Rachel Marsden

Where in all of this is anyone actually producing anything that's turning a significant profit? Meanwhile, in China, they have enough cash floating around to buy up the treasury bills of every other cash-strapped country, thereby stringing them up by the short and curlies and ensuring the red-carpet treatment anywhere and everywhere they might wish to go on a round-the-world tour.

So where do defenders of freedom turn when they see how socialism has turned them into slaves of communism? To the free market and the private sector they've been up until now taxing into oblivion in the interest of spreading the wealth. You can't make this stuff up.

On Friday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced at a Berlin press conference that they'd like to offer the opportunity for the private sector -- via banks, insurers and investment funds -- to dole out some cash on a "voluntary basis" to bail out Greece, because those 110 billion euros that Europe is currently forking over in installments definitely won't be enough, and none of the countries who might be expected to pony up this new injection of funds has any more money to flush down the toilet. Sarkozy adds that this all needs to happen before September, so the private sector had better hurry up and jump on this most excellent opportunity to never see their money again.

Oh boy, let's all hold our breath for the "Peugeot Parthenon," the "Citroen Coliseum" and the "Airbus Acropolis." Meanwhile, Nigerian scam e-mail writers are probably taking notes in the event this rip-off actually achieves liftoff: "Dear Mister CEO, Sir: I have city to sell in Greece! Please transfer $1,000,000,000 to account below and I will send keys in mail. Many blessings!" Maybe while they're at it, they can also bankrupt all the private health insurance funds in Europe in an attempt to save Greece.

Dark humor aside, the Greek case should serve as a reminder to Obama, America and every other country led by someone trying to spend their way out of economic trouble that it will always lead to things getting much worse. And, as Sarkozy and Merkel have now effectively acknowledged, the free market is the best solution to economic difficulty.

Rachel Marsden
