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This 11-Year-Old’s Pizza-Based Solution to the Greek Crisis Is Burning Up the Web

Apr. 3, 2012 11:45am Jonathon M. Seidl

LONDON (AP) — An 11-year-old Dutch boy has gone where many of the best economic minds in Europe have feared to tread and proposed a radical solution to the European single currency’s problems – using a pizza as his inspiration.

Jurre Hermans’ entry in the 250,000 pounds ($401,000) Wolfson Economics Prize, an international economics competition to find the “best contingency plan for a break-up of the euro” won special mention Tuesday from the judging panel.

Hermans, of Breedenbroek in the Netherlands, was 10 at the time he entered. He has been given a (EURO)100 ($133) gift voucher for his efforts but failed to make the final short list of five proposals – which included reversing the process in which the euro was created and exiting the system over a weekend.

Jurre Hermans Pizza Solution and Graph to Solve Greece Crisis Goes Viral

A graphic of Jurre Hermans's solution to solve Greek's Euro problem.

In a telephone interview after school, Hermans said he came up with the idea after watching Dutch TV news.

He explained his idea in brief, saying Greeks would “hand in all their euros and get drachma in return. The euros go to the government and it pays the debts.”

“I saw it on television and said, ‘why don’t they do that?’”

In his written entry to the competition, translated into English by his father Julius, Jurre goes into greater detail, suggesting that on top of Greek people exchanging euros for drachma, anyone trying to move euros out of Greece should be penalized.

“All Greek people should bring their euro to the bank,” he wrote, including a diagram of his plan. “They put it in an exchange machine …. You see, the Greek guy does not look happy!!

“The Greek man gets back Greek drachme from the bank, their old currency. The bank gives all these euros to the Greek government.

Jurre Hermans

“All these euros together form a pancake or a pizza. Now the Greek government can start to pay back all their debts, everyone who has a debt gets a slice of the pizza.”

Julius Herman said his son’s career ambitions lie outside the field of advanced economics. “He wants to do something with animals,” he said.

“He’s not particularly interested in politics or economics. He started thinking about it because it is getting so much attention in the media.”

The prize’s five shortlisted finalists, who will each receive 10,000 pounds to continue their work ahead of the prize’s award on July 5, and their proposals are:

- Robert Bootle and his team of Capital Economics in London: A country leaving the euro would convert its government and consumer debt into its own currency. The country would then deliberately default to bring its debt levels down to 60 percent of its economic output.

- Catherine Dobbs, a British private investor: The process which created the euro would basically be reversed. All claims in the exiting country would be replaced by claims in the new currency.

- Jens Nordvig and Nick Firoozy of Nomura Securities in London: If a country quits the euro, British law would not recognize debt contracts in the country’s new currency. A new way of handling and dealing in these debt contracts would have to be introduced.

- Neil Record of Record Currency Management: Record contends that if one country leaves the euro, the currency has to be dissolved. He thus argues for maintaining secrecy for as long as possible before announcing a breakup plan, to prevent markets from attacking structural weaknesses in other countries.

- Jonathan Tepper of North Carolina-based Variant Perception: Many currency unions have failed in the past and a euro break-up is not especially challenging. Using past examples as a guide, countries should exit by surprise over a weekend, declare an extra bank holiday or two around the date of the exit and stamp the existing currency until new notes are circulated.

The prize has been sponsored by a family charity trust of Lord Simon Wolfson – a member of the Conservative Party in the U.K.’s second parliamentary chamber, the House of Lords – and is being run by the think tank Policy Exchange. The competition attracted 425 entries.

“Sadly, the risk of a country leaving the eurozone has not gone away,” Lord Wolfson said at the announcement of the shortlist. “The ideas contained in these entries are an invaluable contribution to tackling this important issue.”

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Comments (67)

Jayms
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 2:47pm
I’m glad someone explained that picture to me.

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scrapadapolis
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 2:20pm
What do you people think,Our dollar is sought after currency throughout the world..even in canada they take US dollars and give you canada paper queen crap we cant use here.Just because the cashiers cant do the math or think its counterfit..

