Greece And Rocket Launches: Both Blowing Up -- Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Greece

The AP is reporting: Greece's Varoufakis says IMF won't be paid; Greece's Varoufakis says country will not be paying IMF debt due Tuesday. This should not surprise anyone. The Greeks telegraphed this a few days ago. On June 21, 2015, I posted:

It was reported earlier that the Greeks have said they want the IMF out of Europe. This is the trial balloon / shot across the bow telling the IMF not to expect their $1.8 billion a week from this Tuesday.  But Greece will get that $8.1 billion -- either from Europe, or from Russia.

IMF on the hook; despite Lagarde's initial reluctance, IMF on the hook for Greece. I have no sympathy for the IMF:

As French Finance Minister in 2010, Christine Lagarde opposed the involvement of the International Monetary Fund in Greece.

Now as the country stands on the edge of defaulting on a 1.6 billion euro ($1.8 billion) payment to the Fund, Lagarde's tenure at the head of the IMF since 2011 will be shaped by Greece, which holds a referendum on Sunday that could pave the way to its exit from the euro.

By its own admission the Washington-based institution broke many of its rules in lending to Greece. It ended up endorsing austerity measures proposed by the European Commission and European Central Bank, its partners in the troika of Greece's lenders, instead of leading talks as it had done with other countries such as Russia and in the Asian financial crisis.

This looks like the 2008 US financial crisis all over again.

And now, a two-year deal is being proposed. Sounds like a great headline, until you read that it was proposed by the Greeks.

The failure to pay the IMF was widely expected following the collapse of talks between Greece and its international lenders at the weekend. Had talks over reforms succeeded, Greece could have received a last tranche of aid, which it could have used to pay some of its debts.

Instead, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras surprised lenders at the weekend by calling a snap referendum on Greece's bailout program and austerity measures. The vote is on July 5.

Lenders refused to extend Greece's bailout program until after the vote, prompting anger from Tsipras who is urging the Greek public to vote "no" to more austerity.

The Greek government on Tuesday proposed a new, two-year bailout deal with the European Stability Mechanism. This would be to "fully cover its financing needs and the simultaneous restructuring of debt," according to a translated press release from the office of the Greek Prime Minister.

I think this whole thing could have been avoided if the IMF had simply restructured the debt (euphemism for writing it off over ten years) last week. The IMF is never going to get paid. By not restructuring the debt (euphemism for writing it off over ten years) the IMF simply invites the world's financial "system" begin a death spiral.

What we will now see is a story on every country that has insurmountable debt problems. The first such story / casualty was Puerto Rico.

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Tesla's Elon Musk's Rocket Blows Up

From Bloomberg, June 29, 2015: 

Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s aim to transport astronauts aboard commercial spacecraft was set back Sunday when one of his unmanned cargo rockets exploded in a fireball minutes after launch.

The disintegration of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket -- the latest reminder that there’s no such thing as a routine voyage to space for man or machine -- was the third fiery demise of a vehicle ferrying supplies to the International Space Station since October. SpaceX and Federal Aviation Administration officials are investigating what went wrong in the rocket’s final seconds.

Cargo missions like Sunday’s attempt are part of a NASA quest to open up spaceflight to commercial ventures, with the debut of astronaut trips on private craft operated by SpaceX and Boeing Co. to follow later this decade. The explosion also prevented a cost-savings attempt at guiding the rocket’s spent booster to a vertical landing on an unmanned platform bobbing in the Atlantic Ocean.

Is it just me or do others think the same thing: is this crazy or what?

The US, at one time, was "routinely" sending men to the moon and back, and launching and recovering space shuttles on a regular basis. Now, it appears, "we" can't even launch comparatively "simpler" re-supply missions into low orbit without them blowing up.

I remember a retired Air Force general officer talking to us at Air War College back in 1996, telling us that it was still amazing to him that whenever there was a space launch it was a major television event and folks would clap and shout and cheer when a launch was successful. He thought that we should be at the stage where rocket launches were routine, no different than the airlines since the 1950's or whenever their golden age began.

But here we are, it seems, at the dawn of the space age (again) when we can't even launch a rocket into low earth orbit. We landed a man on the moon back in 1969 and here it is almost 50 years later and we're having trouble launching rockets.

Only one thing comes to mind: cutting corners on cost.