Greece: Land of the Golden Fleecing

Dateline: Athens, February 07, 2012.  Massive riots are rocking the troubled capitol of Greece today as tens of thousands of angry protesters fill the streets.  Chaos is everywhere and there's virtually nothing the newly appointed government can do to quell the violence as they huddle together trying to figure out which devil deserves the next dance.

Greece has 171 billion dollars of bond payments due late next month and couldn't scrounge two drachmas together if their ouzo sodden souls depended on it.  The party is over; all the furniture is broken; the bars are closed and nobody's got cab fare even if they could find one that hadn't been burned or overturned.  Man, what a night...

The government stayed in power, until recently, by giving everyone everything they wanted.  And people wanted plenty.  The rich paid almost nothing in taxes (sound familiar?).  The middle class could retire on generous pensions at fifty.  The poor were given constitutionally protected civil service jobs instead of welfare.  Mid-level city clerks had in-ground pools and sports cars, while the very rich danced on the graves of the tax collectors.  Basically, it was quite a racket, at least while it lasted.  Unfortunately, the very last blue bird of happiness was mistaken for a pheasant and devoured at a bacchanalian backyard barbeque somewhere on the Isle of Patmos, according to sources.

What to do?  What to do?  The loan sharks want their money and they want it now.  Private banks throughout Europe, the IMF and the European Central Bank have all suddenly awakened to the fact that they've made some very bad bets (sound familiar?) and the Greeks are broke, except of course the very, very rich.  And they're not particularly interested in the problem, when they can simply sail away on holiday until the whole ugly mess gets sorted out.  (Please see above photograph.)

So why am I telling you this story?  And more importantly, why should you care?  Three very ugly little words: credit default swaps.  What?  Remember AIG, the quasi-governmental insurance company that almost brought down our own government in 2008?  They bought and sold these Las Vegas style, exotic little insurance policies betting for, or against, any particular financial transaction's outcome, even though they often had no direct interest in the deals upon which they wagered. When they took these bets, they booked the exchanges as "income" and made their investors happily believe they were actually earning profits.  Then somebody blinked.  The bets were called in and so was the US Treasury, to the tune of 85 billion.  And that's just one company.

Imagine, if you can, that nearly all of a nation's "sovereign debt" has these little poison pills attached to all that bad paper.  The major banks in Europe would fail almost overnight, literally, if Greece defaulted.  The US and Japanese banks would start collapsing the next day.  It's called the Global Economy.  No one is immune; no one except maybe North Korea.  I guess we could always hit them up for a loan in the event of a real emergency...

Every leader of every modern nation has known this train wreck was speeding toward us all for at least two years.  No one acted.  Everyone pretended that the charred blue bird could somehow miraculously be raised from the smoking ruins and transform itself into some mythically glorious phoenix and save the day.  Yeah right; monkeys will fly out my mythical..... first.

As a public service announcement, did I happen to mention that the private yacht above took five years and two billion dollars to build?  It also has anti-ballistic missles and an escape pod submarine, just in case the bullet proof glass or steel clad master bedroom aren't quite enough.  I bet Nancy Brinker wishes she had one.  And now a word from this week's sponsor, Monsanto Ave. Honey Company.  "We make sh*t that tastes good."   And a very good night to you all.

Leadership: The Real Global Crisis

Dateline: Athens, March 21, 2012.  "Yesterday world leaders collectively decided to drive the bus over the cliff.  Screams could be heard from the passengers:  Save the Acropolis from the Apocalypse!  It is not yet known whether there are any survivors.  World markets are collapsing by the minute as the representatives of the G 20 meet in Brussels with IMF and World Bank officials.  Can catastrophe be averted?  Wolf Blitzer will have more on this from the Situation Room at the top of the hour."

Of course, I'm making all of this up.  Normally, I write fiction about vampires, which puts me in pretty good stead to talk about the blood sucking that's consuming our planet wholly faster than I can type these words.  Greed, corruption, cronyism and inept leadership all make important contributions to this nail-biting narrative. But the one common thread that weaves and binds this sadly needless story together is leadership; the failed, vacuous, spineless pseudo-captains of politics, finance and industry that were so starry-eyed by their own beguiling siren songs, that the chorus of the common good never even got a first audition.  Golden parachutes, million dollar book advances and speeches before the writhing masses of zombie capitalists and hung over politburos all took precedent over good governance and global stewardship. Whether at the barrel of a gun, or by a hanging chad, these are our leaders.  And their magnificent malfeasance is truly breathtaking to behold.

Too poor to even pay attention?  Then you might try a little Fox News, or the Bilderberger Report (subscription required) or getting your first born into the Tri-Lat Sorority at Broke Back U.  I've been castigated more than a little often for being overly brainy, too interested in world affairs, and out of touch with the commoner's plight.  Ironically, if we'd been holding all of our leaders to this same threshold of humanness, I'd still be writing about fictional bloodsuckers...

The problem is one of character (even though the cast includes thousands.)  It takes courage to lead.  America beheads the courageous, rewards the dangerous and enshrines the ludicrous. The entire concept of nobility is a cast-off garment, seldom worn and trampled furiously on the dusty floor of our precious democracy.  We would no sooner accept a leader of aristocratic character and values, than we'd make Newt the Fifty-First Governor on the Moon.  The culture itself manifests it's own destiny; and we're getting exactly what we ordered, moreover, what we deserve.

Next time, I might actually still have the platform to launch into the Greek situation.  The story itself is completely gripping, full of intrigue, international espionage, conspiracies and the like.  Stay tuned for the latest and greatest of your favorite characters:  Mittens with Mormon Vixens; Newt and the Stepford Solution; In Search of Barack on the Shining Path: Tales From the Hawaiian  Jungle.  All this, and much, much more await you on the next episode of Postscripts from the Ledge.  Now a word from our most generous sponsors, Ambien...