Monday, March 19, 2012

Greece's Past and the Debt Crisis

Here is an interesting article I read on Greece's debt crisis. The basic argument is that the Greeks resent their northern European creditors - despite an enormous amount of leniency - because they feel that they have been taken advantage of historically. The author does not present any quantifiable polling data, but his historical examples do offer some food for thought. This is the kind of wedding of history to current events which helps us understand why people can behave so stupidly. It is sometimes difficult to see how the history of Classical Greece, the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, and the Third Reich can still have an effect on the present.