| Bad loans did not cause the crisis. Bad loans are a symptom of a poor fiscal situation. No one forced Greece to take out loans. Consider this write up :http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-... This was before the "Greeks as Victims" narrative gained wide currency. “The way they were keeping track of their finances—they knew how much they had agreed to spend, but no one was keeping track of what he had actually spent. It wasn’t even what you would call an emerging economy. It was a Third World country.” As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. |