Gridlock on Greece

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Tyler Cowen takes a look at the latest European stitch-up for saving Greece:

If you had told me it was an Onion-like satire of all the previous plans, and not an actual serious plan at all, I would have believed you.

And here’s Paul Krugman:

The Serious People are determined to destroy all the advanced economies in the name of prudence.

I don’t really have the heart right now to go through the entire plan and try to make sense of it. Others can do a better job than me anyway. Broadly speaking, though, it demonstrates yet again that European leaders simply aren’t willing or able to deal with the eurozone’s problems, and probably won’t be until something genuinely catastrophic happens. There’s really no partial restructuring that has the slightest chance of helping Greece, but as the difficulty of getting this agreement shows, even partial restructuring is a tough sell. At some point everyone is going to have to come to grips with an all but total default from Greece, but apparently we’re still some ways off from that day of reckoning.

Watching both the United States and Europe careen recklessly toward fiscal oblivion simultaneously is not something I thought I’d see in my lifetime. Just goes to show my lack of imagination, I guess.