NEVER ON A SUNDAY….
(or any other day, and keep your mitts off our ouzo!)

The Euro-Zone financial brains should have realized early on that trying to equate –Greek- with –austerity- would end up being an oxymoron.

After decades of living it up under statist welfare of one kind or another, with little or no tax collection of tax revenues to pay for it, the Greeks have now run smack into the harsh wall of reality, which is, profligate habits sooner or later must be paid for. But belt-tightening austerity to do that is not part of human character in general, and definitely not part of Greek character in particular, which tends more towards a …never on a Sunday, or any other day, and keep your mitts off our ouzo…mindset, instead.

So what’s to be done?

For one thing, Greek politicos of whatever stripe need to talk straight to their people about their reality, no matter how painful that might be. That is, they’re broke, so it’s time to just quit crying and wailing like trust fund babies who’s fund has gone dry, and accept the fact that like any other bankrupts they now have to set up some kind of debt service deal with their creditors, even if it has to be spread over the next twenty years. Either that, or they may find themselves completely out in the financial cold with only circling loan sharks perhaps willing to consider extending them some credit (and despite the lyrics of a very old Navy song of ours, there are no chivalrous sharks in the world’s financial oceans).

Unfortunately none of their politicos seem either able or willing to be honest about their predicament, preferring instead to continue spouting the same old slogans and mantras of – don’t worry-, -be happy-, trust us-, we’ll make things right….by soaking the rich! But slogans don’t pay the bills, put food on families’ tables, or pay for pensioners, and, there are very few rich left to soak, in Greece. So no amount of just austerity, or only bail-out stimulus, can do it either. Only economic and job growth can do so, and for that to happen it has to be a balanced combination of both.

Of course the Greeks are not alone in this situation, as we’ve seen by the wave of political backlash against austerity measures which has swept across the Euro-Zone. The question now is will they all have both the smarts and the political will to come up with such a balanced approach to resolve their common problems, or not?

The key to successfully resolving them seems to point towards devising collective means to help bring individual members’ debt loads to a more manageable level, somewhere within 30% of their respective GDPs, or less. Whether they have the political wills to set up the necessary capital and financial mechanisms to accomplish that is an open question.

The danger is, if they are unable to do so then their entire structure could collapse like a house of cards. After a half century of very great effort to create a strong and viable common economic community it would be a great pity to see it all get flushed down the drain, and thereby risk reverting back to the bad old days of nationalistic economic and political rivalries that begat two devastating world wars.

These are not happy thoughts, but reality is reality, and it must always be faced, not with fairy tales, but with courage and determination.

CENTURION