The Greek crisis , though seemingly solved in the short term, goes on and on, fueled by an incredibly ignorant government and creditors who are sick of flushing money down a bottomless hole.
It’s easy to see why this crisis has become such a disaster. Everyone is to blame and no one seems to be without guilt. The European Union has bullied the Greeks who have handled everything badly. The creditors have tried to use usurious tactics and the Greek leaders have acted like a bunch of idiot children.
I watched a half-dozen, or so Greek leaders, being interviewed by Christine Amanpour and they all appeared to be stupid, venal, idiots who double-talked, avoided any responsibility and generally acted even worse then our own congress. When Amanpour pointed out to one of them that the resolution they had presented to the country to vote on no longer existed, none of them would even approach the accusation. Each double-talked around it, blabbering about Democracy, blaming everyone but themselves.
The Greeks got themselves where they are now, by bad fiscal policies administrated by a non-functional government. The World Bank published a chart the other day showing that 89.5% of taxes in Greece are never collected as opposed to England where 95.8% of taxes are. This is only one indication of why some countries are fiscally successful and others aren’t.
The Greeks voted overwhelmingly, to leave the European Union rather then submit to stern fiscal restrictions. It was certainly thrilling to the Greek people, showing that they would not be pushed around, but it was the move of a decidedly stupid country. I’m sure that everyone has had a great time celebrating their vote for Democracy but the next day when they found out that they had to buy groceries and medicine, they didn’t feel quite so triumphant and then they settled for exactly what they had voted against.
This is a country with about the same GDP as greater Miami. It will not have caused any huge financial problems if it had left the Euro Union, but if it had and it was then successful, it might have encouraged the other countries that are lagging behind, like Spain, Portugal and Italy, to start thinking about doing the same.
That’s part of the problem with the Union. There are all these countries with the same monetary policy and vastly different fiscal policies.. You can actually draw a line across a map of Europe and those to the south are all in trouble financially and those to the north are all okay. This does not make for a functional organization.
But while there is some worry about a domino effect taking place if Greece leaves the Euro-Zone, the reality is that Spain isn’t going to leave no matter what, and that the North of Europe will help them much more than they would help Greece, simply because they are a much more functional and even much more important partner.
On a related note, maybe the British Museum should rethink sending the Elgin Marbles back to Greece right now. The Marbles are an international treasure and sending them to a country that is as unstable a Greece, could lead to disastrous results. Look what the savages of ISIS are doing to all those treasures that were left behind in Iraq and Syria, treasures that would still exist, if they had been taken away by some civilized country or the collectors therein.
But back to the crumbling country that wants its heritage back so it can be endangered. Greece had two awful choices facing it. It could bend to the will of the financial powers that want it to endure what will possibly be decades of austerity, so that it can become an at least decent candidate for further loans, or it could have actually left the Euro-Zone and issued its own currency.
Of course said currency would be worthless on the world market because it would have represented a country that was bankrupt, but at least with such a devalued currency this physically gorgeous country could create a tourist boom that would, at least, have brought in some cash.
The alternatives, have been, endlessly, threshed out, by a media that thrives on rumor and conjecture. It looks like Greece is in for a very long, hard road, especially since no one in Europe has any faith in either the leaders or the people to want to do the right thing. The people didn’t want to put up with adversity to get the country back on its feet, but their ideas of adversity was not paying taxes, retiring at 45 and having a huge social welfare system that wasn’t being paid for by anyone.
Long term, this isn’t going to go away and the people of Greece better get used to being poor because being lazy and dependent doesn’t lead to a functioning country and that isn’t going to change any time soon.