Comments by "Brand131" (@Brand131) on "How the euro caused the Greek crisis" video.

  1. A currency devaluation is a bad way to make your economy competitive. You are making everyone in the country poorer, while it only gives a country a temporary competitive boost. If a country does not rely on money printing, companies are forced to cut costs and innovate to maintain competitiveness. Greece (and Spain and Italy and Portugal) aren't uncompetitive because they can't devalue their currencies but because they've historically always done this. Greece already had a high debt before the Euro and that they already had an uncompetitive economy as well then. The only difference the Euro made in this is that it has offered Greece historic low interest rates. A responsible country would use that to benefit their fiscal budget and reduce their debt. (like they were supposed to under the Maastricht agreement, I might add). However, Greece hasn't done this. They kept lending, misled their lenders in order to keep their interest low,  and now this has been revealed, the market adjusted Greece's credit worthiness. Also, if they would print money in this situation, as the video suggest, it would only lead to lenders demanding even higher interest rates.
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