Grilling An Easter Lamb In A Greek Village

Life in Greece is good. There may be financial chaos around the corner but customs and traditions are being observed.

When I know that more than a dozen people are coming for lunch on Easter Sunday, my Austro-German mind goes into overdrive. Everything needs to be prepared at the latest the day before. The tables are set and the sunshades in the open yard are up. In short, everything is prepared to perfection. Which, to be honest, can make it a rather stiff affair.

We arrived at the family home in the village on Saturday evening. Everybody was cool. Not a sign that there would be a big event the next day. Just easy-going and pleasurable company. I offered my brother-in-law to help and he said I should be up at 8 in the morning. Punctually, of course, at 8 I was there.

My brother-in-law threw a small mountain of logs on the fireplace and lit them, and that was the end of that. I expressed worries whether it would burn well; whether it would produce enough glow; etc. He just waved his hand. Then he brought the lamb from the refrigerator. It was a big animal. He improvised a couple of small tables to put the lamb on. We then made the lamb grill-ready like we would be preparing coffee: no stress or excitement whatsoever. When something didn't work, a new trick was improvised. There was no rush. It took almost one hour to finish the job.

Then the grilling began. Surprise, surprise --- the glow was just perfect. A little electric motor made the lamb turn and that was just about the end of it. My brother-in-law went back to enjoy a coffee. I couldn't believe how one could be so relaxed when performing such a big job. No one ever asked "When will it be ready?" I guess the answer would have been "It will be ready when it is ready!"

As time passed, more and more younger and older women made their appearance and without any such thing as a central command or organization, they got to work. Somehow everyone seemed to know what his/her part in the show was. The tables were set; the sunshades were fixed; salads arrived one after another; bottles appeared on the table. Before long, the tables were bending over and the lamb wasn't even ready yet. People were sitting down and started eating. I asked my wife whether we shouldn't wait for the lamb. She said no; this was just the Orektikó.

At long last, my brother-in-law took the lamb off the grill. I asked him how he knew that it was ready. He just waved his hand. I was curious because I didn't see a large table where he would put it in order to cut it up. Instead, he took a huge plate, put it on the floor and simply let the lamb slide down. And then he put the plate the middle of the table and that was the end of that. Everybody took their food and drinks and it turned out to be a huge feast. Hard to think of anything more enjoyable.

Life in Greece is good, indeed. My thoughts got going and I started contemplating that there might soon be a Greek default and/or Grexit. That there could be complete financial chaos in the country. But something told me that life in the village wouldn't change all that much. Life would remain good.

A Letter From Ireland

ft.com posted the below letter from a reader. 

The Irish government would never have made the cuts and structural reforms that were necessary to save the Irish economy without being able to look for cover behind those bad Germans all along the way. What we would have done, as our history can prove, decade after decade, is pretend that there were no structural problems in the economy, that corruption and clientelism were just part of our friendly culture, and sadly we would have continued to export our children like cattle to the four corners of the earth. Does this sound familiar, Greece?

A people that are far-sighted and generous enough not to sell out the next generation are a people I admire. A country that took East Germany on its shoulders resulting in a 20 per cent cut in wages for West Germans is a country I admire. Solidarity is not just a populist term of the left in the land of Goethe and Schiller; they mean it. So the next time I drive over the viaduct that traverses the Manchester Ship Canal heading north on the M6 towards the tiny village of Hambleton in Lancashire to visit my wife’s relatives who left Ireland for England in the 1980s, I’ll look at my two young daughters in the rear view mirror, turn up the volume of Brahms’ German Requiem on my CD player, and say “Danke danke danke”. 

Cormac O’Donnell
Dublin, Ireland

A National Strategic Reference Framework For Greece!

Ever since I started this blog, I have been arguing that Greece needs to have a plan for its economy and society. Not a fiscal budget; not a Memorandum of Understanding. Instead: something like a Long Term Industrial Development Plan.

When McKinsey came out with their report Greece Ten Years Ahead in early 2012, I was all excited. It may not have been the best plan. Perhaps not even the right plan. But it was a plan!

Subsequently, I was told that McKinsey, in preparing the above document, had very much drawn on work which had been done by the Greek Ministry of Economy and Finance a few years earlier. That didn't surprise me because consultants are known for looking at your watch when telling you what the time is.

I have now discovered this 'earlier work' by the Greek Ministry of Economy and Finance. It was called National Strategic Reference Framework 2007 - 2013 and below is an excerpt about its overall strategic approach: 

"The progress of the Greek economy depends to a large extent on its ability to adjust to the international environment, through a powerful and consistent boost to competitiveness. Within this framework, complex and comprehensive actions are required to cover a wide range of financial and social life activities. 