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- RamonPreston
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 3:18pm
  When I was in Canada many years ago, if something was marked $15 and you gave them a $20 bill, they gave you back a $5 American. Of course $15 Canadian is less than $15 American and they didn’t give you an exchange rate.
  
  Report this comment
- fritzflesh
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 4:58pm
  Once the US Dollar is no longer the reserve currency in the world – the artificial prominence of the currency will disappear and the freefall devaluation will begin.
  
  Report this comment
- leafsmission16
  Posted on April 4, 2012 at 7:22am
  Ramonpreston, Just wondering when you were in Canada? Many years ago (70′s maybe?) Canadian was on par with the USA and at times worth a bit more. Recently is has been on par or very close to it. I visited last year and got no exchange rate because of this. But if they gave you back USA currency then there would be no exchange rate since you got real money back. It would be like you bought something here for 15 and got 5 in change. The exchange only counts if they pay back in Canadian money.
  
  Report this comment
tharpdevenport
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 2:19pm
I have another idea, over the weekend all countries that didn’t want to be a part of the supra-nationalist state of E.U., exit quietly and then give the middle finger to it.

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jnobfan
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 2:16pm
It may go down that way – of course the Drachma would be worth much less than the one for one Euro you hand in. You would be better off hanging on to the Euros which would rise in value after Greece was kicked out and getting more Drachmas for your Euros later.
I

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- SgtB
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 5:07pm
  I agree. This sounds an awful lot like the Roosevelt solution of confiscating all privately held gold. No gov’t should have the authority to take from you any asset. Greece should go bankrupt and their gov’t should be dismantled and a new gov’t formed. This would be alot like a company going under and another company being created that takes its’ place in the market. The original company no longer exists and the debt is repaid as best as can be accomplished with the assets on hand and then lenders who over estimated the company’s ability to repay the loans learn their lesson and take a loss. The world moves on and the people of Greece learn that they cannot spend themselves to wealth or prosperity.
  
  The same goes for the US. We’ll never repay our national debt and quite frankly, anyone who has been around long enough to remember the 70′s is to blame.
  
  Report this comment
joe.r.piehole
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 2:16pm
When Blaze readers’ ask their children for their thoughts about the debt crisis in the USA, they get a different response. You see, Blaze readers homeschool their children, so they are disadvantaged from a very early age, learning fairy tales as fact alongside science. Therefore, they are rendered incapable for life, of ever thinking of an idea as complex as that of this Greek 6-year old.

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- Briggston
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 2:52pm
  That’s right I teach the fairy tail of evolution pointing out its strengths and flaws. Also pointing out it is a THEORY based on observation of the geologic record.I also teach my kids about the fairy tail that communism and socialism work while pointing out the truth that the only thing they produced in the last century was a mountain of corpses and oppression. I teach the truth that the right to be free is inherent by nature and that rights come from nature and natures god not man. I teach the truth that you don’t have the right to take someone else’s property based on difference of income for that is THEFT. I teach that you have nor right to be idle and demand others pay for you no matter how rich or poor you are. I teach the fact that if you want to live in a decent civil society you must be civil and decent yourself. I also teach that the means don’t justify the ends, that Utopia cannot be built on lies, deceit, corruption,graft,and force. I teach also the truth that if the individual has no rights the collective has no rights because to Marxist’s individual and collective are merely terms of convenience to gain power.
  
  Report this comment
- inblack
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 2:58pm
  @wants to be Joe
  
  The EU kids saw it on TV ““I saw it on television and said, ‘why don’t they do that?’””
  
  This is what America’s public school children would do. In fact the public schools show TV to children a great deal and myths like algore propaganda and the soros “the story of stuff”.
  
  Like EU kids the kids in public school are taught not to think, but to repeat what they see on TV, just like you did when u wrote your post.
  
  You do know that home schooled kids are much more intelligent and creative than you and your fellow pro-union public school kids, right?
  
