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Originally Posted by saden1
Germany is a socialist country with lots of social programs, I wonder why they haven't gone under. The Greek problem is two folds, decline in world wide shipping and tourism due to United States sub-prime crisis, and fraud on the part of the Greek government with the help of Goldman Sachs to mask their real debt. |
The German economy isn't a great one to compare with, it's a force and can support a hefty government budget because it derives so much of its GDP from exports. It's a central and critical transportation hub for traveling throughout Europe. And its citizens are highly educated and specialized, something Greece and Canada don't quite match up against.
You're right about Greece's problems and how they got into the mess to begin with. But their government's spending was unsustainable given their economy. The broader economic crisis did kill their shipping and tourism industries, which represent such a large chunk of what they need. While Germany has been able to weather the storm because of the mere size and diversity of their economy, Greece got crushed, and couldn't sustain a government of that size.
In the case of the United States, we're running a bigger deficit (as a % of GDP) than Germany is. We're not at the Greek level by any means, but nations can't continue heading down that road, or the piper ends up getting paid a lot more later than it would take to pay him off today.