A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
There’s no better language for issuing commands than German. It’s structured to give orders. And Germany is culturally disposed to follow those orders. So it’s no surprise that Germany’s prime minister, Angela Merkel, is demanding that Greece pay in full an unpayable debt that greedy and reckless lenders in Germany helped create. Pigheaded piety suffuses the German character, and is a major reason why that nation waged two criminal and losing wars in the last century.
Merkel’s fortunate that Melina Mercouri is not still alive. However much Merkel hates working with Greece’s current prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, a man who refuses to click his heels and salute Merkel, she would have hated even more working with Mercouri, who never took guff from authoritarians.
Merkel still resists writing off some of Greece’s debt, although most economists agree that’s necessary. But today the New York Times reports that France has accepted that a write-down is necessary, so proud and pigheaded Germany may become politically isolated.
Whether or not Greece gets a bailout and write-down and continues to be a Euro state, I think this situation is a reminder that the European Union and the Euro were bad ideas from the beginning and ought to be abandoned. There cannot be a successful common currency for a babel of languages, cultures, and political and economic systems. If European nations were not so afraid of each other, they never would have tried such a foolish idea.
Greece’s happy-go-lucky character helped bring about its economic downfall, but Germany’s greed and bullying provided the final push over the fiscal cliff. Europe’s biggest economic and political problem is not Greece. It’s Deutschland.