Greece
and Germany don’t belong on the same continent, let alone in the same currency
union.
By Donald Kaul
I’d
like to apologize to the people of Greece.
I’ve
been pretty hard on them over the years. I’ve made fun of their freewheeling
spendthrift habits, their unwillingness to pay their taxes, and their early
retirement ethos.
When
they were given membership in the Euro zone, I made fun of that too, or at
least of the rest of Europe’s willingness to cast its lot with the Greeks.
“That’s like going mountain climbing with your safety rope tied to the town
drunk,” I said.
Nor
did I let up when the Greek economy went blooey and was forced to go, worry beads
in hand, to Europe’s banks and ask for a bailout. “You might as well contribute
to Bernie Madoff’s Defense Fund,” I said.
Shame
on me.
Not that what I said was factually wrong, but it was insensitive to the people who invented democracy and whom we’ve treated shabbily.
Because,
while the Greeks got their bailout five years ago, it was attached to draconian
conditions that made it virtually impossible for the country to pay off its
debts — ever.
Europe,
led by Germany, demanded that Greece cut its pensions. It did. Then it ordered
the Greek government to raise taxes. It did. It told Greece to brutally cut
government employment as a way of returning to prosperity.
The
Greek government did all of that for four grinding years and prosperity never
came calling. It had lost Greece’s telephone number.
Unemployment spiked to 25 percent and youth unemployment
was twice that.
Finally
the Greek people got fed up. They threw out the conservative government that
was meekly acceding to austerity demands in favor of leftist leaders who
refused to let other European powers — particularly Germany — push them around
anymore.
We’re
mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore, Prime Minister Alexis
Tsipras said, in effect. We want our loans restructured. We want freedom to
breathe.
No
dice, replied the other Europeans. We have rules — you have to abide by them.
The
Greeks said no, the rest of Europe said yes. The Greeks said no, the rest of
Europe said yes. It went on that way for weeks with the Greece situation
becoming more desperate by the day.
Finally,
the parties reached a preliminary agreement that promises to be even more
debilitating to Greece than the original plan.
We
should have seen it coming decades ago. Greece and Germany don’t belong on the
same continent, let alone in the same currency union.
These
people don’t understand each other and never will.
European
powers like Germany are ticked off at Greece for its irresponsibility. But
the Greeks have been trying lately. They’ve donned the hair shirt of austerity
and what has it got them? Economic collapse.
Nor
does it look as though it’s going to improve any time soon, certainly not under
the proposed agreement.
What
European leaders don’t understand — and neither does our Republican Party for
that matter — is that in hard times, you can’t cut your way to prosperity. Cut
fat and waste, certainly. Reform the tax structure by all means. But when times
are hard you need government to provide economic stimulus to grow your way to
prosperity.
And
what would be wrong in requiring the banks that made bad loans to share in the
pain of repaying them?
Not
the capitalist way, I guess.
OtherWords
columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. OtherWords.org.