“Take Greece and give us Puerto Rico”, German FinMin Wolfgang Schauble reportedly joked, when talking with US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

The usually frosty Schauble’s jest was obviously linked to the recent default of Puerto Rico, a long-time US territory. Essentially, he was saying the Eurozone would “cover” Puerto Rico, with “Uncle Sam” taking Greece into the “dollar zone”.

Of course, Greece is not a … territory of Germany — that was tried, unsuccessfully, between 1941 and 1944, as well as in other European countries. The result, as many Germans realize, was not ….positive, either for their country or Europe.

Lew reportedly didn’t respond in a literal fashion.

Otherwise, he could have … mentioned the tens of billions of dollars paid by US taxpayers — plus the manpower — to protect West Germany during the Cold War, swords instead of ploughshares… or BMWs.

According to MarketWatch, the Puerto Rican government’s debt-to-GDP ratio is about 60 percent. But if you include the island’s unfunded pension liabilities and the debt of its public enterprises, that figure rises to about 150 percent, according to data provided by Goldman Sachs.

US federal officials have said that there will be no federal bailout for Puerto Rico.

Greece owes 315.5 billion euros in sovereign debt, which equals 177 percent of its 2014 GDP, according to Eurostat.