itself and eventually Greece crisis happened. Situation was no different for other nations in Europe: not only those countries which loved to use monetary policy went bankruptcy but also countries which tried to handle the European crisis through supports and aiding are also facing great economic pressures. Now, no one could handle this crisis happened in the world biggest market except for European nations themselves. Unfortunately, only with fiscal policy, it would be really hard and would take a long time for European countries to get out of economic dip. Regarding the fact that the euro is aboriginal cause of European economic crisis and key to get out of economic crisis at the same time, the euro system must be abrogated.

    

    The euro not only harms the member states of EU as slightly alluded in previous argument, but also harms individuals in Europe. As a nation uses single currency system, the price level become more vulnerable to other countries’ economic fluctuation. Correspondingly, economy of the nation naturally becomes unstable. Pessimism in one economy naturally leads to higher unemployment rate, soaring price level, a depressed economy. This not only makes the government stressed out, but also puts great burdens on the shoulder of their public. Although this was only a hypothesis of opposition of the euro system when the euro was first initialized, now, we could see that this hypothesis is realized: hundreds of thousands of public-sector employees and professionals gone on strike in protest at privatization, pay ceilings and pension reform and major public-sector strikes coincide to increase pressure on the government over its economic policies in Greece. A strike in Rome on Tuesday 6 September 2011 showed the strength of feeling that richer Italians had escaped tax rises and spending cuts. The Dax share index has lost 29% since the beginning of July 2011 – significantly worse than London's FTSE 100 – while business confidence was tumbling at the fastest rate since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in Germany. Not only these countries, including Spain, Britain, Portugal, Switzerland and all the other European nations are suffering from same phenomenon. To once again remind the role of the government, the government has responsibility to save its citizens from any kinds of threats and harms before any other benefits or harms; yet, the policy of government is even threatening peaceful life of their citizens. If the government truly cares about their public, they must abolish harmful policy, the euro system.

   

    Last but not least, these harms happened within the territory of one nation and EU will eventually harm the international society. Back in the history, ancient Chinese didn’t really care about rather Rome prosper and conquer almost the entire Europe continent or not; simply because Rome’s action did not affect China’s circumstances at all. But now, if Italy starts a war in Europe, not only China but also the entire world will pay sharp attention to it and will take whatever measure to stop Italy. Once again, reason is simple: world nations are intimately connected to each other. In this intimately established world network, what will happen if the entire continents go bankruptcy? Great catastrophe will happen. Just by seeing how China’s drastic economic development suddenly changed the international situation, if the world biggest market EU goes bankruptcy or at least economic crisis, this will greatly tumble the entire world economy. Although the euro stood as a symbol of union and symbol of future world unionized economy, international economy is too much of a cost to bear.

    

    I would like to remind what chief of IMF has argued: in a speech in Berlin, Lagarde, chief of IMF, discussed raising that total by up to an additional $500 billion, bringing the IMF's resources for lending close to $1 trillion. Currently, international society do not have much burden to solve economic crisis in Europe, international society is desperately trying to save EU from its desperate situation. If EU really cares and knows this effort of international society, trying to save EU from economic crisis, they must do their best to get rid of economic abyss; and the very first step they should take would be abolishing single European currency the euro. 

Sources

http://ateurope.idebate.org/debatabase/debates/politics-economics/house-would-abolish-single-european-currency

http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_20385333/imf-chief-says-funding-increase-europes-debt-crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/06/euro-debt-crisis-country-by-country

http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/209

http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/wiwi/laufer/lecture/lecture-english.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1014812.stm

Argumentative Essay (Step 1 and 2)

THIS HOUSE WOULD ABOLISH THE SINGLE EUROPEAN CURRENCY

Former president of the German Bundesbank, Dr Helmut Schlesinger, who in a speech in Los Angeles in April 1993, said that:

"Many economists feel that the single European market will only have been completed economically if Europe actually also has a single currency. Nothing expresses this conviction better than the well known slogan, "one market, one money" However, I believe it to be somewhat short shighted simply to regard the European monetary union as the logical conclusion to the process of economic integration. The monetary union is rather a step with a significance of its very own. A single market can exist and be beneficial without inevitably requiring further moves towards integration in the monetary sphere. Nobody to my knowledge is calling for the creation of a single North American currency, as the consequential establishment of a North American free trade area."

