I
won't be coming home tonight
My
generation will put it right
We're
not just making promises
That
we know, we'll never keep.
The
last month showed one of the main competences of the Euro-zone in a situation
of distress: its ability to ignore the truth and turn a desperate situation in
a victory for all parties involved.
The first weeks of 2015 were firmly in the hands of
Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, from
a news point-of-view, due to the enduring war and the
cease-fire-that-wasn’t-one in Eastern Ukraine.
Lately, however, the new PM Alexis Tsipras of Greece
and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis have successfully highjacked the discussions
with their ‘runaway train’ attitude towards the Euro-zone politicians, when it
came to the austerity measures and economic reforms required by the EU, in
order for Greece to acquire a new slice of the emergency loan package.
The Troika? The new emergency loan package? Additional
austerity measures and economic reforms? Pushing the Greek economy further into
the swamp of poverty and despair, by squeezing the Greek middle and lower
classes dry?
“Just say ‘no’ and everything will be fine!” But of
course, it wasn’t.
The German political representatives and press cried
blue murder about so much boldness and the Dutch and Finns were more than happy
to join the choir of the aggrieved.
Even the South-European countries – of which one would
expect that they would be the natural allies of the Greeks – turned against the
bold attempt of PM Tsipras and Finance Minister Varoufakis to acquire an
opt-out from the bitter pills of austerity and pointless economic reforms. “We have been brainwashed by the leaders of
the Euro-zone and we have suffered for it. And now we want you to suffer too”.
So everything was lost, right?! To be frankly: not
really!.
While the usual suspects in the Anglo-Saxon press and
blogosphere predicted an imminent departure of Greece from the Euro-zone – the
so-called Grexit – for the umpteenth time, they were only to find out that they
had been wrong again for the umpteenth time in a row. A miracle was about to
occur in the Euro-zone; once again!
In the end, the Euro-zone and Greece deployed one of
those unparalleled pseudo-solutions, which make the old continent so notorious
in the eyes of many other countries: Greece received its emergency loans and,
in exchange, its new political leaders promised towards the Euro-zone to
maintain the austerity measures and economic reforms in a slightly different
form, while telling at the same time to their grassroots that the austerity and
reforms would be finished. Or so…
And everybody was happy again!.
Chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem was all smiles and
received the credits for rescuing the Euro-zone this time. Schäuble mumbled a
warning towards Varoufakis ‘that Greece should not play any games with Germany’
and then everybody cheered the new-found success.
The ‘emperor’ Greece had his beautiful new clothes,
which should last him for at least four months. And after that? Well, the
French say: ‘apres nous le déluge’ (i.e. the floods will come after us).
The Greek population was left behind dazed and confused
for a few days: will the austerity and economic reforms now be diminished or
not?! Yet, after a few days they found out that the Greek government had
arranged an empty shell for them and the protests started again.
Especially, when they found out that the French would
once again receive a few years more for deploying economic reforms at home and
for meeting the threshold of the Stability and Growth Pact.
And now, it is unclear what will happen in a few
months. Especially, the Euro-zone should consider that it has only bought time,
during the last few weeks. A steady solution with real stamina has not been
found and it will be impossible to find, when both camps will not give enough leeway
to let each other breathe.
In my opinion, the biggest problem is still caused by
the monomaniac fixation of the Euro-zone upon austerity and economic reforms.
This very fixation and the general unwillingness of the Euro-zone to look at
the demand-side as a driver for economic growth, has led to the slow suffocation
of the consumers in all Euro-zone countries, including Germany.
What good is economic growth based upon wage reduction
and exports, when it has led to such wage decreases, loss of purchase power and
such a massive rise in unemployment, that the vast majority of lower and middle
class consumers all over Europe have raised the white flag and hoard all their remaining
cash for a rainy day, instead of spending it partially.
And one of the strangest side-effects is, that the
countries which have suffered the most from this failed policy (i.e. Spain,
Italy and Portugal, as well as the Baltic states and other East-European
countries) want their ‘natural ally’ Greece to do ‘the full monty’ in its share of
suffering.
Sometimes it seems like a perverse expression of the
Stockholm Syndrome.
All other countries that did their share of bleeding
want Greece to bleed more and more; nobody asks anymore whether this bleeding
actually helps fighting the disease of financial instability and economic
heartship.
The bleeding itself has become the main purpose. In the
end, the disease might have been cured, but the patient will probably have
passed away, caused by economic suffocation.
And that is the political stalemate now. Nothing has
been solved. Greece is nowhere near a viable solution for either its massive debt
problem or its faltering economy. And neither are the other European countries
in distress. But everybody is happy now, with a fictional solution, for as long
as it lasts.
Did
you see the new clothes of the emperor?! Oh yeah, they look fabulous, don’t they?!
And so the “Fifty Shades of Greece” will soon appear in
another leg of the crisis that never ends in the Euro-zone…, because nobody
will look for a real solution, in order to not upset Mother Merkel.
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