Monday, August 22, 2011

Greece India and Grief

Just read Michael Lewis and his take on the Greece debt crisis. He is his usual inciteful and humorous self, as he talks about how Greeks who claim to have invented Maths had forgotten to count almost 30 billion Euros in deficit spending every year, about how failure to pay taxes and cheat and lie about your income and expenses is not even treated as a minor misdemeanour, in fact it is the Greek character..

How different are we? we invented the zero..and I would argue that our grasp of what our deficit is, how it is computed and what to do about it, would probably put the Greeks to shame. And our attitude to taxes is not different either. The only people who seem to pay taxes in this country are those whose taxes are deducted at source. For every one else it is an approach of broad understatement of wealth and income and deal with the authorities, if a problem arises.

Are we headed for a Greek type tragedy?

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010

Read the article and judge for yourself..