Ok, so many people I see all the time, just jump to the conclusion that Greece is supposedly another 'example' of socialism 'failure' but in reality it had nothing to with what's happened there at all. Here's a reddit post I found that sums it up. [quote]There is no socialist bent. The majority of European countries have very similar welfare and social safety net programs, universal healthcare, etc. This include Germany, which is currently the one bailing Greece out of the water. The Greek economic crisis was predominately caused by much of the same problems which someone like Bernie Sanders wants to address. In fact, a huge chunk of it was because of precisely the same problem which put this country in a recession. The sub-prime mortgage crisis, toxic assets and high liabilities which lead to our recession had a global effect, particularly in Europe which is not as isolated from the same banking firms as we are compared to say... China. Greece was one of the fastest growing countries in the Eurozone in the early to mid 2000s. Their adoption of the Euro meant that certain restrictions were placed on their economy, the primary one being that they are unable to devalue their currency like we are able to. They also had limitations placed on deficit spending and other restrictions which were supposed to ensure financial stability, see: Euro convergence criteria. Yes, it is true that they continued to have deficit spending and did increase their debt, but this is simply not a significant problem for a country in control of its own currency. Factors from both their adoption of the Euro and the recession caused their GDP to tumble at precisely the same time credit markets dried up. Without the ability to devalue their currency or increase (yes INCREASE) deficit spending to create domestic liquidity, the entire economy essentially froze. They turned to both the IMF and other countries to help, but these placed new policy restriction on them, particularly in the way of austerity cuts. What do you think happens to a domestic economy when you tell a huge percentage of workers they're only going to get a fraction of their pension because of the policies demanded by creditors? THEY STOP SPENDING. This exacerbates the issue further, labor costs sky rocket which leads to greater trade deficits (different from other deficits), which exacerbates it EVEN FUTHER. The policy of their creditors is explicitly designed to keep them in debt in order to force them to sell state assets to foreign governments and corporations. This is why the latest deal requires them to liquidate 50 billion dollars worth of government assets. In addition to devaluation acting as organic debt restructuring, the devaluation of currency increases tourism (one of Greece's previously top contributors to its economy) and organic investment because things become cheap, while not totally destroying the purchasing power of their domestic economy. Last but not least, Greece has suffered tremendously with upwards of $20 billion dollar shortfalls in tax revenue due to corporate corruption and tax loopholes. The very same that a "socialist" like Bernie Sanders says we need to fix. If you want to see our country end up like Greece, go ahead and elect a corporate / global capital backed Republican or Hillary for that matter (as she's not drastically different), when they finally get a chance to refuse raising the debt ceiling and we come under similar austerity measures imposed by the IMF for debt relief, you'll get to see the free market in action as we sell off national land and resources to the highest foreign bidder and our democratic processes become opaquely controlled by foreign world banks. The Greek people voted 2-to-1 NOT to accept austerity, and what happened? A new austerity deal which will only further freeze their domestic economy, lose another tens of billions of assets to Germany and China... and all that passed by a "socialist" government. You don't know what socialism is, and you most certainly don't understand the first thing about economics, let alone the particular problems Greece face; which have, thus far, been overwhelmingly CAUSED by capitalism and free marketeers. Go ahead, support the TPP try to use dirty words like "socialist" against the only person who has the balls to break up the banks that need to be broken up (like republican Teddy would have done), privatize your education system so it can be bought by the Chinese when we refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Given that the working class is the vast majority of the Earth's population, I'm going to make what I consider a pretty safe assumption that you are, in fact, a member of the working class. When are you going to wake up and realize that no matter how much you think one day the American Dream will float your way and you can be one of them, their interests are not your interests and if you think they're doing it cause they "love liberty and freedom" perhaps realize that what they mean by liberty and freedom is the liberty and freedom of the almighty dollar, the liberty and freedom to buy democracies, etc? Your "liberty and freedom" doesn't mean remotely the same thing theirs does no matter how suavely they mask it in sugar-coated rhetoric about the values of founding fathers and "what this country was founded on."[/quote] Provided that it is a bit condescending, it is completely correct. It does baffle me though how people completely jump to conclusions without investigating and just believe whatever their told. More info here also http://qr.ae/RbGHHO Discuss.