Stop insulting and bashing Greece

So, the blogster feels bad for the Greek people and the debt woes that make the mythical intractable Gordian knot look like your average kindergarten knitting project. The commonly known version of how Alexander the Great solved undoing the knot is that he simply sliced through it with his sword.

In modern parlance, you could say, well, sometimes violence does solve a problem.

The less well known version of the story is "he unfastened it quite easily by removing the pin which secured the yoke to the pole of the chariot, then pulling out the yoke itself."

If you look at media coverage of what is commonly called "the Greek debt crisis", you might think Greece is a big country as critical to the world economy as Japan or China. In reality, Greek is a small country with a population of about 11 million and a GDP of less than 200 billion Euros. Greece's government debt in relation to its GDP is 175 % in 2015, which is less then 400 billion total.

Japan's ratio is 245% of a GDP coming in at 4901 billion, so around 12 000 billion, and you never hear about it. Presumably, that's because everybody thinks Japan will repay it one day.

Even the German ratio of about 67% of a GDP of about 3600 billion means a debt of about 2500 billion. Germany will, of course, repay. Except, repaying the principal has not happened there either. No "new debt" is as good as it gets.

German million print copies a day tabloid Bild Zeitung has a track record of producing headlines about Greece that could be considered hate speech, such as 'No further billions for the greedy Greek', and ignores history.
When the desperate new Greek government,  a socialist one at that, pointed out that Germany had never repaid some World War II loans, German "fiscal conservatives" became apoplectic.

Even the somewhat more reasonable German media generally point out that Greece has not had good governance since it regained its independence in 1830.

Reading this, the blogster felt the urge to ask which Western country had good governance in 1830 and the subsequent decades.

Other than maybe Iceland?


[Update 6/15/15] Fixed a typo as a courtesy to readers, not because it mattered but because it distracted.