It came as a shock. Even in a country that must be used by now to shocking situations, the decision of the Greek government to immediately shut down the national broadcaster, “ERT”, produced the appropriate “shock and awe”, precisely as planned.

The move by the government of prime minister Antonis Samaras was modeled on Ronald Reagan’s radical reorganization of the US Air Traffic Control system (ATC) by closing it down, firing all controllers and rebuilding it from scr...