My Big Fat Greek Bankruptcy

(Via Felix Salmon)

Michael Lewis scrapes off Greece's financial scab and reveals the horrors underneath.

The [Greek] national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros [yet pays its workers] 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension,” Manos put it to me. “And yet there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.”

And that's just the beginning.

a law on the books [makes] it a jailable offense to cheat the [Greek] government out of more than 150,000 euros [in taxes]—but its enforcement. “If the law was enforced,” the tax collector said, “every doctor in Greece would be in jail.” I laughed, and he gave me a stare. “I am completely serious.” One reason no one is ever prosecuted—apart from the fact that prosecution would seem arbitrary, as everyone is doing it—is that the Greek courts take up to 15 years to resolve tax cases.

Perhaps the most entertainingly horrific thing you will read this month.