A bit harsh on itiinerant Eurocrats. The Scandanavians, Germans and French all pay their very high taxes, and as a consequence have the world's best healthcare and public infrastructure etc. The hated Eurocrats have actually paid down more than a €100 billion of the Greeks debt; ok it may be to rescue their own banks and skin etc but from the Greeks point of view it is still debt they have been relieved of ever repaying.

Democracy is only as strong as a country's citizens are willing to fight for. The Greeks have been extremely neglectful of their own duty as citizens, and find it too easy to blame their politicians for their own sins. And curiously they look set to vote in the very party that got them into this pickle in the first place! (The conservatives of New Democracy (!) under Samaras had the orgy of borrowing and spending and are also the ones who got Goldman Sachs to fudge the books. Hah, New Democracy, same as the Old Democracy.)

And finally, lest we get too complacent:
Greece: €30,900 per capita debt (private + public)
Australia: €45,454 per capita debt (private + public)

(The above figures predate the forgiven debt so Australia would come out even worse in any up to date comparison. We may have a much more productive economy but we should still be aware of this massive indebtedness, and be a little careful about throwing stones....)

Michael James,

Perhaps I'm not the only person throwing stones.

I'm well aware of our Australia's very high level of private indebtedness and I'm certainly not complacent in regard to its future implications, however, although I agree with your accounting, that's not my point.

(There are economic arguments against aggregating private and public debt).

The notion that the Greeks have been 'naughty' and should suffer collectively for their 'sins' sounds far too glib and self-serving to me. That assumes all Greeks benefitted equally from, and participated in, their society's corruption and fiscal incompetence. Why were these incorrigibles admitted to the Eurozone in the first place? That seems, on the face of it, a remarkable lapse in judgement bordering on negligence.

So, whether or not the Greeks deserve their present predicament, is not relevant to the point I was making, which is the erosion of democratic governance by the Euro elite.

RW,
I an not glib about the fate of the Greeks. But contrary to many commentators I think their best bet is to stay within the EU and tough it out. Not least because further help will be forthcoming from the EU--probably in the form of targeted grants. (But their economy will never be productive enough to sustain their previous lifestyle. They cannot ever again pay themselves at German rates--in some cases three times German rates!)

Equally they brought this upon themselves (even if Goldman and euro banks have been irresponsible) and we can sympathize as much as we like, there is no way out without suffering. I agree that this is not distributed fairly, though new homes & upgrades to northern european standards and the noticeable presence of shiny new cars and fewer old bangers all point to the carpetbagging being widespread. (The exact thing anyone visiting Eire over the past 15-20 years will have noticed, all the time wondering if it could be real. It wasn't.)

And again, it is a bit easy to criticize the Eurocrats but they are attempting to impose on the Greeks things they should have done themselves years or decades ago. (I don't subscribe to the "nasty German" conspiracy theory.) I still hold some hope that things will work out, though this relies upon the EU resuming higher-than-average growth.

Finally, I want to read JK's book (Life & Death of Democracy) especially now I don't need a loan from the IMF to buy it! (It may be good value at 1000 pages but still I recall it was about $80 when it first appeared in Oz.) I am very interested to see his assessment of democracy in the new century. I have written something on this in Crikey: that a lot of these problems have come from a surfeit of democracy. It was ND in Greece who appealed to populism and pure bribery to keep voters happy. No accident that incomplete democracies like HK, Singapore (and latterly Taiwan, N Korea) have made far superior long-term strategic choices for their citizens than any of the Anglo-democracies. We cannot even decide to build a second airport over 40 years of endless "democracy". Compare to what HK did to solve their airport problem!

So, I say let's give the Euro-elite a little leeway and maybe a few years to see what happens. How can it be worse than the Euro-trash (Samaras; Berlusconi et al) who have been running the show?

Michael James.

I certainly don't have any opinion as to what policies the EU leaders, or the Greeks, should follow so long as democratic government isn't sacrificed in the process.

I've studied Japanese, Chinese and S Korean economic history so I don't dispute the the developmental benefits of state directed, or indicative planning, but I'm sceptical about its long term sustainability and there's more to life than economics. Britain, the first industrial nation, wasn't a democracy when the process started, liberal democracy emerged later. In my opinion, the present malaise in Australia is not so much due to an 'excess' of democracy but is the result of a dysfunctional democratic system.

I'm not convinced. The Europeans should practise what they preached to the rest of the world-democracy, the authoritarian 'cure' might be worse than the democratic disease.