Syriza in shock over creditors' demands

[dflprincess]

39. I thought this was an interesting view on Greece's debt & one not mentioned much

(at least in the U.S. media).

http://www.startribune.com/european-union-germany-s-debt-obsession-is-hypocrisy/313036681/

Germany failed to learn from its own history--and Greece is paying the price

As the minutes tick down before Sunday’s deadline for Greece to reach an agreement with its creditors or else face bankruptcy, the Greeks and their supporters are accusing Germany, their main creditor, of hypocrisy. After all, in 1953, Germany’s creditors forgave half that nation’s debt so that the fledgling republic could recover from the war Germany had inflicted on those creditors, and thrive economically.

But Germany, which now adamantly declares that adherence to the rules of debt repayment must trump all other considerations, can rightly claim that in at least one crucial instance, it was anything but a hypocrite. As the Great Depression descended on Germany in 1930, its government — a coalition of centrist parties headed by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning — insisted on balancing its budget in order to convince its creditors (the nations to whom it was paying economically ruinous reparations as compensation for World War I) that it was a responsible debtor. In the hope that the creditor nations would respond by eventually canceling those reparations, Brüning slashed social spending and investment. He trod the path of fiscal rectitude even as unemployment reached record heights — the same policy, under the same depression conditions, to which today’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has demanded Greece adhere.

As the minutes tick down before Sunday’s deadline for Greece to reach an agreement with its creditors or else face bankruptcy, the Greeks and their supporters are accusing Germany, their main creditor, of hypocrisy. After all, in 1953, Germany’s creditors forgave half that nation’s debt so that the fledgling republic could recover from the war Germany had inflicted on those creditors, and thrive economically.

But Germany, which now adamantly declares that adherence to the rules of debt repayment must trump all other considerations, can rightly claim that in at least one crucial instance, it was anything but a hypocrite. As the Great Depression descended on Germany in 1930, its government — a coalition of centrist parties headed by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning — insisted on balancing its budget in order to convince its creditors (the nations to whom it was paying economically ruinous reparations as compensation for World War I) that it was a responsible debtor. In the hope that the creditor nations would respond by eventually canceling those reparations, Brüning slashed social spending and investment. He trod the path of fiscal rectitude even as unemployment reached record heights — the same policy, under the same depression conditions, to which today’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has demanded Greece adhere....

...“Does democracy trump debt? Of course not,” Jochen Bittner, the political editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, wrote in a New York Times op-ed Tuesday, blissfully unconscious, it would seem, that such sentiments helped speed the Weimar Republic to its doom. Yet such sentiments have shaped German policy toward Greece since the beginning of the euro crisis. Worse, they have shaped the policy not only of the governing Christian Democrats but also increasingly of the opposition Social Democrats...