Greece exemplifies the inherent unreliability of government economic statistics:
Financially-stricken Greece had an even bigger budget deficit for 2009 than previously thought, official figures showed Thursday — at a time the country is considering whether to tap a bailout facility from its 15 partners in the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund.
The European Union’s statistics office Eurostat said that Greece’s budget deficit in 2009 as a percentage of economic output was 13.6 percent — that’s up from the previous estimate of 12.9 percent and nearly double the 7.7 percent recorded in 2008.
Fictional numbers informing the deployment of fictional money by fraudulent financiers. I have a sneaking suspicion that the people of the far future are going to look back on our time as the Idiot Ages. We are the telephone sanitizers.