Greece: Playing "Train-Dodge Game," Right Into...Another Train?
Greek negotiations with the Eurozone. Wow, what a page turner and day-by-day soap opera. Any news I print today is obsolete by tomorrow, so I'll comment only on what I believe is really going on behind the scenes.
- "Game Theory": wow, fascinating to see it play out in the economic theory sense of the phrase live and in-person day by day. I'm learning a lot about negotiations, too, a subject I thought I knew well in business school.
- "the Communists" are protesting. Who the hell do they have actually believing that blue-sky? Seriously?
- Raise pensions, keep low retirement age, other entitlements that no state can afford, given the low productivity and state of economic depression. Paid for by *whom,* exactly? The EU doesn't owe bums a red nickel above and beyond what the other member states get! That'd be like me asking the State of Washington to provide me an all-expenses paid (and salary paid) trip to Hawaii ever year. For a month. I'm not holding my breath.
- "We have suffered enough!", they clamor. I agree, sure you have. Seriously, you have, with Communists one one side (Syriza, other Trotskyist) and the Nazis on the other (Golden Dawn party, the Greek police). Your choices are: snap-to the fiscal norms of the Eurozone, or exit the Eurozone and take your chances on your own following in the wake of Argentina and others. Pick one. Now. Today. Economic "chicken" game is done.
- Remaining silent about tax collection, corruption, paternalism, and everything else related to massive corruption. Sounds like it's time for a cultural revolution of sorts, Greeks. Start by burning down the oligarch's homes in Athens and elsewhere. Dammit, wait: they've offshored their assets. Hmm.
On an individual basis, I like Greeks just fine. Fun people. I've managed several, and been friends with others, over the years. But hell, I know a guy running a restaurant business in (some town USA) that is "cash only," through at least earlier this year. He's been running it that way for years, probably from square one. I cannot believe he gets away with this, in 2015. I'd bet an Andrew Jackson someone's skimming revenues on that, c'mon! Typical of a culture that deifies corruption, I must say (with some reluctance, since we're talking about real people and real suffering). And I do like the guy.
But the time for "I like the guy" and wink-wink/nudge-nudge is past. I mean really past. As in, the light at the end of the tunnel is a train. Meet it, or dodge it.
Exit the Euro, guys. Do it. Bite the bullet. Leadership will hide behind the flag, as one pundit phrased it, but it's just got to be done for your long-term health. The world will survive. The Eurozone may not. Who cares.
- "Game Theory": wow, fascinating to see it play out in the economic theory sense of the phrase live and in-person day by day. I'm learning a lot about negotiations, too, a subject I thought I knew well in business school.
- "the Communists" are protesting. Who the hell do they have actually believing that blue-sky? Seriously?
- Raise pensions, keep low retirement age, other entitlements that no state can afford, given the low productivity and state of economic depression. Paid for by *whom,* exactly? The EU doesn't owe bums a red nickel above and beyond what the other member states get! That'd be like me asking the State of Washington to provide me an all-expenses paid (and salary paid) trip to Hawaii ever year. For a month. I'm not holding my breath.
- "We have suffered enough!", they clamor. I agree, sure you have. Seriously, you have, with Communists one one side (Syriza, other Trotskyist) and the Nazis on the other (Golden Dawn party, the Greek police). Your choices are: snap-to the fiscal norms of the Eurozone, or exit the Eurozone and take your chances on your own following in the wake of Argentina and others. Pick one. Now. Today. Economic "chicken" game is done.
- Remaining silent about tax collection, corruption, paternalism, and everything else related to massive corruption. Sounds like it's time for a cultural revolution of sorts, Greeks. Start by burning down the oligarch's homes in Athens and elsewhere. Dammit, wait: they've offshored their assets. Hmm.
On an individual basis, I like Greeks just fine. Fun people. I've managed several, and been friends with others, over the years. But hell, I know a guy running a restaurant business in (some town USA) that is "cash only," through at least earlier this year. He's been running it that way for years, probably from square one. I cannot believe he gets away with this, in 2015. I'd bet an Andrew Jackson someone's skimming revenues on that, c'mon! Typical of a culture that deifies corruption, I must say (with some reluctance, since we're talking about real people and real suffering). And I do like the guy.
But the time for "I like the guy" and wink-wink/nudge-nudge is past. I mean really past. As in, the light at the end of the tunnel is a train. Meet it, or dodge it.
Exit the Euro, guys. Do it. Bite the bullet. Leadership will hide behind the flag, as one pundit phrased it, but it's just got to be done for your long-term health. The world will survive. The Eurozone may not. Who cares.
