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The shift in labor in Greece to Croatia, Northern Africa, and the cheapest denominator has bankrupt pay as you go pensions is a function of the global economic shift where tomorrow’s currency was utilized to fund yesterday’s indulgence.  The water running into the sewer drains of American and the remainder of Western Europe’s streets mirror the sheen.  If the Euro zone allows Greece to default Spain, then Portugal, then Italy would likely teeter in a cascade of an un-held line with Germany as the pillar of continuity.  The lack of a German military and U.S. military outposts in the post WW2, post East / West Berlin era prompt advantage. 

Most of Europe’s growth is based on debt forgiveness and hyperinflation after WW2 to pay down debt with cheap currency.  Austerity does not work.  Greece citizens are facing as high as twenty three percent value added or sales tax.  That is not sustainable and spending will freeze.  It is bad economics to throw the Greek people off the boat. 

Greece like Portugal and other poorer Western European countries are a function of the global economy whoring itself to nationless corporations exploiting labor to retain the difference.  The aging of the post world two population locked into pension existence is a global trend in most countries which participated in the international conflict. 

When we see Greek people rioting like this, voting to stop the austerity and their government is tied into a system that is just dragging out the inevitable bust, ask where is the money?  Ask where is the economic activity which was, but is no longer?  The issue is far bigger than Greece.  I would suggest reading some of Thomas Piketty’s words.  See through the lies of what the IMF and the World Bank do and what effect that has on Wall Street.  Digest the reality of so many government defined benefit retirement plans promising undeliverable returns forced into low risk investments which were traditionally bond based when the federal reserve artificially holds interest rates at next to zero.  Look at the math and the billions of dollars in gaps in the pensions of almost every state in this country.  Louisiana has over a 20 billion dollar gap in unfunded obligations.  Look at GASB 45 and how barely any of it is on the liabilities of the state’s balance sheets. 

What can we do about it?  Look at Wall Street, read up, and maybe listen to a few things Bernie Sanders is campaigning about right now.  Is Sanders’ all the way right, no, but he and maybe Elizabeth Warren are the only anomalies in the U.S. Congress and might be the only voices to echo what is really going on in the economic end of the world at the heart of why Greece is such a big deal.  Titanic, Iceberg, Greece is a symptomatic trickle of a common ailment nesting in publically traded entities saying, “Nah, I’ll keep the difference.” And labor refusing to relate pension pay out with pension risk and return in too many government benefit programs.