Greece and the Euro, The Invisible Hand and Taxes

Listeners’ Questions, Peter’s Answers- July 18, 2013

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Nathan from Ontario Canada
People like Nigel Farage advocate Greece exiting the Euro, going back to the Drachma, and devaluing the currency to get away from the “economic prison” of the Euro.

Is Nigel’s idea opposite to Austrian economics, or does he have the right solution? Which is worse for private enterprise, extreme austerity, or a devalued currency?

Carl from Okinawa Japan
Does Carat matter when investing in gold?

Tom from Shanghai
I’ve been researching what led to the Global Financial Crisis in 2007. Alan Greenspan popped up a lot and he is believed to be a libertarian influenced by Ayn Rand, whom I aspire after. Could you please enlighten me as to why Alan Greenspan is to take the blame for the GFC if the notions of “the invisible hand” and “self-regulated” all were to be held as true?  Is he different from other libertarian economists such as Milton Friedman or Ludwig Von Mises?

Mateusz from Poland
Our economy 22 years ago was centrally planned. Now it’s called a market economy but it is overregulated, highly taxed (VAT at 23%, gasoline taxes at 48%), there is so much socialism , higher education, healthcare etc. but we were THE ONLY country in Europe that has not been in recession during meltdown.  Is Poland, in your opinion, a good place to invest money as a businessman or stock broker?

Mim from Downers Grove, IL
To obtain the unemployment figure, the BLS calls 60,000 households to randomly collect this information. Since almost no one under the age of 45 has a landline, and cell phone numbers aren’t published, who in the heck are they calling for this data? This method of collection may have been valid 8-10 years ago, but do you think this could be giving skewed data?