Finland and Greece: A better deal

This week Finland was headline news around Europe because of the additional negotiations regarding their multi billion Euro participation in the Greece bailout deal.

Now obviously the Finns have shown a damn lot more financial intelligence than the rest of the European governments combined by actually demanding collateral before dumping their money into a bottomless pit like the Greek economy. The way they went about it was not the smartest though.

Now obviously Greece is a country full of law abiding, hard working people, who are among the most honest in the world, have a culture that despises corruption and deceit and are totally not to blame for their financial misery. They just have a small temporary cash flow problem that needs to be resolved with a loan.

But lending out money and then asking for almost the same amount in collateral in a frozen bank account doesn’t really solve their problem, now does it? And on top of that, even when Finland does get this collateral deal, all the other European countries will want the same and we will all be back to square one.

What Finland should have done is demand the islands of Santorini and Mykonos as collateral. When Greece eventually files for bankruptcy these islands will then automatically become part of Finland’s territory. And until that time all Finnish residents should be made be eligible for 75% discounts on hotel rooms, apartments, restaurants and car rentals plus free beach chairs. Furthermore Greek males are no longer allowed to harass Finnish female visitors anywhere on the island at any time. Oh and all Finnish residents get unlimited free access to Cavo Paradiso of course.

Voila: a much better deal and Finnish tax payers’ money put to good use. And since Greece is hip deep in islands this deal is easily replicated towards other EU countries as well, so there will be no opposition like there is against the current plan. Just part out the rest of the country in collateral to all the other bailout fund participants, and when in the end of the day Greece eventually does go bankrupt the entire problem is solved automatically. Greece will simply no longer exist and the rest of Europe will have their own little vacation paradises. Bought and paid for.