Friday, December 2, 2011

Do we deserve a Great Depression because the Greeks were irresponsible?

Rod Dreher seems to think so. Here he is, commenting on David Brooks' column sticking up for Germans who don't want to bail out their Eurozone counterparts:
I wonder what would be worse: a Depression that serves as nemesis for the hubris of the Eurozone tower of Babel, or saving the Eurozone by throwing overboard the “precious social construct” of moral hazard and an economic system that rewards virtue and punishes vice.
Those are two bad choices, but you know what? The Depression is worse. In the latter scenario, people who don't deserve to live comfortable lives get to do so—but so do the people who do deserve to. In the former scenario, people who made bad choices pay for them—but so do a lot of other people who don't. I'm not a fan of tripping lightly over moral hazard, but I'm even less a fan of the misery that accompanies a Depression.  And there's no telling where those ramifications would end. The last Depression ended with a genocidal world war, after all.

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