Bonds are safe. Right?

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To ensure that the participation rate is high enough, the Greek government retroactively inserted collective action clauses into the contracts that govern its domestic bonds. The clauses give Greece the authority to force bondholders who do not volunteer for the restructuring to abide by the terms anyway.
However, Greece needs a sufficiently large number of investors to volunteer for the restructuring in order for it to be considered a collective action.
The unofficial target for the so-called participation rate is 66%. Anything below that threshold might not be considered voluntary, which would make it difficult to argue that the action was collective.

It would never happen here right?

via

Steyn on Not So Great Britain

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This is the logical dead end of the Nanny State. When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the British welfare regime in 1942, his goal was the “abolition of want” to be accomplished by “co-operation between the State and the individual.” In attempting to insulate the citizenry from life’s vicissitudes, Sir William succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. As I write in my book: “Want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons want to work, want to marry, want to raise children, want to lead a life of any purpose or dignity.”

Replace “Britons” with “People” and you have 80% of the planet fitting that description.

Big Government means small citizens: It corrodes the integrity of a people, catastrophically. Within living memory, the city in flames on our TV screens every night governed a fifth of the earth’s surface and a quarter of its population. When you’re imperialists on that scale, there are bound to be a few mishaps along the way. But nothing the British Empire did to its subject peoples has been as total and catastrophic as what a post-great Britain did to its own.

There are lessons for all of us there.

Occupy that. I’m going to start reading Steyn’s columns to my kids at bedtime. Forget the stupid fairy books they make me read to them now.

Jason Kenny takes on Amnesty International

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I must confess that my first reaction upon reading your open letter to Minister Toews and myself was one of surprise and joy. For your organization to muster its formidable powers of suasion against the orderly and innoxious proceedings of the Canadian immigration system must mean that the world’s most truculent regimes have discharged their last political prisoners and advocates of democracy are free to march in the streets of Tehran and Pyongyang.

Read the full thing.

Saving 20 Billion

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“But until we get through these difficulties, we’ll hold back some of the money that the American taxpayers have committed to give.”

Responding to whether that figure was “some $800 million,” Daley said, “Yep.”

The New York Times, citing three unnamed senior U.S. officials, reported that altogether, “about $800 million in military aid and equipment, or over one-third of the more than $2 billion in annual American security assistance to Pakistan, could be affected.”

$2 Billion annually goes to Pakistan. I can think of a way to save $20 Billion over 10 years. I’d like to know which American taxpayers committed the money.