I’m not an economist. I may have gotten my figures wrong. I may have gotten my economic history wrong. But it seems to me that Greece, population 11 million, has defaulted on about $100 billion worth of emergency loans that were made to cover its inability to pay off even larger loans. It also seems to me that the money that was loaned went to sustain a pension system that enabled people — almost half of them government employees — to retire at an absurdly early age, and at a still more absurd age if they worked at hundreds of “hazardous” occupations, such as beautician and radio announcer. And it now appears that while taking emergency loans to enable it to get through a “tough” period of “austerity” mandated by its fiendish creditors, Greece actually added 70,000 workers to the government payroll.
In response to the awful suffering imposed on them from beyond, Greeks went to the polls on Sunday and passed a referendum encouraging their government to demand yet more money from their creditors, with the stipulation that Greeks themselves would do nothing “further” to economize. The referendum won by a landslide. The human pebbles who slid down the electoral hill apparently believed that the people who loaned them money were exploiting them by expecting them to honor some part of their agreements.
The Greek government will now demand that a large portion of its debt be “written down”; in other words, that Greece be licensed simply to keep the money it was loaned and now refuses to pay back. In support of this idealistic notion, many of the pebbles took to the streets, indignantly proclaiming that “Greeks are not beggars!” They are right; there are other words for what they are — or, more properly, for how they’re acting. It’s a fine illustration of the way in which normal, decent people turn into ne’er-do-wells and conmen at the polls. The first victims of the conmen are themselves. They convince themselves that they are acting decently — indeed, that they are impelled by a righteous cause.
hile taking emergency loans to enable it to get through a “tough” period of “austerity” mandated by its fiendish creditors, Greece actually added 70,000 workers to the government payroll.
We’ll see whether Greece will continue to find European financial agencies that are silly enough to provide more money, on the Greeks’ own terms. Maybe it will. In Europe, there are two suckers born every minute.
Others besides me have commented on these matters, and I’ve read a lot of their comments. But so far I haven’t encountered a certain kind of comment. It seems to me an obvious one to make, but it isn’t being made. So I’ll make it.
When we talk about “European” loans to “Greece,” we must remember that we are talking about money that governments and government-sponsored banks have arranged to cover the debts of Greek official institutions. No private individual would make loans like this, unless he was figuring on some government covering his ass. In Greece itself, no private individual would do that.It’s like the California “bullet train”: it’s supposed to be a wonderful investment, but somehow, not a penny of private money has ever been invested in it.
If there is a better argument against centralized economic decisions, I can’t think of one. Here we have enormously ridiculous, enormously expensive losses, engendered by a class of government-sponsored experts who thought they knew better than every other individual on the planet. And by the way, these experts were working with other people’s money, with money that is taken, not requested. That kind of money is always easy to spend. And here is the financial system that is supposed to give the world security.
No private individual would make loans like this, unless he was figuring on some government covering his ass.
The Greeks aren’t the only people who think that “investment” means extracting money from productive individuals and giving it to the government to spend on projects that can’t possibly turn a profit. That’s the modern system of political economy. As for the ability of the United States, or the now-sainted China, to stimulate its economy by increasing its debts, the comment of Ray Gaines in Monday’s Wall Street Journal says it all: the system is not working. Meanwhile, the culture of entitlement that is inseparably linked to borrowing without repaying spreads inexorably from the seminar room to the legislative chamber to the chamber of commerce and the welfare mob. Too confused to argue, it asserts its positions; too proud to beg, it demands.
