Europe has always been a rather tenuous concept. A rump continent, Europe represented the barbarous hinterlands for the Greeks and Romans.

I am a simple citizen, this is why, when writing these lines, I ignore whether this text will reach my other co-citizens in Europe. It is a letter in a bottle.

When Greece exchanged its drachma for the euro in 2000, most voters were all for joining the Eurozone. The hope was that it would ensure stability, and that this would promote rising wages and living standards.

Soon after the Socialist Party won Greece’s national elections in autumn 2009, it became apparent that the government’s finances were in a shambles.

John Maynard Keynes thought he had pretty well killed gold as a monetary standard back in the 1930s. Governments of the world did their best to help him. It took longer than they thought.

In September 2010, a short time before the international financial summit of the Group of Twenty (G20) took place in South Korea, Brazilian finance minister Guido Mantega declared that the world is experiencing a "currency war" where "devaluing currencies artificially is a global strategy."

Cafés are full in Athens, and droves of tourists still visit the Parthenon and go island-hopping in the fabled Aegean. But beneath the summery surface, there is confusion, anger, and despair as this country plunges into its worst economic crisis in decades.

It all began, as usual, with the Greeks. The ancient Greeks were the first civilized people to use their reason to think systematically about the world around them.

That war is not productive may seem self-evident to Misesians but it is not to the "educated" public who have been taught that World War II ended the Depression and that deficit spending (of whatever kind it doesn't matter) spurs economic growth.

It is a thought provoking and a deep-sea dimensional analysis. Hence, it is bound the boggle the mind of the person who asked the question, and who ventures to answer it !!