09:56 – The situation in Greece would be funny if it weren’t so serious. Right now, the Greek government and the Troika are arguing about trivial issues like cutting 15,000 government employees. The Troika surely must know that that’s a drop in the bucket. Even to get a start on solving the problem, Greece needs to cut literally 100 times that number of government employees.
Everyone is fully aware that cutting 15,000 employees won’t even begin to make a start, but the Greek government is also fully aware that cutting even 15,000 government employees is likely to lead to riots and possibly a full-blown revolution. For a decade now, Greeks have gotten used to an unsustainably high standard of living, subsidized by cheap loans that there was never any prospect of them repaying. Now that the tap has run dry, Greece is going to have its standard of living cut in half, it it’s lucky. That’s what happens when, for a decade, a country consumes twice as much as it produces. Eventually, other people get tired of paying for it.