It is somewhat amusing that the word ‘crisis’ originates from Ancient Greece.
It’s actually a medical term; Hippocrates wrote extensively about ‘crisis’ being the key turning point in disease progression– the time at which it either overcomes the patient, or it subsides.
And though the word ‘crisis’ is thrown about routinely these days, it’s safe to say that Greece is now truly in crisis in the purest sense of the definition.
Same with the euro, for that matter.
A century from now when future historians write about our time, it’s highly likely they’ll conclude that the euro was the dumbest invention of this age.
And that will really be saying something because the competition is fierce: pet rocks. Acid-washed jeans. FATCA. Google Glass. Fox Business News. Obamacare.
But the euro deserves first prize in the ugly contest.
The idea was to take completely incompatible economies, pretend that they were all Germany, and put them under one monetary roof simply because they were on the same continent.
This is ridiculous, especially today. It’s 2015. Geography is an irrelevant anachronism.
Imagine jamming Argentina, Australia, Angola, and Azerbaijan into a currency union simply because they all start with the letter “A”. It’s just as pointless and arbitrary as geography.
And when one of them starts to collapse (probably Argentina), rather than admit their mistake and dissolve the whole stupid idea, the bureaucrats spend massive amounts of other people’s money fruitlessly trying to hold the project together.
This is what’s happened in Europe.
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