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by graeme 3808 days ago
Might be the Greece 2.0 prediction. I was with you till there. Greece's debt was in Euros, which the Greek government didn't control.

So Greece had no option to devalue it's currency in response to a slowing economy. Whereas Canada can devalue currency (as we're doing). We have the additional benefit that our debt load is in our domestic currency, so we don't face the debt appreciation challenge many countries face when they devalue their currency.

I think Canada's in trouble, but the Greek situation is fundamentally a different type of problem.

(I didn't downvote)

1 comments

I thought that Greeces problems stemmed from excessive govt spending leading to a situation where the tax revenue could not compensate for the debt load with a consequence of either bankruptcy or bailouts from other countries. At least that's where my comparison starts and ends.
That's true. But it's only true because the debt load is in Euros, and Greece doesn't control the value of the Euro.

If you're a country with currency control + debt in your own currency, it's basically impossible to have that same kind of crisis.

(You can have other problems, but they wouldn't be so intractable as what Greece has.)