You and I would not be talking about Greece today if Greece in 1999 by some miracle of politics and rationality had stayed out of the Eurozone. That is the reason why it is such a disaster; and it’s why it’s so significant in the world economy and pipsqueak Greece has been dominating for three years. The headlines of [?] which is a sign that something is definitely wrong with the international economy. And the reason for that was that Greece was in the Eurozone. The tragedy of course is once you are in, you can’t get out. You are trapped. And so on and so forth.
The podcast is a year old. It is of interest now because he is now finance minister of Greece.
I was in Bodrum, Turkey in 2009 for Hans Hoppe’s conference. Everybody asked me if I was going to go to Greece, since a Greek island was only three miles offshore. I asked, “What’s it like?” Everybody replied, “Just like here, except much more expensive.” So I didn’t go.
I suspect some of Turkey’s prosperity in this century is due to its Greek economic rivals being hammered by the high value of the Euro. The Turkish lira is at an appropriate level for Turkey’s level of economic competence, but Greece had a currency appropriate for an exporter of BMWs.