  Luckily your brainwashing doesn’t take on all kids, they grow up to think for themselves and become conservatives or better yet libertarians.
  
  Report this comment
- bikerr
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 3:34pm
  @ joe.r.piehole—-Well now. You said the boy was a 6 yr old. It was in the headline and in the article that he was a 12 year old. Sure am glad you know so much.Please tell us more about what others think when Home Schooled.
  
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- bikerr
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 3:42pm
  Well, I should read the article before and during commenting It was mentioned the age to be 11,not 12. The boy was 10 when he did his entry. Doesn’t change Joe r pieholes’s commenting that the boy was 6. His home school comments reflect his lack of knowledge on a subject he knows nothing about.
  
  Report this comment
- Not Giving Up
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 3:59pm
  I was home educated. I am sure that I am a mere peasant in comparison to your raging intellect and scientific wherewithal. I would attempt to have a civilized conversation with you, but the simple words that I use probably bore a person such as yourself.
  
  I could even produce facts and figures (http://bit.ly/HRMO5v) that prove your ignorance but there would be no point in that because you obviously have the intellectual upper hand.
  
  If I were to be able to discuss such things with you I might explain how at 15 years old I had completed my education. I might also share with you how I took a 2 year academic break at the age of 15 so that I could work a full time job and earn money for College. Perhaps I could share with you that at the age of 17 I earned my GED and scored in the 95th percentile (after having done no schoolwork in the prior 2 years. I might even share with you that I worked and paid my way through two college degree’s without incurring any lasting debt.
  
  I am sure that all of this information would mean nothing to you, because you were privileged to earn a real diploma from a Public School system. You were probably one of those lucky kids with the divorced parents who tried to buy your love and affection while trying to mutually destroy each other. Those must have been good times.
  
  I would rather just say that I pity you. I feel pity for the lost relationship that you once had with my Lord and Savior. I pray that you may one day find your way back h
  
  Report this comment
- mjmaverick
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 4:08pm
  Funny then that home schoolers consistently test out higher than the children attending your government indoctrination stations……I mean public schools.
  
  Report this comment
schroeder123
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:55pm
The US had flooded the world with dollars…and will continue to do so. It will be the new world currency.
It is almost there. Just print a little more, then Tax the other countries, to be paid to the US in Dollars. Ha ..

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- AmazingGrace8
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 2:34pm
  Seems that way.
  
  Report this comment
- ChiefGeorge
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 3:15pm
  Maybe yea but China and Russia, India, Iran and a host of others are trading in their own currencies and also buying oil from Iran in their own currencies outside the Dollar for Oil scheme enacted in the 1970s by OPEC and Dr. Kissinger SecState at the time. The US and the world elite will need to move the scheme to the next level for a one world currency as predicted by most scholars. Lets start fresh they’ll say or it will be through a major War.
  
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Micmac
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:55pm
When the Euro was introduced it was predicted to fail by those introducing it, the technocrats now in control in southern Europe, thinking that the collapse would result in a 1 “nation” socialized Europe. Fiat money has an average life span of around 27 years before collapse. Every nation in the world is now on fiat money.

NoBama 2012

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abbygirl1994
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:53pm
Out of the mouth of babes!! Now will the idjits who created the mess listen?? I doubt it! They will continue being idjits!

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COFemale
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:36pm
And this is why a one world currency is bad. When nations share a currency and one fails, they will all begin to fail. It does not take a rocket scientist or an economist to know this. I am a computer geek and I knew moving to one currency WAS BAD.

Although, I think the kid was onto something and had his heart in the right place, his idea would not work. There is nothing to back the Drachma.

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DeVain
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:34pm
An 10 year old Dutch boy has a better grasp of economics than Obama, Bernanke, Geithner, and the entire Obama economics team.

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- turkey13
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 2:06pm
  hey! Leave Timmy alone – the tax problems was a glitch in Turbo Tax. I just can’t understand why he didn’t sue for defamination of his good name – worth millions.
  
