Unravelling the Greek basket case

Thanks, great story (Unravelling the Greek basket case, October 20). Let's hope the break up of this monetary union doesn't happen at the start of a war.

Greeks and gifts. An old problem seen anew.
The only solution is to create euros and pay off the banks of Greek debt then remove Greece from the EU. It's Greece's problem. Keeping them in the EU makes it everyone's problem.

I think the writer moved too swiftly from 1928 to 1953 with such little detail. WWII was by far the most significant economic event in modern Greece's history (Unravelling the Greek basket case, October 20).

Greece is a huge problem and at the same time a big lesson to those architects of the Maastricht Treaty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastricht_Treaty - read the section under criteria and you will be horrified by actually how many countries have "broken the rules" of membership.
There may be an argument for an "A" league and a "B" league euro - the "B" being some 30 per cent lower than the "A" - say parity to the US dollar. At least on that basis trade with the eurozone countries could continue vs one currency and the weaker economies see some export price advantage on what goods they currently have to sell and perhaps induce foreign investment.
Reverse problem in the case of Greece is that their import bill is significant and a currency related rise in that bill might swamp any potential benefits of export growth. Again in the case of Greece, about 74 per cent of GDP relates to services/tourism. Current civil unrest will badly damage the toursim component and may be that we see civil war (God forbid) which could spread elsewhere. That would send Greece back to the dark ages. Sadly it is a complete basket case (Unravelling the Greek basket case, October 20).

Hartwich ought to spare us the ridiculously precious apercus from Hegel, about whom he knows little and understands still less (Unravelling the Greek basket case, October 20). Hartwich displays a singular inability to understand what the central problems with inter-capitalist rivalry in the eurozone (Martin Wolf came closest yesterday - and three hundred people visited my blog thereafter) when he wrote of "the structural mercantilism at the core of the eurozone" - and he did mean "the core", namely, Germany, France, Holland and Finland. If I sound harsh, so does Hartwich.

Greece's economy is not sustainable (Unravelling the Greek basket case, October 20). It loses money every year. It's out of options. Trouble is it could flag trouble that spreads to other economies in the region, which have similar issues. You can't bail it out. I think it needs to fundamently fail and then rebuild, but 3 million people also need to leave, their social security system ripped up, government employment slashed to 40 per cent of existing levels. It would be mayhem and no-one knows the outcome to such vast social dislocation. It could be the wildfire that burns through much of Europe. The Germans should get out and batten their hatches. Maybe I'm wrong - but I've seen nothing to change my mind

Well there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Greece should get kicked out of the eurozone and I'm sure they would be very happy and are praying for that to happen, but most definitely not out of the EU (Unravelling the Greek basket case, October 20).
The EU and the eurozone are completely separate animals/entities.
The Greeks have done nothing wrong enough to get kicked out of the EU and the EU would be all the poorer for losing them.
The people who should also be kicked very firmly are the people who dreamed up the nightmare of the eurozone on the simplistic formula/basis that it was founded upon originally.

The Greeks and Romans created Europe (Unravelling the Greek basket case, October 20). Now they are about to destroy it. Hubris to nemesis.