Congrats Greece! You are Slightly More Free Than Bangladesh, Burundi, And Yemen
The Heritage Foundation ranks Greece #130 on its economic freedom list, which puts it in the "mostly unfree" category. Of course, these rankings depend a lot on the categories and the weighting, but the story here is still telling. The next worst European country I can find is Slovenia at #88 and the first EU country I see is Italy at #80, not great but a good fifty spots higher.
Which begs the question, asked by Megan McArdle today, of why Europe wants Greece anyway. In terms of political-economy, it had little in common with the rest of the continent. Everyone assumes the EU is trying to prevent a domino effect, with the other PIGS nations defecting from the Euro, but I think the Greek capitulation this weekend shows how unlikely this is -- it is clear Greece will do absolutely anything to stay in the Euro, and so it is reasonable to assume Portugal, Spain, and Italy face the same incentives and are thus not ready to leave the Euro on a whim just because Greece does.