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budzy1911
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:29pm
Here is the problem. The drachme they would recieve would be worth nothing because they are created out of thin air – taking the Euro out of the equation.

The drachme would hyper inflate within weeks and a collapes would occur.

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ShyMan
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:22pm
Good job skippy.

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hauschild
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:16pm
Kid’s appearance is frighteningly late ’70′s, early ’80′s. That’s a good sign.

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ThePostman
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:59pm
There aren’t enough Euros in Greece to pay off the debt. Not even close. THAT’S the problem, kid!

(Same exact problem in the USA, too.)

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- TomFerrari
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:09pm
  Maybe they could just print a few quadrillion…
  Just like in the U.S.
  
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- HTuttle
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:20pm
  Devalue the currency until the debt pays itself!
  
  MuuaaahhhHAHAHAHAH!!!
  
  And keep telling the stupid middle class we never raised their taxes! While their money value gets pizzed down the drain!
  
  Report this comment
- smokeysmoke
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 3:25pm
  ya not to mention, WHO IS GUNNA GIVE AWAY EUROS, TO TAKE cURRENCY THAT COULD BECOME WORTHLESSS if greeks do not change their spending habits…. they would be forcing you to exchange your currency into a more unstable paper currency…. hahahah
  
  Report this comment
ColoradoMaverick
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:55pm
Yes, even an 11 year old can clearly see that the Euro-socialist economic models are a complete failure. He’s too young to have been indoctrinated by the school system yet. It’s time they send him to re-education camp.

Hey Odumbo, maybe you should consider hiring him as your economic Czar, moron.

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killertofu
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:53pm
“ITSJUSTTIM” has a new name

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shogun459
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:29pm
It’s time to take your meds, and a nap.

We will be by shortly to ‘tuck’ you in.

nite

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TheSoundOf Truth
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:27pm
Thanks for telling us how to use a message board.

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Mapache
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:19pm
The government can just make as many pizzas as it needs, our Treasury does that.

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TheePolitinator
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:16pm
Boys a prodigy !! And smarter than 99% of our elected thieves

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blackyb
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:12pm
They could do this, but have they got 45 million pieces of paper and regulations like we do to check that would take longer to read than it would to pay off the debts? Maybe we need someone who has a brain here that would come up with something that would work based on our Constitutional laws without ursurping our nation here in the U.S. and creating enough paperwork to deforrest the country.

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AllAmericanGirl22
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:05pm
Nice job kid!

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Detroit paperboy
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:04pm
But I thought everyone could work for the government or be on welfare…… And we can print as much money as we need…………..

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- Blackhawk1
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 5:00pm
  That’s what Greece and Spain thought too.
  
  Report this comment
Beckofile
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:01pm
I always tell my friends that freedom, liberty and the Constitution are simple concepts that only get ruined by the wizards of smart. This boy seems to have pointed out that the wizards in Europe do the same and screw everything up with confusing practices in economics and politics.

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- TheePolitinator
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:17pm
  No it further proves that all countries have been overthrown by the same radical elite rich slime …. It’s not just here it’s global and we have a gov’t full of globalists..
  
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- shogun459
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:34pm
  Remember MAD Mutually Assured Destruction?
  It was replaced by MAED Mutually Assured Economic Destruction.
  Put in place by the world bank and many of the world’s governments it was designed “we were told” to prevent Large Wars by Making all the world so tied together that it would bankrupt the countries involved.
  
  Guess they didn’t count on Socialist Monitary Policy draging the world into the pit of hell.
  
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- vox_populi
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 1:37pm
  @SHOGUN459
  
  “They” didn’t tie the worlds economies together, capitalism did. The patchwork of trade agreements that connect the world weren’t made because they would prevent major wars, they were made because they were profitable.
  
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Itsjusttim
Posted on April 3, 2012 at 11:50am
Europe isn’t leaving financial crisis, and it will only get much worse from here.

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- kegbuna
  Posted on April 3, 2012 at 12:03pm
  gloom and doom
  
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