Taki Explains the Greek Crisis

Taki writes:

Pouring money in will not make Greek industry competitive. Pouring money in is the problem, not the solution. All that the summit in Brussels accomplished was giving Greece breathing space. It will not work. What is needed is a change in the culture, and that takes decades if not centuries. The Eurocrooks are taking this ancient continent down the Suwannee. They couldn’t care less as long as they keep their salaries and privileges. A borderless continent conceived by technocrats is an LSD illusion, a scam, and a monetary union without full political unification is the biggest scam of all. Yet the Eurocooks insist that lending more moolah is the answer. Greeks see fraud and corruption everywhere and refuse to play ball. The state, with EU money, has spoiled them, and now it demands sacrifices. It doesn’t work like this. This year will be the third in a row that the Greek economy has shrunk. Does anyone in their right mind still believe that things will improve and that everything will one day be hunky-dory?

The Eurocrooks are taking us down, and we’re doing nothing about it. Everyone’s playing for time in order to be able to keep the motorcycle outriders and the arse-licking and bowing and scraping which go with being in power.

I wrote this last year and I was proved right. Next year I expect to be named a prophet.

Bonus coverage, Taki reports on marching orders from Rupert Murdoch:

Back in 1994, Sue Douglas and John Witherow hired me to write the “Atticus” column for the Sunday Times. Witherow proposed 80K. “I get 80 from the Speccie,” I told them. “Cut the crap,” said Sue, “the Spectator doesn’t pay you 80,000 pounds per annum.” The penny dropped and all I said was, “Where’s the contract? I’ll sign anything.”

The funny thing was that a week later at a New York party, the great Rupert himself came up to me and told me how happy he was “that you were joining our family.” I was flattered until I heard him say to his wife Anna, whom I was seated next to at dinner, to be very careful about what she said in front of me. Couple of years later, at a New York bash, Rupert approached me and asked me to “stir it up a bit”—namely, to go after Mort Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News, direct competitor to Rupert’s New York Post. Which I did, until I was told that Rupert had ordered the then-editor of the Post—I also had a column there—never to allow me to attack Zuckerman. Go figure!