you'd think you need a PhD

in Economics just to keep

track of what's going on, but at least for this video, you don't.

I'm Garrett Jones. I'm an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University.

I'm going to try to boil it

down to a ridiculously simple but accurate story.

Imagine a frat boy, he's

going to college. He needs

to borrow some money to keep

going, so he goes to

his rich uncle and says, can I borrow some money for college?

And the uncle says, if I'm going

to lend you money you got to

keep your act together, and I want to see that you're getting good grades.

I'm going to make you sign a document.

Frat boy says, I'll sign

on the dotted line, I'll take the money, I'll get back to you in a couple of years.

Goes to college. Instead of

getting the Bs that he promised,

he gets Cs, C+s, the occasional B-.

His grades are below

what he promised and he

still needs some more money, and

the uncle says, well, you

didn't keep your promise last time,

should I believe that you're going to be able to keep your promise in the future?

I'm going to have somebody check up on

you every month in college and check on your grades.

Now of course that's totally humiliating for college student right?

The frat boy says, hey,

not only did I get

okay grades, I majored in something really hard.

You can see that's kind of

how the Greeks feel, they were

asked to do something incredibly difficult,

and even if they did only half

of it, to them they feel

like, hey, we passed a pretty tough test.

The uncle like the Europeans

are saying, I asked you

to do something, you signed on the the dotted line, and you didn't keep your promise.

The Greeks are humiliated by having

to change their ways. The

Europeans don't want to

lend to someone who keeps maybe half of their promises.