2 ms·

I don't think a central currency necessarily means no sovereignty. Does using gold make a country lose their sovereignty? It just means you can't print money.

• green7ea 11y ago
  I don't think your gold analogy is correct because nobody can create gold out of nothing (mining requires a ton of work). Fiat currencies however can be create from nothing by central banks and normal banks (multiplicative effect due to fractional reserve lending). What violates the Greek sovereignty is the fact that a bank they don't control can create their money out of nothing.
• ChuckMcM 11y ago
  There have been a number of great write ups on the challenges Greece faces, although two combined in a hugely negative way, one is that tax compliance (which is to say the number of people who pay their taxes as they should) is quite low, and the other is that government sinecures (jobs that don't require any work but get you paid anyway) were handed out like candy in exchange for support or other political favors leading to a lot of people (often highly paid) that were consuming government funds and producing no value. If a government has no money, no taxes and nobody willing to loan it some money, then it can't pay its workers. And while it is easy to get someone a job that has pay but no work, it is hard to get them to work with no pay. If someone could start a social media campaign, "Pay your taxes, its the Greek thing to do." and the people were able to get individuals out of government positions who were not adding value, the crisis would resolve nicely I expect.