Things are so complicated in Europe
you'd think you need a PhD
in Economics just to keep
track of what's going on, but at least for this video, you don't.
I'm Garrett Jones. I'm an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University.
I'm going to try to boil it
down to a ridiculously simple but accurate story.
Imagine a frat boy, he's
going to college. He needs
to borrow some money to keep
going, so he goes to
his rich uncle and says, can I borrow some money for college?
And the uncle says, if I'm going
to lend you money you got to
keep your act together, and I want to see that you're getting good grades.
I'm going to make you sign a document.
Frat boy says, I'll sign
on the dotted line, I'll take the money, I'll get back to you in a couple of years.
Goes to college. Instead of
getting the Bs that he promised,
he gets Cs, C+s, the occasional B-.
His grades are below
what he promised and he
still needs some more money, and
the uncle says, well, you
didn't keep your promise last time,
should I believe that you're going to be able to keep your promise in the future?
I'm going to have somebody check up on
you every month in college and check on your grades.
Now of course that's totally humiliating for college student right?
The frat boy says, hey,
not only did I get
okay grades, I majored in something really hard.
You can see that's kind of
how the Greeks feel, they were
asked to do something incredibly difficult,
and even if they did only half
of it, to them they feel
like, hey, we passed a pretty tough test.
The uncle like the Europeans
are saying, I asked you
to do something, you signed on the the dotted line, and you didn't keep your promise.
The Greeks are humiliated by having
to change their ways. The
Europeans don't want to
lend to someone who keeps maybe half of their promises.