{"id":303709,"date":"2010-02-10T11:04:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T16:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"e2249889-c78b-43e3-9643-b1d7d4aa587b:394037"},"modified":"2010-02-10T11:04:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T16:04:00","slug":"put-greek-leaders-on-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/303709","title":{"rendered":"Put Greek leaders on trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since Greece wants a bailout, maybe it\u2019s time to think about what the terms of that bailout should include. They should be onerous enough that other nations won\u2019t be tempted to imitate the accounting tricks practiced by Greece\u2019s former government.<\/p>\n<p>One simple idea would be to make any bailout contingent upon Greece putting its former leaders on trial. In a searing <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704820904575054881520585198.html?mod=WSJ-hps-LEFTWhatsNews\" >opinion piece<\/a> in the Wall Street Journal, Takis Michas, a prominent Greek journalist, argues that the deliberate deception practiced by former prime minister Costas Karamanlis amounts to securities fraud. Only by charging Karamanlis and his entourage will Greece send a sign that such corruption won\u2019t be tolerated in future.<\/p>\n<p>If Greece isn\u2019t willing to confront its former leaders, it\u2019s difficult to see how a bailout can proceed without creating huge problems of moral hazard. A penalty-free bailout would signal to Europe\u2019s struggling nations that it\u2019s fine to fiddle with your accounts, because the EU\u2019s rich nations will always come to your aid in crisis.<\/p>\n<p><i>Freelance business journalist <b>Ian McGugan<\/b> blogs for the Financial Post<\/i> <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/network.nationalpost.com\/np\/aggbug.aspx?PostID=394037\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since Greece wants a bailout, maybe it\u2019s time to think about what the terms of that bailout should include. They should be onerous enough that other nations won\u2019t be tempted to imitate the accounting tricks practiced by Greece\u2019s former government. One simple idea would be to make any bailout contingent upon Greece putting its former [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4059,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4059"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}