My agenda here is to make it clear that there is an alternative, and that Greece has no duty to refrain from that alternative out of loyalty to a European Union that appears to be run of, by and for Bild Zeitung and Deutche Bank.

I realise that standing alone it sounds Euroskeptic. I should, perhaps, clarify that I am not a Euroskeptic. I believe in the European project, and I would be the first to lament it if the European Union collapsed. But I do not believe that Greece has a duty to commit economic suicide on the alter of monetary chickenhawk idiocy and thinly veiled German racism. I do not believe that it is in the long-term interest of the European Union to cow-tow to an EPP government that is too craven to stand up to the gutter press - one needs only look to Britain or Italy to see what happens when you allow the likes of Murdoch, Springer and Corruptioni to run your government. And I especially do not believe that it is in the long-term interest of the European Union to make impossible demands of its members.

Now, the ability to print your own money may cause the Greek government to go overboard and create excess inflation. If you believe that this is likely, then you have sound reason to want to stay in the Eurozone. But that would be a consequence of a Greek government failure to conduct responsible macroeconomic policy, not a consequence of leaving the Eurozone per se.

I'd like to take the opportunity to remind the reader that to remain in the Eurozone on these grounds would be an implicit admission that the Greek polity is incapable of managing its own sovereignty on important issues such as economic planning. That conclusion may be correct, even if it is unpleasant, but if I were a Greek citizen I would want rather stronger arguments for it than the Conventional Wisdom of the Springer Verlag. It is, after all, the macroeconomic equivalent of committing oneself to a mental hospital. ...which is presently run by doctors enamoured with full frontal lobotomies and electroshock therapy.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.