Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Today's random foreign blogging

Just a thought, but with Greek debt being downgraded today to "junk" status, maybe it would make sense for them to cut their military spending. Greece right now has 177,000 active duty soldiers (4.2% of its population, or more than triple the per capita numbers for the US). Greece also spends 4.3% of its GDP on its military - 25th in the world, and ahead of the US, and way higher than other European countries. Germany, Czech Republic, Belarus, Albania, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, etc. are all at around 1.5% of GDP or less.

Greece's GDP in 2009 was $356 billion, so adjusting their military spending to be more in line with similarly situated European countries would save them about $11 billion a year - something that would probably make the bond markets (and the EU) pretty happy. The communists lost and Turkey is part of NATO, so there's not really any reason to bankrupt your country with military expenditures when you can just freeride off the US like everybody else in Europe.

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