Every six weeks or so, I have a consultation with Vilaremetaftia Kolodaktilo, Principal Secondary Assistant Mattachine Attaché for High Culture at the Greek Embassy here in Washington. For about the last two years or so, our conversations have focused primarily on the formulation of a strategy for return of the Elgin Marbles. So, whereas Prime Minister’s Question Time in the British House of Commons this week included a decidedly pointed jab about them – put well and stoutly, I might add – by Member of Parliament Andrew George of Saint Ives Upon Shiteburne, Wankershire, I fully expected Dr. Kolodaktilo to talk about that. But alas, today I was sorely mistaken.
“Tell me,” he challenged, throwing himself onto my office couch next to the picture window looking out onto the White House, “why your General Motors corporation in Detroit got a bailout while you let Lehman Brothers in New York City go bankrupt!”
I would say, that when an expert in classics and antiquities approaches you with a decidedly twenty-first century macroeconomic question concerning federal fiscal policy, and does so sporting an obvious attitude, you should tread lightly. “Essentially,” I answered, “General Motors employed a lot of genuine, hardworking, well-meaning, honest Americans who manufactured useful economic goods and got screwed by Wall Street. Lehman Brothers, by contrast, employed a relatively small group of greedy, self-centered, nasty, lying, thieving, money-grubbing, worthless, immoral, criminally inclined sociopaths who produced nothing of value to society and spent all of their time working on Wall Street screwing people. Therefore, that one, as we say here inside the Beltway, was a no-brainer.”
“Oh yeah?” Kolodaktilo sneered, “then how come the US government bailed out Goldman Sachs?”
“The United States government did not, in fact, bail out Goldman Sachs,” I duly noted. “The United States government bailed out AIG. And Goldman Sachs got twelve point nine billion dollars out of that, because the people at Goldman Sachs are a bunch of greedy, self-centered, nasty, lying, thieving, money-grubbing, worthless, immoral, criminally inclined sociopaths who produce nothing of value to society and spend all of their time working on Wall Street screwing people and are good friends of Henry Paulson. I hope that elucidates the situation to your satisfaction.”
“Perhaps,” Kolodaktilo fumed, “but that’s no excuse to treat the Greeks like Lehman Brothers! Why can’t we be treated like General Motors instead?”
“In order to stay in business,” I observed, “General Motors had to let the United States government tell it what to do, and, what’s more, look over its shoulder while GM did it. Are you suggesting that, in exchange for a bailout, Greece would agree to some similar kind of arrangement with the EU Parliament, the International Monetary Fund and/or the European Central Bank?”
“Of course not!” Kolodaktilo protested. “Such a situation would compromise Greek sovereignty, Greek independence and the Greek national identity, and, as such, would be completely unacceptable.”
“So what you’re saying,” I surmised, “is that Greece wants boatloads of EU money – no strings attached, no terms, no conditions, no repayment schedule and no awkward questions asked.”
“Sure,” Kolodaktilo shrugged. “That’s the way it’s always been since Greece joined the Eurozone. Why should it change now?”
“Because,” I explained, “since Greece joined the Eurozone, a bunch of greedy, self-centered, nasty, lying, thieving, money-grubbing, worthless, immoral, criminally inclined sociopaths who produce nothing of value to society and spend all of their time working on Wall Street screwing people have managed to wreck the entire world economy through a shameless prostitution of commodity market concepts, in which those concepts were knowingly applied to entirely inappropriate financial instruments in a premeditated scheme to commit fraud on a global scale.”
Kolodaktilo threw up his hands in a symbolic gesture of futility and inconsequence. “Yes, yes, I know, the derivatives, the mortgage-backed securities, the credit-default swaps. But none of that is our fault! True, we Greeks invented tragedy, but that doesn’t mean we are to blame for every one that occurs, now are we? Therefore – so what?”
“So,” I informed him, “because Henry Paulson and his cronies have managed, in effect, to loot every national treasury, steal every family’s jewels, filch the contents of every safe-deposit box, destroy every acre of real estate, empty every granary, rustle every herd of livestock, pillage every church poor box, snatch every purse, pick every pocket and purloin the contents of every child’s piggy-bank in every country in the entire G20, the other members of the Eurozone simply do not have any more money to give you in return for nothing. Times are tough now, and the hard fact is, if the ECB, the IMF or the EU are going to let Greece have any more of their money, you Greeks are going to have to… work for a living.”
