Sunday, June 17, 2012
Needs a dose of human nature
The usual Euro babbling:
No. No. No. EXACTLY WRONG.
That's not the way humans work, and it's EMPHATICALLY not the way governments work.
Reform happens only after you hit bottom.
We know this in the context of our own lives, but for some reason we don't apply it to governments and other institutions. In the case of Greece it's wildly obvious. As long as the Krauts were willing to pay the welfare checks, the Greek economy was happy to be a useless parasite. When the welfare threatened to stop, the Greek elites showed some signs of straightening up. They won't get any better until their own actions have immediate and observable consequences. In other words, you can't heal until you have a functional feedback loop. And the only way to restore feedback is to become an independent nation.
Former Greek PM George Papandreou said that Greece leaving the euro would be "catastrophic" for the country and warned there will be a “run” on the banks.
"Leaving the euro would be catastrophic for Greece. There would be a bank run ... we are still a high import country, we depend on oil, for example. Also we will have deep cuts and at the same time there will be most likely a cut in our GDP growth by 20pc, so this will be a major catastrophe that will have not only social but political consequences, which I believe will make it much more difficult for Greece to reform."
No. No. No. EXACTLY WRONG.
That's not the way humans work, and it's EMPHATICALLY not the way governments work.
Reform happens only after you hit bottom.
We know this in the context of our own lives, but for some reason we don't apply it to governments and other institutions. In the case of Greece it's wildly obvious. As long as the Krauts were willing to pay the welfare checks, the Greek economy was happy to be a useless parasite. When the welfare threatened to stop, the Greek elites showed some signs of straightening up. They won't get any better until their own actions have immediate and observable consequences. In other words, you can't heal until you have a functional feedback loop. And the only way to restore feedback is to become an independent nation.
Labels: the broken circle
¶ 3:22 AM
