If you read between the lines, it was only the debt forgiveness and refusal to allow war reparations, after WWII, which allowed Germany to come back from the brink and rebuild it's economy into what it has today.
Yet, if you think about it, what Germany is imposing on Greece today is little different from what France imposed on Germany after the end of WWI. And we see the same result. Rampant unemployment, economy in crisis, huge tracts of the country being sold off to richer nations who will repatriate the profits and become richer still, all at Greece's cost.
It is little wonder that the hard left, hard right and Neo Nazi parties are growing in the polls. It is unlikely that, in Greece, Golden Dawn would have grown to where it is today without this massive punishment for "fiscal crimes" in the past. Therefore I find it quite interesting that Germany is now being accused of failing to learn from it's own lessons.
That the press is turning on Germany in this way is also interesting. Also that our own Bank of England's Carney is telling Germany to ease up and become more "European". It's all a bit like a TV soap really, you couldn't make it up could you?
All the sins of the way they bodged together the Euro are now coming home to roost. It's clear that Germany wanted all the benefits of a common currency but none of the downsides of being the largest creditor in a single system. I must admit that Merkel must have been frantically looking to keep things patched up just one more time until we could, by some miracle, weather the mess and grow to better times.
But Germany has clearly forgotten the real message and the real impact of what they are doing. They've been eating their own dog food for so long they really do think it's steak. Germany should have remembered that growth and inflation is the only way to keep the gains you have made when everyone was borrowing money and spending what they can't afford. But Germany has been determined that everyone else will feel the pain and they will keep the gains. Forgetting that if the don't allow growth then inflation will stall and they have been doing everything they can to stop the Eurozone from growing by maniacally trying to ensure that the currency does not fall in value or that inflation does not destroy their gains.
I have consistently, from the very beginning of this crisis, been saying that the only way we will get out of it is to inflate so much that the debt is insignificant. Would it be such a bad thing? The rest of the growing world is running 8% - 15% inflation. Yes if we stand still we become richer in comparison, but if we can't pay our debts and our debts come to what we made in the first place, then what is it all for?
I expect Germany to become increasingly in the spotlight over the next few months as they become more and more determined to drive Greece out of the Eurozone. Something which will be as disastrous for Germany as the rest of the EU. Only the non Eurozone countries who trade heavily outside of the EU will weather that one without much impact and that is really only the UK.
Another interesting point I had not realised and nobody is talking about. There is a young Greek man living in the apartment above me here in Brussels. I asked him what he thought about the Government change and he told me a very strange thing.
He said "I'm worried about being able to work here, what if we lose the Euro and have to leave Schengen, how will I work here". Just what have they been telling the Greeks at home? Do the Greeks believe that a Euro exit will stop them travelling and working in the EU. If so they must have been desperate indeed to vote the way they did. When I told him that Britain is neither in the Euro nor Schengen and I can work without a visa I could see his scepticism. When I told him that if they even had to exit the EU and dropped to the EEA then he would still be able to work here like the Norwegians and the Swiss, he was even more sceptical.
It's incredible the lies that governments can get away with that the press and the people at large don't challenge or even research. The EU is open to all with an internet connection. You can see and read what they do and do not allow and can see and read what each country can do and not do within the EU. I would have thought it would have been important enough for the warring political parties to make this clear.
Meanwhile the Euro continues to fall. My pay cut is now £700 per month and climbing. I got a call from a Swiss agency about a Job in Switzerland with a Swiss bank yesterday. I told him to go ahead and put me forward. This situation in the EU and the Eurozone is only going to get worse in the short term. Switzerland is not seen as being impacted by it on the financial markets and now they have pulled their peg to the Euro, they are pretty stable whilst the Euro falls.
Cheap holidays in Spain this year.....
