Greece is astonishing. The country's economy is in the tank and sinking fast to the bottom, where it belongs anyway. Yet Greek unions somehow think the bonanza isn't over and have called a wave of massive strikes that have already crippled fuel supplies and will cripple the whole country beginning tomorrow.
Ports, borders, transport and tons of public services will all be shut to protest the austerity measures the Greek government is offering in exchange of an EU bailout. The economically savvy union leaders believe that imposing what amounts to an embargo on their own country will force the government to back down and return to spending lots of money.
They just don't get it, from leader to member. There's no money, their country's word on debt is junk. What is the EU doing discussing a bailout when the populace seems so oblivious to the basic rules of common sense?
Let them fail. Countries have defaulted before and survived. Greece, Italy and Spain are incapable of reforming when asked to. The purse strings need to shut tight and throw these spending junkies into the gutter. In the past the government simply leant on the Central Bank to devalue the currency, defrauding its investors.
Well, the party is over. Accountable to the ECB, Greece must now face the music. It should be made an example of, for all of Europe to see. A government's good intentions don't matter if the voters remain so obtuse. It's time for them to feel the hit. Maybe, just maybe, they will begin demanding fiscal responsibility from their rulers in the future.
3 comments:
Normally the EU might have come to the rescue of the Greeks but since that country became the back door for all the trash flowing into Europe, there is no sympathy from those that could have helped the Greeks through this crisis. (real conservative)
I agree that the Unions need to be shown the door. They need to realise that there's no point in fighting over something that doesn't exist.
However, I don't see how the Euro has been of any benefit. It's partly to blame for Greece's current position, as it was the push for membership of the Eurozone which persuaded the government to start falsifying figures.
If Greece still had the Drachma, the markets would weed out the losers, as you put it, by devaluing the currency. That, in turn, would make the Greek economy more competitive, allowing them to grow their economy through exports. That's how the UK recovered from the deep recession of the early '90s, when Sterling collapsed.
Instead, Greece is locked into unrealistic exchange rates, tied to the German economy which has little in common with that of Greece. Once Greece has been forced to accept the required budget cuts, it is likely that there will need to be significant transfer payments from wealthier EU countries, as fiscal policy is the only way to maintain a balance when a country gives up its control over monetary policy. It's the same reason that Canada has transfer payments - without them, Quebec would be in the same position as Greece.
there is no shortage of stupid in the world.
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