When we first think about the welfare, there would be few words come to our mind, Europe. European Union has been purchasing a large scale social project that once "was" the model of other countries for their welfare policy; yet, due to the perennial government  debt, European Union almost had collasped. Even recent days, they still are facing abysmal situation with their million debts. This welfare catastrophe in Eureope not only toss a question rather welfare state system like most of the European countries is a right way to go, but also questions the practicality of European Union systems itself. Reminding the fact that the countries joined in Eurpean Union aren't able to use monetary policy, they lost one of their most powerful tool to control the nation's economy. The reason is clear: member countries of Eurpean countries cannot print money or properly control the money supply since they all use same currency, Euro. For this big defects of using singe currency, we come up with an argument "This House would abolish the single European currency".

Eruo once threatened the status of U.S. dollar as a key currency. With European Union's  world biggest market size, Euro was one of the most convenient and efficient unit of market exchange. Nevertheless, the fact that countries in European Union all had distinct characteristics and  different level of economy, less developed or less economically influential coutries suffered to adjust their price level to other countries and comparatively more economically influential countries suffered to condescend to less economically developed countries. For this differences, Euro was like a time bomb. Absolute value of Euro created gap between member states of European Union; this gap tumbled the whole European Union system which eventually caused Greece's economy slip and PIGS economic crisis. 


Aforementioned information is a basic background information about the European Union and the motion itself. As already somewhat revealed, I'm personally for this motion. Although the aim of the singe currency was nice, single currency in imperfect system only will cause catastrophe; European Union in this regard is incomplete union and before considering to unite their currency, they should have checked the balance between member states. Futher detailed arugments will be dealt in step 3 and my essay :) 


Source:


http://www.brugesgroup.com/mediacentre/index.live?article=74

http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/politics-economics/house-would-abolish-single-european-currency

http://mailhost.econ.yale.edu/seminars/apmicro/am05/israel-050915.pdf

Photo essay [1]

Since I was very young, I often took public transportation to go somewhere. When I was about five, the most intimate public transportation to me was subway. Although most of the subway in Korea passes under the ground, some of the old station in Seoul was up on the ground; I especially liked the sunset glow through the translucent dark green color ceiling of the empty shabby station. Unlike the peaceful station, most of the time I took subway was to meet my grandfather who lived in the hospital room. Before he came to live in the hospital room, he was member of board of directors in Industrial Bank of Korea. According to my mom and grandmother, my grandfather worked harder than any other workers in Industrial Bank of Korea. He started from minor clerk and eventually became one of the chairmen. My grandfather was my hero and was my model. Way going to visit my grandfather in this regard was exciting, but at the same time, was blue. I don’t know how to explain my feeling at that time seeing the sunset glow, but the mixture of deep colors of sunset was my feeling.

When he passed away, it was already about six years have been passed since I was five; I still clearly remember at that time. It was about seven, eight o’clock. I was on my mother’s car and was heading to music academy in The Art Center located in Seoul for my violin lesson. When we turned left after passing gateway of my apartment, my mother’s phone rang; my mother only heard what the caller said for a while and baffled after the phone call. She stopped the car for a second beside the oil station and told me about what she has heard. I cried out loud more than ever, but ironically, didn’t really know why I was crying. I was just crying and so was my mother.

After then, I think that was when I started to think about the death and started to love thinking alone. Before, I just did what others asked me to do. Although it was something that I didn’t like to do, I adapted myself to the situation and tried to enjoy what I was doing. But after my grandfather’s death, I slowly but surely became myself. This was the biggest shift in my life.

