Q: Why Do You Rob Banks?

A: Because that's where the money is.

In my continuing attempt to understand the Greek debt crisis and drive away all readership from this blog, I have this latest installment. In today's WSJ there is this article discussing how the Greek government is riddled with corruption.

A study to be published in coming weeks by the Washington-based Brookings Institution finds that bribery, patronage and other public corruption are major contributors to the country's ballooning debt, depriving the Greek state each year of the equivalent of at least 8% of its gross domestic product, or more than €20 billion (about $27 billion).

"Our basic problem is systemic corruption," Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou said after he took office late last year, vowing to change a mentality that views the republic as a resource to plunder.

Bzzzzzzt! Wrong answer, George. Your basic problem is that your economy is more than 50% government spending. Allocation of government resources is based on politics and politics is all about favors and influence. The problem is that your government is massive, not that Greeks are any more or less corrupt than anyone else. The more money the government controls, the more motivation there is to try and get some through bribery. Here in the US, ObamaCare was loaded with it.

Louisiana Purchase, anyone? How about the Cornhusker Kickback?

This is a feature, not a bug, of statism. Greed is part of the human condition and greedy people flock to money. If the money is in the government, that's where they'll go. It's not about Greece, it's about the unintended, but preordained endstate of the statists' dream. If you don't think it's happening here in the US, dig this little bit from Sweetness and Light:

As we have noted numerous times, saving the UAW’s pension fund was the real raison d’être for the automakers bailout in the first place.

And, as we have also mentioned, the just enacted ‘healthcare reform’ legislation includes a discreet injection of $10 billion into the UAW’s pension fund.

ObamaCare helped more than just sick people. It helped the UAW, too. That's what happens as the government grows and grows and grows.

So Greece has problems with corruption? Well, duhhhhhh.