There you are; you do all the right things and believe in a all the right values. You work hard, spend frugally, and save any spare cash you have. You are by nature entrepreneurial, and you build world class companies which are the envy of other nations. Your country, as a consequence of this, becomes the richest and most economically powerful nation in the whole of Europe.Then, like a thief in the night, one of your kind takes from you billions of your hard earned Euros, then hands them over to a more profligate nation, which flourishes on corruption; and where everybody it seems, works for the public sector and produces nothing at all.
Greece is still an agrarian society also dependent upon the vagaries of the tourist industry - oh yes, and commercial shipping. Economically speaking, this nation is about 20 years behind Northern Europe, but was allowed to cheat its way into the Euro Zone. Now the foreseeable has happened and Europe's strongest economy is being asked to come to its rescue
As a German citizen you are, not unnaturally, very angry with Angela Merkel your chancellor, who behaved so fraudulently, and never took the trouble to ask you if her actions commanded your support. Then you realise you are a member of the Euro Zone, which means decisions are taken by politicians and (especially) bureaucrats, without any kind of reference back to you, the people.
You then realise that if you had held on to your beloved Deutschmark, you would never have been placed in this mess by your politicians.
I am not an economist, but even I can appreciate the impracticalities of trying to introduce a single currency when there was such diverse economic divisions between European nations at the outset. For the southern European states were in no fit state to become members of the Euro Zone at its inception.
There should have been a two tier system introduced from the very beginning. But no, the thirst for political and economic union was too great. Our federalist leaders on the continent would tolerate no compromise - even one that would have made the likelihood of a single currency more workable.
But they wanted their federal union and they wanted it immediately. Euro sceptics were treated as traitors; and Britain in particular, was only spoken of with a thumb and index finger pressed together against federalist nostrils, for fear that the rather pungent aroma of pragmatism might be infused through the nose and into the brain.
Perhaps this is what divides us in the UK from the rest of Europe. Philosophically we have always been at odds with the continent. We have always been empiricists, unlike the romantic and idealist philosophies of the continent which lead to failure through revolution and a Utopian misunderstanding of human nature.
I genuinely feel sorry for the German people, for they have surpassed themselves in creating a powerful modern economy built upon hard work and inventiveness. When communism fell they poured billions into what was East Germany. They did so because a unified Germany was worth it; and any sacrfice made was in the German national interest. Now they have been told that they must once more provide. But not for a Germanic people oppressed by communism, but for a state that has no place in their affections (except as tourists) and with a morbidly obese public sector and with little prospect, as a consequence, of economic growth.
The irony is, is that Greece has little time for Germany because of the last war. Yet it is Germany who will, of all the European nations, make the most generous contribution to what? Greece's recovery? But recovery from what?
The requirements demanded from Greece in exchange for their deliverance will, as we have already seen, been heavily contested on the streets of Athens. In fact the knowledge that Germany is to be one of the main benefactors will add fuel to the fire of Greek resentment.
On top of which, these 'loans' will have to be repaid if the term 'loan' means anything at all (which in terms of the EU, means very little), through economic growth. But nevertheless we must ask out of, if nothing more than curiosity, how is Greece going to repay such a loan, if this is indeed what Germany's contribution amounts to. Where is Greece's economic growth to come from to make such a 'loan' a repayable.
Where, for instance, is Greece's manufacturing industry? For it is only through a naive hope of a fully functioning manufacturing sectore that Greece stands any hope of any kind of repayment of any part of Germany's wasteful Euro billions. Greece should never have been allowed into the first tier of the single currency. But she was, and poor old Germany is being left to pick up the finaciial pieces.
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