The main problem with Greece is that its people cannot accept the idea that they have lived on borrowed money for a number of years and now it is time to wake up. I've said this a number of times; you cannot expect people living in a country with virtually no industry (pls name one Greek company that is a household name across the world like BP, Siemens, Renault etc) and where corruption and tax avoidance are endemic to have the same standard of living as the French, Brits or Germans.
Greece is more similar to Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania than to Germany, Sweden, UK or US and should have living standards more correlated to those in those countries. I mean, Europe has been bailing them out consistently for 3 years now and they still have not removed the barriers to enter for pharmacists??? That is lack of political will, they were not asked to build an industrial sector from scratch, just to repel some laws that conferred advantages to some insiders, did they do it?
The main issue is that Greece is only the beginning. IMO, globalisation will bring the Western standards of living lower and lower until they will be just above those in India, China and the other fast growing economies.
I can see the following countries coming out of this well:
- Germany(with their fantastic Mittelstand, full of niche manufacturers that cannot be replicated easily in China)
- Ireland and some Eastern European countries that are used to hardship (no one mentions that the Baltic countries, Romania and Ireland all cut their civil servants pay and benefits by 20-25%, not just froze them like here and everyone shut up, swallowed the cuts and cut their expenses - imagine this happening in France, the bidonvilles in Paris and Marseille, where no one has worked a day in their lives will burn like Rome under Nero).
- Australia, Norway, Canada and some Latin American countries as they have natural resources
- any African country that is not under a dictatorship or a religious rule (such as Rwanda or Botswana), as this is the continent where everything will happen in the next 2-3 decades, and where all production will be moved once Chinese and Indian wages catch up with the rest of the world (already wages in some coastal Chinese cities are higher than in countries like Ukraine or Belarus).
The following IMO will have it bad:
- US, with their huge deficit and their deadlocked Congress. It is clear that until Latinos will make more than 40% of the population and decissively sway the elections in favour of the Democrats, neither big party will be able to gain enough votes to have a clear majority in the two chambers. The resulting deadlock, the stupid healthcare law and the existence of inflexible fringe movements like Tea Party will just balloon the deficit and the house of cards will fall when China stops buying their debt.
- countries where the population has been used to being pampered from cradle to grave, especially those over 45. Universal free healthcare, generous unemployment benefits, retirement at 60 etc are just not sustainable anymore and a rude awakening awaits those who expect them to continue. The perfect example for this France, of course, but UK, Belgium, Holland and most other Western European countries fit in too. Some countries which are open economies, export-oriented like Sweden may fare better.
- countries with aging population and which are reluctant to immigration (Japan)
- countries where people are opressed by a dictature and which will awaken like the Arabs last year, mostly Russia and China. I am expecting a "Chinese spring" sometimes in the next 5-10 years, not as dramatic as in Lybia or Syria, as the Chinese enjoy many freedoms already but an one-party rule is an anacronism and the people will wake up.
