Voodoo economics

last updated 8 January 2015

Athens

Greece cheated on its entrance examination to join the euro common currency in 2001, the government admitted this week. The Greek conservative government said that the Socialist government that was in power at the time deliberately fudged the numbers, to make Greece’s forecasted budget deficit look smaller. As the financial health of one eurozone country affects all the others, euro users are supposed to adhere to strict economic policies, which include keeping budget deficits low. The rest of the union will decide in December whether to punish Greece, but since France and Germany have also run up big deficits since the adoption of the euro, they are hardly in a position to be stern.