The Greeks don’t have a word for it

IF Greece had not cooked its books its finances would not now need the EU bailout and monitoring it so resents.  Greece, as Nicholas Sarkozy said recently, should never have joined the euro but no-one will openly admit that it is useless trying to save a country which is valuable mainly for its past and feta cheese.  If it leaves the eurozone the banks and the markets – who can afford it – will lose.  But if Greece remains, everybody loses.

Spilt milk, stable doors

A NO-FLY zone is being discussed to deter President Bashar al-Assad but, as he has warned, Syria is not Libya.  Winds of change in Libya could anyway herald a hurricane while the West’s previous incursions in Iraq and Afghanistan suggest that happy endings are not guaranteed. Toppling tyrannies and assisting rebels with a cause are worthy objectives that too often disappoint their too subjective instigators.

Don’t bank on it!

FIRST the Vatican declared that economies needed people-based ethics, then the Archbishop of Canterbury weighed in by sympathising with a Robin Hood tax on bankers. No country can have a buoyant economy unless banks make profits, but it perplexes those whose personal finances have plunged precipitously during the crisis to see bailed-out bankers wiping away crocodile tears with one hand and trousering bonuses with the other.