QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s important to remember that the EU and Euro projects were projects by elites with little popular support. Obviously popular objection wasn’t so strong as to prevent it, but it really was a project of the People Who Run The World, and not some idea cooked up one day by Greek farmers, or whoever.
The point is that whatever problems are happening right now exist because the people in charge fucked it all up. And for that the little people, including Greek farmers, must be punished.”
Atrios is, of course, absolutely correct. And it really is worth remembering that neither the European Communities {the precursor to the EU}, the Euro nor the EU itself had any real measure of large scale popular support when they were being proposed and foisted off on the people of Europe via a series of ever expanding incremental treaties and agreements entered in to by various unelected commissions starting in the late 50s and running through until about 1973.
The political and banking elites simply said, “Trust us, we know what’s good for you.”
And they’re still saying that — except now they’re also saying, “We’re going to bail out the central banks that were culpable in fucking this whole thing up but in order to do that we need to use our austerity programs in order to screw over the little guys who never really wanted to be part of this totally fucked in the head system that we came up with and then completely and utterly mismanaged.”
June 8th, 2012 at 7:51 am
I think 2007-2017 is going to become known in history as the “Nightmare” decade.
June 8th, 2012 at 9:40 am
I wonder how much and how many American Banks were involved in all this. It seems to have Wall Street written all over it… I also wonder who they would turn to if the countries found evidence and confiscated their assets
June 8th, 2012 at 9:42 am
It, sadly, gives me a greater appreciation for the Holy Roman Empire, previously the not-such-a-great-idea of an United Europe.
June 8th, 2012 at 10:32 am
As a Greek, I can assure we are living our worst nightmare, I take full responsibilities for our corrupt government and mismanaged finance.. but when there is a divorce both parties are at fault.
Our socialist government while holding 42% of the votes decided to starve to death the country…the union government 2 years later barely holding 35% of the general votes (as evidenced by the latest elections) decided not to fight a single battle and to accept the diktat of Berlin.
BTW it was known from the beginning that the finance of Greece was dodged, but nevertheless they acceptd he country in the Euro… You see France and Germany could not let a country that left them with huge commercial surpluses to remain outside of their festivities.
Once again, I take full responsilbilities and I am fully knowedgeable of the shortcomes of the Greek government, after all it is the Balkan…isn’t it?
June 8th, 2012 at 4:15 pm
Very well said, Scott.
June 8th, 2012 at 5:02 pm
I, as a Brit, am very happy that we resisted joining The Single Currency.
Personally I would disagree about the Euro being foisted on the population, most countries held a refarendum on the issue.
I would also point out the political stability a united Europe has placed on the continent. It has been almost 70 years since Germany invaded anyone. Which is nice.
As Christian said in the previous comment, Greece is a unusual circumstance. The government there overspent in the extreme and the population are highly resistent to paying taxes.
As for Troy’s comment above, he is mostly correct. The benking crisis is a global one (except the Islamic banks due to religious resions concerning loans) All global banks are guilty of ridiculous risk taking. Certainly the first domino to to fall was the American banking system. But as the saying goes “When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold”.
June 8th, 2012 at 5:05 pm
I just reread my comment. Please accept my apologies for my poor spelling.
Excuse: I’m just back from an awesome work night out, so I’m slightly drunk.
June 8th, 2012 at 8:43 pm
you shouldn´t forget that the euro is also a result of the 4+2 agreement which lead to germany´s reunification after the berlin wall came down. the uk and france insisted on replacing the d-mark with a single european currency to integrate germany even deeper in the european union. they were afraid of germany becoming too big and strong again.
and now britain is in a big crisis even though they don´t have the euro.
btw it was goldmann sachs who did the accounting for greece and they lied about greece’s finances all the way with knowledge of the greek government to meet the criteria for entering the euro-zone.
June 9th, 2012 at 12:42 am
Atrios is not correct. The EU has always enjoyed a strong level of support among most of its citizens. Some countries are more Eurosceptic than others (e.g. UK, Denmark), but generally the people are in favour. The same was true of the Euro – and many countries held referendums before they joined. There is something in what Atrios said, in that the Euro project was mostly driven from above, but the mistake was in making the Eurozone to big too quickly. Had it started with France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria and Finland, there would have no problem. But Italy had to be included (for political reasons) with its rather dodgy economy, and if Italy is let in, the it’s harder to say no to Greece, Portugal, etc.
June 12th, 2012 at 1:36 am
thomak isn’t quite correct. The uk did not insist that the d-mark was replaced with the euro, the uk has always been against further unification of any kind, but is repeatedly outvoted by the others. A disasterous and aborted-amid-crisis period of shadowing the d-mark in the 90s proved to us that the euro was esentially a dodgy idea.
I don’t think that there’s ever been a nefarious plan to hobble germany. Despite our scepticism, however the disaster is now on our doorstep once again…sound familiar?
June 13th, 2012 at 7:00 am
The State of Greece has been in some sort of a bankruptcy or default for a large part of its existence, long before the euro. Sure, the current situation is very bad and made worse by the common currency, but the underlying problem in Greece seems to be the political culture and corruption.
The trouble with the euro is that it’s impossible to have a stable common currency without a common economic and financial policy. The zone is too large and includes economies that are just too different by nature. Obviously Greece shouldn’t have been accepted in, and arguably Finland should have kept out as the other Nordic countries did, and possibly formed a closer monetary union with them instead (Norway excepted, since they concentrate on counting their oil revenues).