Some guys thoughts on various things: June 2012

With the benefit of hindsight, few still believe Greece's inclusion into the Euro was warranted. Greece is a first world country, but compared to most of the rest of Europe, its small economy, encumbered with red tape, a bloated public sector (40% GDP), a relatively inflexible workforce was bound to find an expanded Deutschmark too expensive sooner or later. It’s now an aphorism that for nearly half the time since independence from the Turks, the Greek government has been in some sort of default.. However true, it’s no more so now than at their entry into the Euro. So why were they invited? The numbers were fudged, but they were probably not given serious scrutiny, and it seems they got in with something of a wink and a nod. It didn't hurt that the Greek economy was relatively small. It was broadly assumed that at about 2% of EU GDP, any problems would be relatively easily contained. Instead, Greece turned out to be the trailing end of a loosely knit sweater. In addition to being small, Greece fell on the wining side of the Cod War, (though this was a close run thing), subscribes to a Christian doctrine, and is white. If the later two were a not factors, many Turks would probably be interested in further explanation.

Now Greece has elected a government more amenable to keeping the bailout packages and staying in the Euro than their radical opponents. They are as broke as they were yesterday, but will probably benefit form various concessions which would have been harder to make to a more radical government; a kind of financial version of "only Nixon could go to China." Still, nearly 40% voted some some version of communist, and another single digit percentage for a party doing its level best Nazi impersonation. Liberalism has a pretty tenuous hold on the birthplace of democracy at the moment.

In any case, Greece was in a tight spot a couple of years ago when I visited, and by most accounts things have not improved since. Here are a bunch of touristy and slice of life type pictures from that trip:

Parliament

Lots of bikes, scooters

Lots of this, probably more now

Other tourists

Surprisingly bid town. Lots of pics like this.

Services impacted?

Acropolis Museum

Not sure how so, but this is some of the strongest cofee I'm aware of.

Beautiful subway. Unfortunately, Athens had no business building this. What were they thinking?

squid- nice enough, but if you have to give up this or steak...

Tough to describe or capture in a pic, but I've not really seen street/night life like these most places. Blocks and blocks of crowds, out late.

Not sure what this was...

I was interested to check out the stock exchange. This guy agreed to take me to see it. He was working in a kebab place, waiting and drumming up business when I met him. He told me he's done all kinds of work; if you have occasion definately do business with. Good guy.

The exterior of the exchange. Below is a little room off the loby with some market information. Couldn't get past the front desk.

Perhapes tellingly, the exchange is on the edge of a middle class, somewhat peripheral neighborhood, on a busy highway, accross the street from a supermarket. I found the location unusual. Apperntly, it used to be more centrally located, but there was unrest after the 2001 tech collapse, so it was moved to a less central location.