Greece, debt default and lying

At a very pleasant party in a snowy London, on Saturday evening, I got chatting to a Greek man who has been living in the UK since 1985 and as I suppose was inevitable, the subject of Greece's financial disaster came up. He and I agreed that the policymakers and various others who deceived their country into the euro should be put into jail. But then again, one of the problems of modern democracy is that far too many voters actually want to be deceived that 2+2 = 5, that it is possible to spend more than one earns, etc. When a whole country becomes locked into living a lie, as tends to happen when a large chunk of the electorate hopes to live off another chunk, honesty is a loser strategy for a politician. Had a Greek politician said in the years immediately prior to the euro's launch that Greece was unlikely, ahead of the Universe suffering heat death, to ever qualify for euro membership, such a person would be damned.

So it is certainly true that some of the political class (and I include central bankers in that classification) deserve to be locked up for their lies. But remember, they lied because the punishments for telling lies about economics and finance have been non-existent in many countries for a long time. I think one of the last politicians who made a point of telling the unvarnished truth to voters was Margaret Thatcher, and at the time, she was regarded as evil and "uncaring". Another fairly honest politician was the late Sir Keith Joseph, who was dubbed the "the mad monk" for his pains.

This book by Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter, I think has obvious relevance to how a whole country can seek refuge from hard facts, as Greece seems to be doing. For a more impressionistic, sad-but-amusing tale of Greece and other countries' financial blowups, Boomerang by Michael Lewis is an excellent page-turner. The chapter on Greece features some property speculator monks. Yes, monks.

Oh, I will get around to writing that "Iron Lady" review when I have the time.