Greece Decides to Stay in Europe’s 12-Step Program
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Greece staying in the EU is like the drunk deciding to continue to attend AA meetings inebriated; is this the company Germany wishes to keep?
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On Sunday, Greek voters narrowly voted for pro-bailout forces. The election, however, while allowing the pro-austerity conservative and socialist parties enough votes to form a tenuous ruling coalition, doesn’t eliminate the huge problems that face Greece and the club it’s in, the European Union.
While this is clearly a reprieve from a day of fiscal reckoning, it is very hard to imagine that Greece will change its profligate ways that have created the mess that it is in (huge deficits caused by excess government spending). Thus, this vote can best be seen as postponing the inevitable: a Greek exit from the EU.
From the beginning, Greece’s membership in the EU has been problematic. Early on, the Greek government gave the EU false and misleading financial information that masked the dire straits that the country was in. Then, as things went down hill, calls for “austerity” by politicians both within and outside Greece, which is anything but such given the rich benefits that Greek government workers receive and the fact that there is an enormous amount of government workers relative to the population, were rebuffed by riots by the Greek communitarian.
Can the Greeks go on the wagon from their spending benders?
But the Greeks were more than happy to take loans (“bailouts”) from the Germans and other EU countries. Of course, the loan requirements requested reasonable conditions that included, amongst other things, that the Greek government spend somewhere within the neighborhood of what it receives in revenues. This left many Greeks unhinged and out on the streets hysterically protesting an alleged conquest by those benevolent enough (the more honest and accurate word is “foolish”) to extend such credit to the heirs of Zeus. Given such history, it is hard to believe that there will be any strong-willed politicians who will lead the Greek masses to the path of fiscal responsibility given that they helped drive the country into such ditch.
Which leads to the inevitable outcome: a Greek withdrawal from the EU because of its unwillingness to be a responsible member.
The Germans (and others) have learned the hard lesson of taking a member into their club who is not prepared to act by the rules of such club. In the euphoric drive to consolidate Europe and show trans-Atlantic upstart America that Old Europe had some punch left to it, they cobbled together a highly disparate group of countries that, while on the same continent, really had only that commonality to show. All countries are not created, nor are, equal. Just look at the United States and the varied group of states within its federation. Thus, Germany and its other more responsible brethren need to start thinking about splitting with Greece (and likely Italy, Spain and Portugal), even if family breakups are painful. It may initially hurt but prolonging a bad situation is worse.
And finally, a word for those sages in the United Kingdom who decided not to join the EU common currency. Boy, they were right! Anyone who can claim to have been part of such decision will, at least for now, have a larger jubilee than Queen Elizabtheth’s 60th.
In the end, if Greece and similar EU members are unwilling to follow the fiscal “12-step program” that the EU rightfully imposes, they might as well stop feigning budgetary sobriety and go on their own, wherever their benders take them. The sooner the non-dues-paying members are booted out, the better the club and the world will be as a whole.
-I.M. Windee
