Many articles in the Guardian about Greece rail against the system, against the banks, against capitalism and against the EU. Greece should default and all will be fine. It is the bankers who are being bailed out at the expense of the people. What they all seem to miss is that the problem with Greece is not so much the debt as the deficit. Greece needs money to service the debt because if it defaults it will not be able to service the deficit, and then no one will be paid. The banks and the Germans encouraged the Greeks to be profligate by lending them more than they could afford, but there’s no getting away from the fact that eventually all must live within their means.
Much as I hate to say it, George Osborne is right in so far as his stance that the deficit in the UK is its biggest problem. If he had continued some expansionary measures and reached a point of sustainable growth as the Darling Plan envisaged, then things might have been better. As it is there is probably no going back. Yes, the banks got us into the hole by tempting us with their loans and tax revenues, but we were gullible and fell for the easy lifestyle. When the markets decide that it is the UK’s turn to feel the heat and our bond rates become unsustainable we can take to the streets like the Greeks, burn our cities and rage against the machine, but unless we can turn round and say we don’t need your money to fund a deficit, we, like the Greeks but unlike the Italians, don’t have a lot of choice.
My Kind of Future 