Greek Fable - the financial collapse

If you drove through Southern Europe recently – over the past 15 years – you would have seen, in Greece, Portugal, etc., massive modern roads and infrastructure being built. All this in sleepy southern European Latin type countries who do things differently to Northern Europe.

It was a Stalinism by the back door, (but benign so we didn’t notice. So, not strictly Stalinism, but certainly his “command economy”). It was paid for by Northern Europe by commissars – oops, commissioners. And no one was going to say no – why should they? As all this cash and busyness was poured in, who cares that their sleepy way of laissez-faire is swept away? Why not ride the wave? And who could object? The German technicians will design it, we get to build it, the burgeoning bureaucracies in our own countries mean Poles, Greeks and Portuguese can get cushy jobs.

The problem was that, like in Russia, they didn’t really mean it. Only the North Europeans have all that work ethic stuff to fix and maintain the complexities they themselves create. The southern Europeans were bemusedly in it for the ride.

Well now the pack of cards has tumbled. The retirement they gave themselves at 45 has come to grief.

But it won’t come to grief in quite that cleaning out of the Stygian stable sort of way. The financiers screamed “don’t bail out Greece!” but they did – just as the west bails out the third world in unending, diluting, bloating aid, with all that accompanying disaster – which is another subject.