At the end of 2014, Greeks owed their government about $US86 billion (or $NZ154 billion) in unpaid taxes accrued over decades. The government says only less than 10% of that can be recovered, with the rest lost to insolvency.

Billions more in taxes are owed on never-reported revenue from Greece’s vast underground economy, which was estimated before the crisis to equal more than a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product.

One has to wonder at how socialists do these things. How could things get so out of control that Greek politicians spent this much, when it didn’t exist, and why did the people keep voting for them? When the politicians were proposing ideas that they citizens didn’t want to fund anyway??

And only a few months ago in another inexplicable example of widespread madness, they voter for more of the same. The only real answer to this question has to be that socialism is an event of mass delusional insanity.

It infects NZ at the moment. NZers have to wake up to the fact they’re voting for two main parties that have no problem with taking $100 billion or more from the NZ economy. How much of that really exists? That about $6 billion goes each year paying interest on overseas debt might give you some clue.

Moody’s issued some cautionary notes, but basically said Greece was going OK back in the 2000s, when this debt was starting to accumulate. Today they’re saying the same thing about NZ.