I know why the caged bird sings

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

The free bird leaps
on the back of the win
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and is tune is heard
on the distant hillfor the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze
an the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.




Theme of the poetry “I know why the caged bird sings” basically is the restricted freedom: portraying the people who are refrained from their freedom to “the caged birds” and “the free bird”. Poetry’s traits that emphasize the theme could be categorized into two classes: rhetorical traits, structural traits. Predominant and continuous use of assonance throughout the poem reflects the long suppressed bird, the people; yet, by breaking the assonance at the last line, the aberration from the structure, establishes fresh sentiment which resembles freedom, the theme of the poem. In addition, through implicit comparison and personification such as “the cage bird”, it further enables author to depict abstract ideas through visual actions like singing of the bird. In case of structural traits, parallelism is used to establish rhyme in the stanzas that deals with “the caged bird”; this standardizes the poem which readers could infer this to the domesticated caged birds, a bird without freedom. However, by breaking the structure slightly as the poem develops, author indirectly implies singing and wailings of the caged birds are attempt to find their own freedom.

The Crucible

"I say- I say- God is dead!"
"A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud- God damns our kinds especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!"


The Crucible is set in a theocratic society, which meant that God was the true leader of society. Yet, mixing up of the laws of God and that of the men led indirectly to the legal chaos of the Salem witch trials; thus, everyone, due to their own greed and flame of desire, wasn’t able to realize the paradox created by their judging standard, mixed up with that of God and the men. In this regard, this excerpt has significance in a mean that John Proctor was the first one to disclaim the system of society he belongs to by denying the existence of the God, the ruler. Nevertheless, we also see that Proctor still wasn’t able to get rid of the paradigm of his society: dichotomy; he only is able to deny his society indirectly through denying God, but wasn’t able to find the irrationalities of his society and directly criticize them. We could once again find evidence of this claim from the contextual tone covered with segments of in complete phrases which seems very tempered and agitated due to confusion within his belief of God and Puritanism.

Three Perspective Story : A lucky day

Characters
-Eric
-Sean
-The stranger


Eric



It was drowsy day of April. As I always did, my daily life started with morning exercise. Finishing four hours of first period classes, I went up to dormitory to have a launch. Yet, my body was loose and I already was tired because of shiny sun shine and cool spring breeze. So I decided to stay in my room and take a short nap. While asleep, I could hear my friends calling my name to wake me up. What was next class? My head was fully filled with this question while I was going down to the school building for my after-launch class.



* * * *



Sean

“Hey! Eric! Wake up dude!” Sean tabbed on the Eric’s shoulder.

Sean, pleased with school launch, was little high with his feeling. His step was airily. He was going down for after-launch class. His mood was even more delighted with great weather. While running down the hill, Sean was able to feel cool wind brushing his face; with a great mood, he lightly shook his friend Eric’s shoulder. To his eyes, Eric’s reeling seemed like a dance. Sean thought Eric was dancing with the spring wind. Yet, far from what Sean have thought, Eric was rather swaying because he felt stupefied with spring fever. Anyway, they went down for their next class which was the physics class. Eric, guided by Sean, would have felt little relief since he didn’t know which class was his next class.

* * * *

Eric

Thanks god, Sean, although he abrupt my meditation while coming down the hill for after-launch class, he led me to my next class, the physics class. The classroom was on the third floor. After reaching third floor of the school building, I almost was plagued to death. Fortunately, I took the right stair rather than the left stair which led me to shorter passage to the physics classroom. I sat down and thought little awake from nap. Another relief. Since we only have about two weeks before the mid-term, I should study from now on; that means sleeping or dozing during the class equals to B in mid-term. “Ding di ling ding ding ding” bell apprised me with class start. “Squeak!” door opened and Mr. Yoon came in with huge cruel book. My indomitable spirit please save me.

