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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEurope Wants to Punish Greece With Exit
In my more than 30 years writing about politics and economics, I have never before witnessed such an episode of sustained, self-righteous, ruinous and dissembling incompetence -- and I'm not talking about Alexis Tsipras and Syriza. As the damage mounts, the effort to rewrite the history of the European Union's abject failure over Greece is already underway. Pending a fuller postmortem, a little clarity on the immediate issues is in order.
On Monday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said at a news conference that he'd been betrayed by the Greek government.
The creditor institutions, he said, had shown flexibility and sought compromise. Their most recent offer involved no wage cuts, he emphasized, and no pension cuts; it was a package that created "more social fairness." Tsipras had misled Greeks about what the creditors were asking. The talks were getting somewhere. Agreement on this package could have been reached "easily" if Tsipras hadn't collapsed the process early Saturday by calling a referendum.
What an outrageous passel of distortion. Since these talks began five months ago, both sides have budged, but Tsipras has given vastly more ground than the creditors. In particular, he was ready to accede to more fiscal austerity -- a huge climbdown on his part. True, the last offer requires a slightly milder profile of primary budget surpluses than the creditors initially demanded; nonetheless, it still calls for severely (and irrationally) tight fiscal policy.
In contrast, the creditors have refused to climb down on the question of including debt relief in the current talks, absurdly insisting that this is an issue for later. On Tuesday, Tsipras made his most desperate attempt yet to bring the issue forward.
Far from expressing any desire to compromise, dominant voices among the creditors -- notably German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who often seemed to be calling the shots -- have maintained throughout that there is nothing to discuss. The program already in place had to be completed, and that was that.
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Nitram
(22,801 posts)No one in the EU, including Germany, will benefit if Greece leaves. Others will follow, the economy will crash and the Euro will be history.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Whether the vote is yes or no, there will be no winners in this game - it has already been lost.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)with some of them more prosperous than others (like the U.S. with states like Mississippi, Alabama etc) that have to be taken care of, then yes, Greece will leave the EU with Spain, Portugal and perhaps even Italy not far behind.
Catastrophe.
snooper2
(30,151 posts)LOL
DFW
(54,380 posts)There is a huge difference in Greece exiting the Euro and exiting the EU. The Euro is a monetary union Greece lied its ass off to get into (thank you, Goldman Sachs, for cooking their books). Their government had no business pulling that stunt, and their people were given no chance to be let in on the scam done in their name.
Tsipras and Varoufakis have been dancing like moving targets ever since this blew up, and everything, according to them, is the fault of the big bad Germans, including that Greece has let domestic tax collection have a priority on a level with a start-up sand production company in the Sahara. They have had years to straighten up, and they passed, taking the attitude of we're a country, we're too big to fail (sound familiar?). But this not like asking Texas to institute a state income tax to repair Dallas highway bridges. This like asking Texas to institute a state income tax to repair highway bridges in Costa Rica. The rest of Europe, not exactly taxed at timid levels, has had enough. German taxpayers are on the point of revolt, and dangerous, odious far-right movements are licking their chops at the prospect of the Greeks providing them with voting blocs big enough to give them parliamentary representation of coalition-swinging size.
Greece won't leave the EU unless it invites Putin to base his warships at its ports. If it leaves the Euro, well, that is another matter, and doesn't have to mean it stops receiving EU money to help prop up its infrastructure. Portugal got over half its highways built with EU money from outside Portugal, and that was before there even was a euro. The Greeks wouldn't leave the EU on their own (Syriza taking them there is a separate question). The euro is another story, and should be treated as such.
