.floatimg-left-hort { float:left; } .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 12px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} Dear Mr. Berko:

Dear R.R.:

Greece is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Frequently in the last 10 years, the Greek government (Athens) borrowed billions of euros by selling bonds to big banks in France and Germany. Those Grecian-guaranteed Euro Bonds were issued to pay Greece’s 20 years of escalating obligations, just as the U.S. Treasury Department sells Treasury bonds to pay for our continuing obligations.

And like the United States, Athens’ appetite continued to demand more euros to sustain enormous annual increases in its pension obligations, national health plan, business subsidies, social programs, schools, hospitals, airports and to keep tens and tens of thousands of redundant workers on the dole.

Politics being politics, Athens blithely continued to increase civil service pay, grant larger pensions and expand free health care, and politicians continued to borrow more euros to give workers what the unions demanded as the nation fell deeper into debt. Sound familiar? The unions were happy; the workers were happy; the politicians got re-elected; but the Greek economy began to go down the toilet.

When Athens’ profligate spending exceeded its declining income, the big banksters refused to give Athens more euros. So the nation that gave us Plato, Archimedes, Socrates, Hercules and Hippocrates was ignominiously forced on its knees to beg.

Greece had two choices: (1) It could quit the European Union (EU), default on its euro debt, print an avalanche of new drachmas (the currency of choice for thousands of years) to replace the disappearing euros in circulation, and life in Greece would go merrily on its way. However, bad currency always forces good currency into hiding, and within a year, the drachma would become as worthless as the German mark of the 1930s. Foreign nations would refuse to accept drachmas as payment for exports; Greek merchants would not exchange their products for a debased currency; and anarchy would rule in Greece.

Or (2) the EU (primarily Germany and France) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would lend Greece 100 million euros if Athens promised to put its house in order by slashing entitlements, reducing excessive pensions and health spending, furloughing government workers, lowering salaries and spending less on bloated infrastructure programs.

Simple as that? Well, I don’t understand how it’s possible to borrow yourself out of debt.

Knowing that government can easily give entitlements to its citizens but it cannot as easily take them back, the unions prompted workers to riot, to close schools, airports, hospitals, rail travel and postal services and virtually shut down the country, hoping to derail Athens’ austerity plans.

Sadly, many Greeks fail to realize that a government that continues to give half its people increasingly larger entitlements to be paid for with future borrowed tax dollars is a government that will collapse. When half of the Greeks recognize that they don’t have to work because the other half will take care of them, the latter will soon realize that it’s useless to work because the first half is going to be given what they work for. Sound familiar?

Please address your financial questions to Malcolm Berko, P.O. Box 1416, Boca Raton, Fla. 33429 or e-mail him at malber@adelphia.net. © Copley News Service