“Today, we’ll move on to chapter 30 which will be on our mid-term” Mr. Yoon said. Oh, god… Sequence of meaningless alien words distracted me from concentrating on class. Yet, I did successfully jot down all the words Mr. Yoon said on first hour of the class. The real problem is second period of the class. I was almost was dead, I should rather sleep during 10 minutes rest.

* * * *

Sean

“Thsh” with a strange sound, Eric fall down on the desk. Class was yet not over. Sean tried to wake him up but it was meaningless. Sean tried to wake him up by shaking Eric’s shoulder even twice but Eric did not budge an inch. Teacher would just think Eric is free soul and leave him sleep. ‘No hope’ thought Sean.

* * * *

Eric



Someone shook my shoulder. I think class just has started. Thanks to my friend next to me, I woke up and started to jot down all the words that Mr. Yoon said. He was talking about the optic waves. Third relief! This is the part that I did study before! While I was laughing in my sleeve, friend next to me once again shook my shoulder. ‘What the hell?’ I muttered and looked at my friend. Surprisingly, he was twirling bottle, half filled with water. He said “Optic! Optic! Optic! Look at how beautiful the light wave scattering through the whirlpool of water!” He was keep laughing and I was little scared. I don’t even know who he is! I looked back Mr. Yoon and tried to ignore him. More surprise, Mr. Yoon was doing the same thing saying “This is the real optics! Spinning, spinning, spinning!”. ‘Hell! Everyone’s mad! They are insane! I got to get out of this class’ I thought. But stranger sitting next to me grabbed my shoulder and tried his best to spin his bottle as well as me. “WHAT THE HELL! LEAVE ME ALONE! AHHHHHHHH!”

* * * *

Stranger

“WHAT THE HELL! LEAVE ME ALONE! AHHHHHHH!” Eric shouted. “HeHeHe,” the stranger said, “You are not alone Eric! Let’s learn about fun optics!” Stranger twirled his body. “Eric! Try to run as fast as the light wave! I want to experiment something!” stranger was almost begging to Eric to run. “I want to! But first let me go!” Eric cried. The stranger didn’t even dare to hear what Eric was saying. The stranger looked at Mr. Yoon and grinned since Mr. Yoon was doing the same thing with the stranger. Soon, everyone was throwing the bottle to each other except for Eric. The stranger tried to shook Eric and let him do something but as the stranger looked back to see Eric, he was already gone.

* * * *



Sean

“AHHHHHHHH!” shouted Eric. Sean seemed to be surprised to Eric’s boutade; not only was Sean surprised, Eric’s shouting woke up everyone in the class suffering from Mr. Yoon’s grumbling like lecture. Sean, he was especially frightened because Eric suddenly pushed Sean from the chair. A minute later, everyone started to laugh and Mr. Yoon seemed little dumbfounded.

* * * *

Eric

Everyone was laughing when I pushed the stranger away from me. The stranger no longer spinning the bottle of water and Mr. Yoon seemed little dumbfounded. Then the bell rang, everyone packed their bag and moved to their next class. I, sitting alone in the classroom, wondered of what happened to me. My note was full of earthworm like letters and ancient scripts.

‘Shoot...GPA...University’

Short Story: Cheers!

Cheers?

John came back from cafeteria. It was dinner time and his eyes seemed to lost their focus.

“R-r-ring”. My cellular phone alarmed me for a text message. It was the first self-study period right next day I finished my dance performance in “Freshmen Party”: a party for freshmen to attract them and make them apply for performance club like bands or hip-hop clubs. I first thought the message was from my mom, as always she sent a “dinner message” to me. I skimmed through my new message list to find my mother’s dinner message. Yet, I wasn’t able to find mother’s dinner message; it didn’t matter though, since I was still tired, and my body was quivered because of b-boy performance beyond my body limit, I didn’t even try or want to check if another people have sent a message. I threw my cellular phone on my bed and enjoyed my time in my little Netherland sitting on my armchair.

