Aside from the fact that the mantra is repeated by virtually every media outlet, mainstream and otherwise, why should any Eurozone country defaulting have anything to do with that country leaving the Euro? Except for Yanis Varoufakis, who is virtually the only Keynesian econometrician who seems to have a workable solution for Europe, everyone else just assumes that default equals exit. Why should this be?

Take the United States for example. The US is a dollar zone. All fifty states use the dollar, and California is about to go bankrupt. Is anyone seriously discussing California leaving the dollar zone if it defaults on its debt? No. Miami, where I come from, declared bankruptcy when I was a kid. Did anything happen to my family? No, because we weren’t stupid enough to buy the municipal bonds of a bankrupt municipality. And by the way, Miami did not exit Florida after it went bankrupt. As it should happen in a bankruptcy, those who own the debt lose the money. That’s it.

So why are we even discussing Greece “leaving the Euro”? Why should they? How does that help anything? Who decides if they are going to be kicked out? Who is in charge of the Eurozone who makes these decisions? Why should it even be an option? What is going on here, has anyone asked these questions?

If Greece did “exit,” it wouldn’t be Greece leaving of their own accord. What would happen is that the European Central Bank would stop giving Greece euros to fill their ATMs, and the country would literally run out of currency and they would have to start printing their own. So the answer is whoever is in charge of the ECB makes these decisions.

Who is in charge of the ECB? Mario Draghi, an Italian? I doubt he’s the one who’s going to make the final decision to stop giving currency to a Eurozone member.

Whoever has his hands on the switch is probably in Germany. The implication is that the Germans literally control Europe. They decide who’s in, who’s out, who starves, who lives, who dies. Germany conquered Europe. Again. Without anyone noticing. It’s August 31, 1939, but instead of Poland, the Krauts are about to invade Greece.

It’s interesting. We always thought World War III would be started with a nuclear bomb. It looks more and more likely that it will be started with a printing press.