by BILL VAN AUKEN
Forbes magazine, which bills itself as “Information for the World’s Business Leaders,” has published an article on its web site entitled “The real Greek solution: a military coup.”
The article, written by one Tim Worstall, a British blogger and metals trader, informs his readers that a “joke” circulating in the financial markets is that “the real solution to the Greek problem is a military coup.”
As the source of this piece of information, he cites an article by Jeremy Warner in Britain’s Daily Telegraph: “Only half in jest, is it sometimes said that a better use for Germany’s money than pouring it down the drain of further bail-outs would be to sponsor a Greek military coup and solve the problem that way. The reason being that a military dictatorship cannot be in the European Union. Thus, if there was such a military coup Greece would immediately have to leave the EU and thus whatever happened to its economy would simply be someone else’s problem.”
Worstall continues that the joke has a “sad” and “bitter” quality because, “if we ignore the little problem of it being a military dictatorship, this would in fact be a good solution to Greek woes.”
What, according to the author are Greek’s woes? He writes that Greece cannot possibly pay its debts and is inevitably headed for default, but that this will not resolve the core problem. “Greek wages, Greek living standards, have to fall in order to make that labour competitive,” he writes. “Or, if you prefer, Greek labour productivity needs to rise very strongly and very quickly. Either path is extremely difficult and painful.”
In the short term, the Forbes contributor indicates, “What the military coup would allow is, as I say, ignoring that little detail about it being a military coup, what should probably happen and would certainly be the least painful way for Greece to deal with its problems: default and exit from the euro.”
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