Tuesday, April 07, 2015

Greece fire

The technocrats aren't happy with the Greek government, the invaluable Walter Russell Mead says:
Brussels insiders say that EU patience with the Greek circus is running out; there are reports that the EU will start to pressure Prime Minister Tsipras to dump the left wing of his party and build a new coalition that will embrace a more conventional approach to Greek’s debt issues.
Apparently flinging poo at the burghers isn't what they had in mind. Mead gets it:
EU impatience with the Greek clown show is understandable. Condescending, arrogant, clueless, incompetent, the Greek government has made itself a global laughingstock as it stumbles from mishap to mishap, spewing bile and seeking handouts. Meanwhile, Greece’s debt clock is ticking, and the longer the clown show continues the more likely it is that a crisis will erupt, and turn the farce into a tragedy.
The German bankers and the Belgian technocrats like things orderly and that's not how the modern Greeks roll. And such behavior is at the root of the problem.
One doesn’t know where or how this will end. European monetary union has turned into something Greeks have no trouble recognizing: a bed of Procrustes. Brussels is becoming a machine for forcing round pegs into square holes. This cannot go on forever; something will have to give. In the short term, the odds of a Grexit, a Greek exit (either formal or informal) from the eurozone are going up as Brussels and Athens grow weary of one another. In the longer term, the costs to the European project, one of the most hopeful and important undertakings in the history of the human race, continue to grow.
And therein lies the problem -- the European project is itself a matter of forcing round pegs into square holes. It's always been problematic to assume that a Spaniard will see things the same way that a German does, or that a Frenchman will agree with anyone. There are centuries of assumptions and world views associated with every country in Europe and in many cases the only thing that they share is geography. We'll continue to keep an eye on this one.

2 comments:

3john2 said...

The Greek government is flinging poo, but most of their ammunition comes from the shit sandwich the EU has given them. (Of course, the Greeks bellied up to the bar and ordered the sandwich in the first place like it was Happy Hour at the Short-Sell Saloon.)

And the talk about "avoiding a crisis" is adorable. There already is a crisis. Does it really take a Sixth Sense to see dead economies?

Bike Bubba said...

I remember being told about the upcoming EU and "Eurodollar" while a student in Germany (summer program, definitely NOT U. Heidelberg!) back in 1989 and wondering why on earth the Germans would want the Italians having anything to do with their currency. I'd just bought a pizza for 5000 lira, or about $3.50 at the time, so I understood very clearly that certain nations had about the same financial sense that had doomed Weimar.

Been a nice run for the PIIGS as they plundered the rest of Europe to postpone reality, I guess, but honestly....