GREEK TRAGEDY

There is a gut-hollowing hopelessness to the predicament of Greece. They are stuck between either staying put in a place where it is almost certainly fatal for them to remain, or of going to an alternative destination that is almost unbearable to contemplate.  Every evening TV screen are filled with a semi-serialised horror show depicting the seemingly inevitable collapse of the world’s oldest democracy amidst scenes of mob chaos and shallow political manoeuvring. Meanwhile a level of austerity is being imposed upon it by Europe’s leaders, who are so obsessed with sustaining their fiction of a united states of Europe, that it is closer to a form of economic vandalism than anything vaguely resembling a solution.

The truth is, for Greece, there is now no solution that is not almost disastrous.

The best analogy I can think of this that Greece is like a critically failing aeroplane with fatal engine and structural problems and the only airports far outside flight range . The pilots (that’s the Greek politicians, unfortunately for the Greek people) have 2 options:

Option 1: Do nothing. This requires that the pilots deny the crisis is as bad as the flashing cockpit dials and the screaming, bulging eyed passengers might otherwise hint at and instead listen to the ranting of the distant air traffic controllers (the Eurozone leaders) telling them that they have to “adopt tough austerity” by jettisoning all their fuel to lighten the load so they can stay up a bit longer (the austerity measures).

Option 2: Believe the evidence in front of their eyes and get their plane out of the sky and on to the ground as quickly as possible - whilst they still have an element of control, whilst the engines are still just stuttering and the brakes might still just work and whilst there is still have a bit of a choice as to where they bring it down.

Option 2 is Greece going for a semi-disorderly default that will see it leave the Euro, adopt a new drachma, and at least hope it can escape partially intact with some longer term prospects for post-crash recovery.

Option 1 is to stay the path they are on and to “see how long they can keep their bird in the sky”. In that case, pity the ordinary Greeks when it does come plunging down in an uncontrolled spiral out of the Eurozone sky.

Its decision time…………