After Greece, what?

Time to put the popcorn on, pull up a chair and watch the fireworks. No I'm not talking about American Independence Day celebrations. On Sunday the Greeks are voting on whether or not to accept European Union's demands for more austerity and other concessions. That's all to keep the rickety house of cards going a bit longer.

I've no idea how this one is going to go down. Greece is technically in default. Will it get a big infusion of loan money? Can it stay in the EU? Will the EU itself survive the challenge?

In the end, while it's all huge entertaining and distracting, it's a sideshow. For the United States Puerto Rico is of more pressing concern. It can't pay its debts either. Wouldn't it be a fine time to just grant them independence? That's just my twisted sense of humor talking. It's not really about governments. It's about banks.

Anyone else notice that other financially troubled EU countries like Spain, Italy and Portugal have totally dropped off the radar? They are pretending to the public that Greece is the only real problem.

Historically, financial crisis time hits in the fall. There are some reasons (theories?) for this, but I'm not going to go there in a short blog post. Let's just say that's the time the astute investors cash in their chips.

How bad is it going to be? Here's where it all gets weird. There's a lot of doom predictions bouncing around the Internet right now. Financial doom is predicted, but so are, earthquakes, solar flares, asteroids, plague -disasters of biblical magnitude. I take some comfort in those dire predictions. They are almost always totally wrong -so wrong as to almost defy random chance of being right.

If they say it's the end of everything, we'll probably muddle through a while longer. That's not to say there won't be negative consequences in the fall. Odds are something bad will happen somewhere. (probably not anything predicted either). After watching the financial and legal gymnastics that took place after the 2008 housing collapse I won't bet against the financial wizards pulling another rabbit out of their hat.

Whatever happens it's sure to be interesting, so stock up on plenty of popcorn.

-Sixbears