“Never spend your money before you have it.” Thomas Jefferson

If you have been playing close attention to the news recently you will have noticed that it has been dominated by the crisis in Greece. Daily talks haven’t resolved anything and now their banks are going to be shut – for a week anyway. It does beg the question though “How was this allowed to happen?”

I use the word ‘allowed’ because Greece doesn’t look after itself and has a government like everywhere else along with people to run it, so what went wrong? Well for a start they have a very complicated tax system which is something we can all relate to – with six rates of VAT that’s confusing in itself and raising their taxes during the crisis didn’t help matters either. But the crisis didn’t happen overnight, in fact problems have been on the horizon for a number of years and rather than address them they turned a blind eye – this obviously did not turn out so well for them.

Like any business you have to know exactly how much money is coming in and how much money is going out and I would say that running a country is no different to running a business – something Greece weren’t particularly good at if you delve into their track record. It’s all well and good not to charge excessive tax rates or curb their spending because they want to help their people but look what’s happened now! You need to make a profit in order to grow and survive and when you’re trouble get the help you need or your business will fail.

So the question is will they be leaving the Eurozone or not? Things may unfold this week and I’ll certainly be watching; will you?

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