{"id":975,"date":"2012-02-12T21:36:30","date_gmt":"2012-02-12T21:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=975"},"modified":"2013-03-04T21:38:04","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T21:38:04","slug":"which-way-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/which-way-greece\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Way Greece?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n

NRO’s The Corner<\/i><\/p>\n

One question that rarely arises about Greece is \u201cwhere did all those hundreds of billions of Euros really go?\u201d I think most visitors could easily answer that they were not all squandered on pensions and inflated government staffs and salaries. The Greece of 1975 was changed into a simulacrum of northern Europe by all sorts of vast public-works projects \u2014 new bridges, port facilities, freeways, museums, light rail, the Athens subway and airport, new agricultural projects, as well as hundreds of\u00a0luxury hotels<\/a>\u00a0well outside Athens and thousands of upscale vacation homes dotting the Greek coastline for 1,000 miles. Suddenly, by around 2002, a Mercedes seemed far more common in Athens than in most cities in California, and yachts in the harbors looked about like those in Newport Beach.<\/p>\n

Whether due to Hellenic accounting fraud that masked an enormous rip-off, or a cynical German mercantilism that wanted to sell its cars, trucks, and machines to the indigent whose borrowing was to be backed up by EU guarantees \u2014 or to both \u2014 a tiny country not particularly known for labor productivity, tax compliance, transparency, or a robust private sector for a moment obtained a glimpse of life as it is lived in Northern Europe.<\/p>\n

Germany had done something similar with East Germany, but that pull-up was far more honest and not shrouded in EU double-speak. It was also made easier by the commonalities between East and West Germany and the ability of the West to insist the old East would copy its benefactor \u2014 something impossible to replicate in Greece given its hallowed and idiosyncratic culture and troubled history with Germany.<\/p>\n

There are only three scenarios likely for Greece: (1) In exchange for debt relief, a liberated Greece changes its ways, opens up its economy, redefines labor and capital markets and becomes a sort of Spain (unlikely). (2) It defaults and its drachma-based country reverts to what one remembered in the old days and what one would expect from a top-heavy, unproductive socialist state (somewhat likely). Or (3) it gets some half-relief, but soon reneges on its promised reforms and austerity, and thus like Greek cities in the 2nd Century AD, life goes on as weeds grow among the impressive, but crumblinginfrastructure<\/a>\u00a0of the past (very likely).<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner One question that rarely arises about Greece is \u201cwhere did all those hundreds of billions of Euros really go?\u201d I think most visitors could easily answer that they were not all squandered on pensions and inflated government staffs and salaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[294],"tags":[107,452,1028,1056,283],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-fJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8502,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/greek-default\/","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":0},"title":"Greek Default","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 25, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"For almost six years Greece has been on the cusp of financial disaster. by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online For almost six years Greece has been on the cusp of financial disaster. Its Northern European and international creditors have extended loans, suspended interest payments, and forgiven some debt. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Europe"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"\"Death by Euro\" street art in Athens. (Aris Messinis\/AFP\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/death-by-euro-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11861,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/greece-finds-new-footing-as-a-player-on-the-world-stage\/","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":1},"title":"Greece Finds New Footing as a Player on the World Stage","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 8, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness ATHENS\u2014After Greece temporarily hosted a pair of U.S. military drones, Greek Defense Minister Panagiotis Kammenos said last fall that, \u201cIt\u2019s very important for Greece that the United States deploy military assets in Greece on a more permanent base.\u201d Indeed, Greece just took delivery of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Greece"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/greece\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2845,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-wisdom-of-crowds-in-ancient-greece\/","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":2},"title":"The Wisdom of Crowds–In Ancient Greece","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Forbes.com A review of\u00a0Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athensby Josiah Ober (Princeton University Press, 2008, 362pp.) Ancient Greek society had seen nothing quite like the myriad of classical Athenian bureaucracies, boards, courts, offices and voting bodies that redistributed private capital, brought status to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":894,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-sick-man-of-europe\/","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":3},"title":"The Sick Man of Europe","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas Why are the Greeks such whiners? Look to their tragic history and geography.\u00a0 Not long ago, European Union bankers gave the Greeks a \u20ac110 billion bailout \u2014 along with stern recommendations to stop cooking their books, to go after tax cheaters, to trim fat\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/economy-europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1049,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/civilization-in-reverse\/","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":4},"title":"Civilization in Reverse","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In Greek mythology, the prophetess Cassandra was doomed both to tell the truth and to be ignored. Our modern version is a bankrupt Greece that we seem to discount. News accounts abound now of impoverished Athens residents scrounging pharmacies for scarce aspirin \u2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":683,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/greece-alone-and-broke-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":975,"position":5},"title":"Greece Alone and Broke–Again","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The recent indecisive Greek elections could be summed up by two general themes: Greeks want to stay in, and expect help from, the Eurozone. But they still do not want to take the necessary medicine to stop borrowing billions of euros from northern\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/economy-europe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":976,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}