The Free Market? It’s Greek to Them

I’ve been thinking about the economic problems in Greece, ever since I brought the topic up with my Greek-American friends Rick and Georgio. They laughed about their home country’s government ineptitude and free spending.  A column in today’s WSJ by Bret Stephens provided me with a little more clarity.

In Greece it costs an average of $10,218 to obtain all of the necessary permits to open a business. In the US? $166. The legions of entitled combined with the ‘captains of subsidized industries’ are joining with college students and government workers to form a political majority.  It gets dangerous when these takers outnumber the taxpayers, also known as the payers.

Europe’s problem that is keeping it from being able to get out of this Great Recession is that the government generally sides with itself, the state, instead of with the market. Jacques Chirac, for 12 years the president of France, made statements against the ‘Angl0-Saxon ultraliberalism’ in other words, letting the market call the shots.

Greece’s prime minister, George Papandreau has alluded to some evil forces, hedge fund managers, perhaps, who he accuses of attacking the euro and having ulterior motives for hurting the entire continent. How about a better reason, George? You spent way, way more than you had, and then you almost defaulted on the loans that were extended to Greece.  As Stephens says, it’s a crisis of ideas, not just about money.