Readers React: Greece on the brink of collapse

A demonstrator waves a European Union flag during a rally in Athens on June 30 in support of a bailout deal.

July 2, 2015 3:20 PM PT

To the edtior: The front-page reports (“Greek crisis threatening to undo EU,” June 29)(“Dangers in Greek default,” June 30) of the “Greek crisis” actually reveal that it’s not about the Greeks or the Greek economy (although the information doesn’t surface until deep in the articles). The villains in the crisis are the usual suspects: the multinational corporations bent on ramming their “reforms” down the throats of ordinary citizens in countries around the world.

Your reporter says that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras “stunned” his EU overlords by asking for a public referendum on the new “austerity” bailout proposals. Imagine that.

Since when do ordinary people have any voice in economic reforms that will decimate their salaries, pensions and public services? The ancient Greeks had a word for this: “hubris,” the arrogance that comes before the fall.

Leigh Clark, Granada Hills

To the editor: At the bottom of Greece’s crisis is the fact that the euro monetary system was designed for good economic times.

Deep recessions and depressions, which are more common in history than the euro’s designers — or the European Union’s current financial technocrats — can understand, make rigid rules both unrealistic and unworkable over the long term.

After years of near-depression, the Greek people are rightfully disgusted with rigid monetary and financial rules that promise only more misery.

Luis Suarez-Villa, Irvine

To the editor: What is happening to Greece is the end stage of socialism.

It collapses after years of deficit spending, when other people’s money runs out. Living beyond one’s means, year after year, always ends in disaster.

Productive people and solvent institutions reach the point at which they will no longer lend more money to the spendthrifts.

Jennifer Marks, Laguna Woods

To the editor: Californians should pay particular attention to the Greek debt situation. Greece is to the EU as California is to the U.S. Greece is shouldering billions of dollars in debt, while California virtually ignores the hundreds of billions in unfunded pension debt.

California is less than one retiree generation away from the Greek situation unless it finds a solution to its debt.

Rick Kern, Incline Village, Nev.