The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has been at it for almost five hours now, not yet done with just the first of three panels on today’s Goldman Sachs hearings. Lloyd Blankfein is on the third panel, so, hopefully he brought an overnight bag. As for the other big news of the day, this item in Der Spiegel is quite critical of the fatherland for their role in the ongoing meltdown otherwise known as the country of Greece.
The Greeks are mainly responsible for their current predicament. But the German government has made the country’s situation worse with its lectures and reluctance to provide assistance. Chancellor Angela Merkel is mainly to blame for the fact that German taxpayers now have to suffer.
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On the one side there are the Greeks, who clearly still do not have their financial statistics under control and who produce one false report after another about the country’s budget deficit. On the other side are the Germans, who delight in hindering a rapid and unambiguous European response to the Greek crisis — in the process driving the cost of a solution through the roof.
At the same time, it is striking just how many representatives of the parties in Germany’s coalition government are giving advice to the Greeks, ranging from drastic pay cuts to an immediate declaration of insolvency right up to a swift withdrawal from the euro zone. These observers base their verbal radicalism on the noble economic argument that Greece needs to be made “fit for the financial markets” once again. Another, less sophisticated, argument goes that the vast majority of Germans are unwilling, after years of limiting their own consumption, to make financial sacrifices to help out Greece.
Both Greece’s calculation errors and the diva-like reluctance of the German government to help Athens are nothing more than an invitation to speculators to bet on the demise of the southern European country.
Can you imagine what things would be like in Europe right now if the British had decided to join the currency union back in the 1990s when they had the opportunity?
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Can’t have it both ways. Either help them out or kick them out. Aggressive and proactive action on one of these two may already be too late by this time. Spreads are going up fast for the rest of the PIIGS. I am really beginning to wonder if this thing will be allowed to turn into a firestorm. Crazy.
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Much of Greece debt is owed to German and French banks. Bailing Greece out only means the people of Germany & France repaying the the banks on Greece behalf. Greece has to drastically reform its society no matter what. So why not let Greece default and suspend it from the EU. Let Greece proceed to restructure outside of the EU, with the understanding that it may rejoin after condition is right. Save the Greece bailout money, and use it to ‘compensate’ the German and French banks directly.
If Germany gave back the Gold they stole from Greece during the War There would be no problems in Greece.
German Thieves!!