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David P. Goldman posted this today on First Things’s blog First Thought. He describes the economic situation in Greece and sketches out some of the social causes and possible outcomes. In my heart I want what I read here to not be true–but I suspect my hopes are misplaced.
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory
On Feb. 12, I posted this item at my “Inner Workings” blog at Asia Times and on the Spengler blog at First Things:
Although Greece is an EC member, its finances and political system have the character of a banana republic. EC membership, though, enabled Greece to borrow far more money than any banana republic, such that the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is about triple that of Argentina just before the latter’s bankruptcy in 2000. And because Greece is an EC member, the size and adumbrations of a bankruptcy would be much, much larger than that of any Latin American country.
Earlier I had assumed that we were watching a negotiation: Brussels would shout “Never!,” the Greeks would throw tantrums, and eventually some compromise would be reached and the situation would be stabilized.
Closer examination of the political situation in Greece makes me less optimistic. Greece may be suffering from an inoperable cancer, in the form of a degree of corruption that make a resolution without bankruptcy very difficult to implement.
Here are some comments by a political observer in Athens who has written to me privately: Continue reading