The Berlin Bulldozer and the Sack of Athens

[Javaman]

https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/13/the-berlin-bulldozer-and-the-sack-of-athens-greece-eurozone/

hen finalizing my book European Spring last year, I hesitated before describing the Eurozone as a “glorified debtors’ prison.” After this weekend’s brutal, vindictive, and short-sighted exercise of German power against Greece, backed up by the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank’s (ECB) illegal threat to pull the plug on the entire Greek banking system, I take it back. There is nothing glorious about the Eurozone: it is a monstrous, undemocratic creditors’ racket.

Greece’s submission to the conditions that Germany demanded, merely to start negotiations about further funding to refinance its unsustainable debts, may stave off the prospect of imminent bank collapse and Greece’s exit from the Eurozone. But far from solving the Greek problem, doubling down on the creditors’ disastrous strategy of the past five years will only further depress the economy, increase the unbearable debt burden, and trample on democracy. Even Deutsche Bank, one of the German banks bailed out by European taxpayers’ forced loans to the Greek government in 2010, says Greece is now tantamount to a vassal state.

But this is much bigger than Greece. It is clearer than ever that Europe’s dysfunctional monetary union has a German problem, too. As creditor-in-chief in a monetary union bereft of common political institutions, Germany is proving to be a calamitous hegemon. Paris may have tempered Berlin’s petulant threat to force Greece out of the euro, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel undoubtedly calls the shots. The deal that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras capitulated to mirrored German demands, not the proposals he drafted with French help last week. By pointing out the futility of resistance if Greece wished to remain in the euro, Paris has, in a sense, acted as Berlin’s agent in securing Athens’ acquiescence.

Yes, small countries such as Slovakia and Finland agreed with Germany. But their voices are hardly decisive. From Berlin’s perspective, they are the useful idiots who provide cover for its narrow interests. Remember that, through their loans to Greece, Finns and Slovaks bailed out German banks, not Finnish and Slovak ones. It is naïve to think that Berlin wouldn’t bulldoze them if they stood in its way.


much more at link...