Monday, January 9, 2012

What would you do if unemployment was 18%?

I ask, because this NYT article reports that Greeks are moving out of cities and going into farming.  Yes, you read that right..FARMING!

With unemployment at 35% in the 15-29 age group, who can blame Greeks?  But here's the rub: Greeks are moving downward in skill set, and that would tend to portend poorly for the future of Greek income.

What they really need to do, is have the freedom to move to Germany and get jobs there, that way they'd rebalance European labor resources, which would in turn rebalance finances.  But Germans would resent such a move, and would rather pretend that they can insulate themselves from any eurocrisis.

I suppose we won't have to wait too much longer for the eurocrisis to boil over though, seeing as the Greek 10 year bond has floated around 35% the last 30 days, and Italy's 10 year has bounced right back up above 7%.

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