Greek Fire

With Athens ablaze and it seeming likely that another round of austerity measures are not going to extricate Greece from it's economic woes, understanding both the reasons for how it got where it is and what will finally solve its problems may very well be useful in thinking about our economies in new and innovative ways.

I have not spent a lot of time trying to understand the reasons for the depth of the current economic crisis in Greece. The claims that Greeks are a bunch of lazy, money grubbing free-loaders who simply borrowed to much and are now paying the price seems overly simplistic to me. Reading beware of Greeks bearing bonds by Michael Lewis only made me realize that there is something far more systemic going on. An interest was being served by successive Greek governments running up massive debts that where being swept under the carpet that goes beyond people expecting to have their pie and eating it.

Greece is but a more extreme version of where many of the rest of us find ourselves. The better we understand what has happened in Greece, how this was allowed to happen, the better we will understand how we allowed Glass-Steagall to be repealed.

Solving Greece's problem's might be the key to us re-imagining how our societies and economies will work in the future. So far, the regular measures have been very ineffective in restoring belief in the Greek economy nor do the Greeks seem ready to undergo further cuts to public spending. What new and old forms of economy will emerge as the current one collapses? We have already seen the return of a barter economy in many parts of Greece and desperation will like lead to further inventiveness.