@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Your assertion seems to be that the problems in Greece are an indication of a failure of their social system. I assert that the problems are much more due to the lies that both the government and banks were jointly entering into. Now, you can say that the government felt they had to do that in order to protect their position, and there's an argument that could be made there. But that's not proof in any way of the essential failure of their social system; instead, it's a failure of their government, who attempted to use secrecy rather than openness.
Cycloptichorn
Let me then be more specific. A succession of left wing Greek governments has systematically indulged in deficit spending and duplicitous accounting to sustain a social welfare systen they could not afford, but which organized political groups in the country demanded. The governments in question used the maintenance and expansion of these programs as a key political issue to keep themselves in power. Further they knowingly disguised their increasingly precarious situation to both the Greek people and EU bureaucrats who, as you inferred, were all too willing to be deceived.
The game would have continued indefinately were it not for the banks and financial institutions (the evil corporations in your lexicon) which had been lending Greece the money but which became increasingly aware of the risk of sovereign default and lowered their bid prices on Greek national bonds (thereby in effect raising the interest rate).
The underlying problem here of populations addicted to social welfare systems their economic productivity does not enable them to sustain is endemic throughout the EU. Indeed the "European Model" social; & economic system about which they brag so much and compare contemptuously to the "American Model" of freer labor markets, greater individual responsibility and greater income variability is itself the underlying culprit. The EU is intervening to bail out the Greeks to prevent further spread of a crisis that could easily become more widespread (and in the case of France and Germany to save their own banks). The dilemma they face is the accelerating demographic collapse of most nations in the EU. Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia all have declining populations, and the others aren't far behind (except France, the Netherlands and the Scandanavian countries, which have much more favorable population distributions. Even if temporary economic fixes are found to resolve today's crisis the underlying crisis of ageing populations will soon enough bring the whole system down.
The sad and ironic fact is that our misguided government is foolishly trying to impose the European model on us just as its inherent contradictions become manifest in Europe