The strategy concentrates on the need to implement policies at national and regional level, in such a manner that Regions and cities will become attractive places for business installation, improving at the same time the living standard of their citizens and reducing inter- and intra-regional disparities. This new approach relies on policy effectiveness through simplified planning and implementation mechanisms. The overall objective is to expand the country’s growth potential, maintain its economic growth rate and increase productivity at levels higher than the Community average, with the prospect to boost employment, achieve real convergence and improve the quality of life for all citizens, with no exclusions whatsoever. In the new programming period 2007 - 2013, Greece aims at becoming an outward-looking country with strong international presence, with a competitive and productive economy. A country that will lay emphasis on education and the young, quality, technology, innovation and respect for the environment".

I haven't read the 300+ pages of the report but it seems that members of the Greek government should do that with a view towards adapting the plan so that it can serve as a National Strategic Reference Framework 2015-2020.

OECD Public Governance Review: Greece 2011

I came across this Public Governance Review which the OECD made of Greece back in 2011. It included 8 key recommendations. The first key recommendation was as follows: 

Key recommendation: There is no evident overall strategic vision to provide purpose and direction to the long-term future of the Greek society and economy, as well as for the short-, medium- and long-term measures to be implemented.

Detail: It is striking that there is no strategic and shared vision of where Greece wants to take its society and its economy. It means that public, media and internal government attention is unhelpfully focused on fiscal issues, with no sense of a broader agenda. There is no clear central steering, clear ownership of reforms, or accountability for results. At the core of its administration, Greece desperately needs a high-level structure which has the authority, responsibility and capacity to lead the development of a strategic vision and direction for public policies, and the effective implementation of this vision in practice and over time.

Should Greece Repudiate Its Debt?

My understanding is that the Greek parliament has approved the formation of a socalled 'Debt Truth Committee'. Its job is apparently two-fold: (a) determine how and why the debt came into existence and (b) audit the circumstances under which the bail-out loan agreements were negotiated and concluded.

Regarding the first question, the Committee could save itself a lot of time if it read this analysis by Yiannis Mouzakis of MacroPolis. Mouzakis presents the debt development since 2000. I suppose he could expand it back to 1981 without too much additional effort.

The other question seems a lot more relevant. There have been conspiracy theories that the 2009 budget figures had been 'massaged' by the EU to justify a harsher adjustment program for Greece which would have a deterring effect on other countries. If the Committee could clarify this question beyond doubt, it would certainly be its self-justification. I would consider it highly unlikely that such a clarification will be the outcome.

And today I read a justification for the Committee by Zoi Constantopoulou, President of parliament, which falls into the category of being 'cute'. She says the 'Debt Truth Committee' will investigate how much of the debt is "illegal" with a view to writing it off. 

Someone ought to explain to Ms. Constantopoulou that it is never the borrower who can write off his debt. Only the lenders can do that. The borrower can repudiate his debt and of all the possible financial faux-pas', one of the few which Greece has not made (yet) since the new government assumed power is the outright repudiation of debt.

"If You Are So Smart, Why Am I So Rich?" - Warren Buffett To Ambrose Evans-Pritchard?

"No, we should veto misanthropic policies within the Euro, demand debt restructuring within the Euro, and never give them the opportunity to claim that we opted out of the euro voluntarily. If they want us out, they should kick us out with no help from us. In so doing, however, they will be bringing down their own houses too…” Yanis Varoufakis, January 12, 2015.

“But to negotiate, to be taken seriously, we have to have a convincing threat. You have to be prepared to blow a whole thing up, simply by being intransigent if we are not taken seriously. So, this is my recommendation: Prepare for a unequivocally tough, unequivocally painful, potentially bomb negotiation". Yanis Varoufakis, January 15, 2015.

"If it turns out the Greeks leave, that may not be a bad thing for the Euro. If everybody learns that the rules mean something and if they come to general agreement about fiscal policy among members, or something of the sort, that they mean business, that could be a good thing” – Warren Buffett, April 1, 2015.

"When Warren Buffett suggests that Europe might emerge stronger after a salutary purge of its weak link in Greece, he confirms his own rule that you should never dabble in matters beyond your ken". Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, April 2, 2015.

With due respect to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, those who have bet on Warren Buffett in the past have done very well for themselves. Or as Buffett would say to an intellectual commentator: "If you are so smart, why am I so rich?"

Warren Buffett: "Grexit May Not Be A Bad Thing For The Euro"

Below are some quotes from this Bloomberg report on a Warren Buffett interview with CNBC. 

"If it turns out the Greeks leave, that may not be a bad thing for the Euro. If everybody learns that the rules mean something and if they come to general agreement about fiscal policy among members, or something of the sort, that they mean business, that could be a good thing” – Warren Buffett.

“I’ve thought that the Euro had structural problems right from the moment that it was put it in, which does not mean it will necessarily fail. You can adapt to those structural problems, but maybe some countries won’t adapt and they won’t be in. It’s not ordained that the Euro has to have exactly the members that it has today” – Warren Buffett.

Charles Munger, vice chairman at Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., criticized Greek citizens last week for trying to vote their way to prosperity.

Buffett told CNBC that, over time, the countries in the euro area would need to better coordinate their labor laws, fiscal deficits and general management of their economies. “It can’t continue with people going in dramatically different directions,” Buffett said. “The Germans are not going to fund the Greeks forever.”