* * * *

Rala was sitting on the sofa in Dasan building. She was impatiently biting her fingernail, wobbling her foot.

“Rala! What happened?”

Ji Young, Rala’s friend and leader of cheerleading team, shattered the anxious ambience around Rala. Rala, startled all of the sudden regained focus of her eyes and looked at Ji Young.

Ji Young called her again, “You do remember what you’ve told me yesterday, right?” After a few moments, Rala replied, “Oh… yes…yes of course! I’ve text messaged them already but still not got a single reply from them”. Only Rala’s eyes moved and she didn’t even tempt to move her body. “You know,” Ji Young said, “our team lacks boy cheer-leaders, who ought to be there! We cannot do any kind of stunt cheerleading only with feeble girls…. Last night you said your club freshmen, boy dancers, showed a great stunt and performance! I’m really looking forward to let them join our cheerleading team! I believe in your ‘Sun-bae’ power…”

After Ji Young left for her thesis paper review, Rala draw a deep breath. ‘WHY! NO! REPLY!’

* * * *

Ji Young’s face clearly reflected her inner feeling: she was greatly disappointed and somewhat be dejected. She expected some good news from her friend Rala: boys with good potential and fine dance experience would join cheerleading team.

Although she supposed to focus more on her college essay and application, she spent more time on cheerleading team that she loved; ironically when she looked back her past years to find some good theme for her college essay, she found there were tenacious spirit of dance within her since she was five, learning ballet which led her to digression. She was that much passionate about cheerleading that she almost regarded her college same with cheerleading club activity.

She walked toward her classroom imagining of great performance that new club members, the hip-hop dance club boys, will show her. No one will be able to possibly imagine how much her expectation towards the boys was high.


* * * *

Three days later.

It has been three days since I lost my phone. Before I came to this dormitory school, I never cared about my phone: basically because I didn’t have phone until I was 8th grade and there were no serious call from other people to me. Although some of the phone calls or text messages were urgent calls, they somehow contacted with me in other kinds of ways. Yet, this jail like dormitory school, away from any kind of civilization, suddenly amplified the importance of my phone: the only way to contact with outside world and the only and the most convenient way for my friends to contact with me for surging group projects. So, now I clearly do care about my phone, worried about text messages that would wait for me to check them out.

* * * *

“Rala! I….” one of Rala’s short-story group project members Hyoeun grabbed Rala’s shoulder. Yet, Rala shook Hyoeun’s hand off violently and said “WHAT!” without even looking back. “Sorry… I think we should meet one more time later…” “Fine, I don’t mind” replied Rala.

“Rala!”

“What! Still have something to say? Can’t you just do it yourself and text-message me later?” said Rala; when Rala looked back after shouting to her friend, she realized that it was actually her adviser calling her, not her friend Hyoeun. “Jeepers!” Her advisor’s face contorted. After quick figures, Rala tried to explain her situation and give some excuses to her advisor. Unfortunately, epic fail. Her advisor already went away.

Three days have been passed since Rala sent text message to scout John. Rala still have no reply from John. Ji Young always asked about the reply from John to Rala whenever Ji Young met her which made Rala even more irritated. Rala chafed at the bit to every single thing, sometimes even to her teacher.

After launch time, Rala called Bob, John’s friend, to ask what is John’s next class. It was 1:32, 8 minutes before class starts. Rala rushed down the hill with flushed face and puffing hard breath like a red bull. Her eyes were searching for John who would probably pushing his way through crowd of students in the Dasan lobby. Finally Rala’s mad eye detected the target. “JOHN!!!”

* * * *


“JOHN!!!”. ‘Did someone call me?’ with a great suspense and fear I could barely look back. Throughout my 17 years of lives, I’ve never heard someone yawping like this. What was more frustrating was that that screaming like voice was finding me. When I looked back, I could see Rala, my dance club leader. Her eyes were sparking and she was rushing towards me; my instinct for survival said ‘RUN!’ to me. So did I.