The crisis in Greece remains … a crisis. After five years, during which time everyone who was paying attention said it was a crisis. And, of course, the crisis went unresolved. The end game may come soon but, then, who knows? But there seems to be a consensus of sorts building around the idea that it would be a bad thing if Greece were to leave the Eurozone. Bad for whom, one asks. The Greeks are in the Eurozone at present and it certainly hasn’t been good to them. Whatever their own sins – and they have been many – it is hard to see where membership is making their lives better. No money and no jobs, with a future that seems to come down to more pain.
The fault may not be with Greece so much as the whole enterprise of putting it into the eurozone with the Euro as common currency. This project was doomed from the start, as Milton Friedman said at the time. He appears, once more, to have called it.
If Greece does leave, we are told, then the whole enterprise may be in jeopardy. Which the global managers and bureaucrats cannot tolerate. Which is why, this afternoon, the U.S. Treasury Secretary:
Well, they had five years from the time they started noticing there was a problem. They put their best brains on it and they tried a number of fixes. Which seem to have a) postponed the day of reckoning and b) made things worse.
Maybe it is time to just let Greece go and if the Euro dies … well, nice try.
