The euro crisis: What would Jesus do?

This one's been around for a long time in the USA; I was reminded of it in a recent BBC News article.

Faced with the current euro crisis, would Jesus:

• Insist that bad debtors - including countries - face immediate bankruptcy (with all the attendant woes - pensioners not getting their state pensions, public sector workers not getting paid, mass unemployment)?
• Sanction the printing of more money, keeping the economy afloat while allowing inflation to erode the value of prudent savers' cash assets and pensioners' fixed incomes? And by doing so, tell mankind that actually, it's OK to spend more than you earn?
• Or would He insist that all debts are paid back, in full, at their proper value? And by doing so - by insisting on a general tightening of belts - would He be content to stifle demand, stamp out prospects of growth, while keeping unemployment high?

Well? Or would He end up doing what Europe's policy-makers are doing - dabbling between the three options in the hope that things will turn out OK in the end?

• Or would He (as PiS supporters would like) order the break-up of the single currency and the EU, allowing Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain to suffer massive currency depreciation, runaway inflation and unemployment unseen in Biblical times, while the EU's more prudent lender countries would see their currencies soar to uncompetitive levels killing off their exports and also bringing about mass unemployment?

What message would Jesus send to the world's financial markets (other than short-circuiting the computers in the money-changers' dealing rooms)?

How you see your God is how you see the way out of our current global economic mess.

As a financially prudent person, I believe in paying off debt rather than printing money or allowing debtors to slip away from their obligations by declaring bankruptcy.

But maybe that's a bit Old Testament of me. Maybe Jesus would be more forgiving of the household that overspent on luxury cars, exotic holidays and fashionable clothes, or of bankers that invested in dodgy instruments, or in governments that consistently spent more than they raised in taxes.

[And incidentally, would Jesus insist on bringing back the death-penalty, as PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński would like?]

What do you think, dear readers?

This time last year:
Orders of magnitude

This time two years ago:
Jeziorki in the snow

This time three years ago:
Better news on the commuting front

This time four years ago:
I no longer recognise the land where I was born