Michael Lewis, who expertly profiled Iceland’s collapse last year, has now set his sights on Greece. Lewis chronicles a country accustomed to corruption, handouts, and “breathtaking inefficiency.” “Where waste ends and theft begins almost doesn’t matter; the one masks and thus enables the other,” he writes. “It’s simply assumed, for instance, that anyone who is working for the government is meant to be bribed. People who go to public health clinics assume they will need to bribe doctors to actually take care of them. Government ministers who have spent their lives in public service emerge from office able to afford multi-million-dollar mansions and two or three country homes.” [%comments]
"And They Invented Math!"
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It’s understandable why German taxpayers don’t want to bail out Greece.
I think the upcoming bankruptcy of the U.S. government is another story entirely. In the U.S., bankruptcy seems to be the method of choice for shedding unreasonable obligations and returning to sustainable level of operations. (See GM in 2009, NYC in 1974, etc,) A federal bankruptcy may be the only way to get rid of bloated and misplaced agricultural subsidies, congressional pork-related defense contractor subsidies, endless subsidies to both Israel and the Palestinians, the mortgage tax deduction and other politically “untouchable” irritations.
Europe has no such tradition of a “cleansing” bankruptcy, and even if it did, i can’t see the Greeks changing their lifestyle under a new financial regime.
What is the problem, exactly?
The Michael Lewis article has a date of October 1, 2010. He has invented a time machine and is writing back from the future!
But Michael, where did you get the plutonium to power your DeLorean?
The problem with journalism these days: sensationalism. This is sensationalized tripe. No one screamed at those people for working. This was a protest of hundreds of thousands, and 3 anarchists through a molotov cocktail. The idea that the crowd wanted those people to die is just bad reporting.
The rest of the article scratches the surface. For all the waste going on in Greece, the average salary of public workers is less than $7k. There are 700k of them. Add that up. You can’t get to $300 billion of debt. The money was lost on corruption. I accounted for over $150 billion of useless projects (mainly military) approved after bribes to public officials (from external sources). German corporations spent hundreds of millions bribing Greek officials for useless projects. Look up Thyssen Kruppe, Siemens, with the words “bribes” and “Greece.” Who goes home happy? Corrupt Greek officials, the German industrial worker, German corporate fatcats. Who gets left with the bag? German banks, European taxpayers, Greek citizens who owe a ton of money.
I generally like Lewis’ work, though i always feel like he doesn’t go far enough (he was far too soft on Dr. Burry in the big short–the guy didn’t know why his clients treated him like a pariah, and it was obvious to all except Michael lewis). In this case on Greece, he did a bad job. Greeks work hard if you look at the stats (though their productivity/efficiency is very low, which is what happens in societies with little in the way of high-tech), they don’t rack up private debt, they make very little in the way of salary. The focus on them is all wrong. The focus should be on corrupt government officials. The people protesting in the streets are exactly right, but Lewis’ disdain for the workers shows through instead.
Being a Greek I must say that I totally agree with “danallen”.
The situation is exactly as he/she describes.
We are NOT all corrupted.Nor we want to have corrupted officials.