With gold at a five-year low, it certainly is a good time to buy. However, declaring Greece to be the new Switzerland is not going to solve the problem of the Greek Debt Crisis. The cause of the problem is two-fold. First, they have the most generous retirement system in Europe, all of it a government expense. Second, they do not collect enough tax revenue to support the government. That could be remedied by your fourth bullet point. Last week on NPR, I heard an under-minister-of-something say that billions of dollars worth of public funds were stolen by oligarchs who put the money in Swiss banks. Last weekend, I ran that past an older European couple we socialize with and they did not doubt it, and began naming names. So, executing the rich might be the most workable part of your agenda. Put "greek bailout goes to banks" in your search engine and you will find the same story on ZeroHedge, The Guardian UK, and Aljazeera. If Greece became the new Switzerland by Paul's plan, it would do nothing to change the fundamentals of Greek culture. Much of human culture in general and Western culture in particular is about cattle-raids and bride-prices. But, in modern times, that changed. Capitalism did not spring from the head of Zeus, but it was a relatively rapid development if you consider the broad sweep of human history. In Greece, it never caught on. They threw out the Turks in 1830 and failed to embrace the industrial revolution. The world's first democracy was rebranded as a kingdom - with foreign kings on the throne of Greece. ("The House of Wittelsbach held the Greek Crown between 1832 and 1862, when it passed to the House of Glücksburg." -- Wikipedia.) The fact of the matter is that very little in Greek culture encourages enterprise as we understand it. Greece is a kleptocracy.
|