“Work?” Kolodaktilo’s eyebrows nearly leaped off his face. “Work? You can’t be serious! Work is for Germans, for the Scandinavians… for the Japanese! Those people love to work! They’re good at it, too – let them do it! The Greek economy isn’t… suitable for that… sort of thing anymore.”
“Didn’t you mention,” I reminded him, “the last time we met, that your son recently graduated from the University of Athens?”
“Why yes,” Kolodaktilo proudly beamed, “he certainly did, and with top honors, I might add.”
“Okay,” I continued, “that’s very laudable. Tell me, doesn’t he want to work?”
“Well,” Kolodaktilo said, “not exactly. He wants a job, yes… with the government. It was what he was expecting.”
“Really?” I asked. “What was his major?”
“Tourism,” Kolodaktilo divulged.
“So he trained for a career in the hospitality industry,” I supposed, “gaining the skills to manage a grand hotel on a Greek resort island or something like that?”
“No, no, of course not!” Kolodaktilo spat in disgust, throwing me an offended look. “My son, Mr. Collins, was trained as an expert in tourism, not hotels. His intended career was to serve the Greek government by engaging in tourism abroad, sending back detailed reports to the Greek Ministry for Touristic Development in order to provide an understanding of how our competitors – which is to say, other countries which are also world class tourist destinations, like Greece – operate their national tourism programs.”
“Your son,” I sought to confirm, “got a degree in being a tourist?”
“Well…” Kolodaktilo reluctantly allowed, “yes… I guess you could put it that way.”
“He’s trained,” I pressed on, “to visit places like Cabo San Lucas, Rio de Janeiro, Barbados, Hawaii, Tahiti, the Bahamas, the Riviera, New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Rome, Venice, Florence, Tokyo, Barcelona, Aspen and Zurich, in order to research how those places entertain tourists, subsequently writing a report on each one and sending it back to the Greek Ministry for Touristic Development?”
“Precisely,” Kolodaktilo confirmed. “And that is an example of the new Greek economy in a nutshell. It is a job, yes, it is a career. It is a position with the Greek government.”
“But it isn’t work,” I pointed out.
“No,” he shook his head, “since the introduction of the Euro, you see, we Greeks have surpassed such quaint and outmoded… paradigms. And haven’t you Americans done so, too? And didn’t you beat us to it by about a decade? You Americans don’t make anything anymore, do you? I’ve heard that your entire economy now consists primarily of selling each other cell phone ring tones and pizzas. These days, everything else you use comes from China. Therefore, what makes Americans so qualified to lecture the Greeks about the virtues of hard work and austerity, anyway? You Americans wouldn’t know hard work or austerity if they ran up and bit you on your amply fat rumps, which, by the way, you have now grown so big, you can’t even fit them into an airline seat!”
“The American economy,” I proudly let him know, “consists of considerably more than trade in ring tones and pizzas. There’s video games, satellite TV, cable Internet services, gambling, Web-based social networks, fingernail decoration, hair weaves, pornography, feature-length motion pictures and health care, not to mention the preparation and sale of hamburgers, fried chicken, submarine sandwiches, pseudo-Mexican simulated food products and thirty-six different regional varieties of barbecue, all on a scale unprecedented in the history of civilization.”
“Bah!” Kolodaktilo spat. “The Greek per-capita debt is forty-four thousand dollars and you Americans, yours is forty-five thousand. The difference is, you print your own money and we Greeks don’t. Maybe we ought to switch back to the Drachma, devalue it and default.”
“But if you do that,” I pointed out, “you won’t have the Eurozone countries to subsidize your economy, an economy which is based in large part, I might add, on cushy government jobs that don’t involve any actual work. Don’t you understand? If Greece soaks up billions of Euros, but doesn’t produce any real wealth with it, then you’re no better than those leeches on Wall Street.”
“That, I think,” Kolodaktilo superciliously sniffed, “is something the Greek people will just have to learn to live with.”