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For the Finance Minister of Germany, Crisis Is a "Necessity"
By Victor Grossman
Source: Mr Zine
Friday, April 05, 2013
Angela Merkel's face usually displays a rather plain, friendly, almost benign expression, matching her simple, benign words. But in rare unguarded moments, some claim, they glimpse a very hard visage, which is matched, equally rarely, by hardly benign words, like her annoyed statement that Cyprus was "exhausting the patience of its euro partners." Yes, Angela can get annoyed and lose patience, above all with those irresponsible lands and leaders to the south so reluctant to manfully bear the required share of their burdens.
Such burdens include cutting wages and government salaries, amputating pension rights, letting prices on staples rise, watching joblessness soar while cutting the means of helping those afflicted, and privatizing key elements of the economy, selling them off to the best bidders -- or the most favored ones. Must hospital and child care be reduced, schools starved out? Such prices must be paid if economies are to be rescued "within the framework of the euro." That is Austerity, Merkel's magic codeword for economic revival.
But to ever more of those at the receiving end, such rescues and such a revival are worse than the perils or ailments they aim at. That is why furious people from Lisbon in Europe's far west to Nicosia in easternmost Cyprus, including Rome, Athens, even some in northern Dublin, are painting nasty comments about Germany on posters or even scribbling ugly Hitler mustaches over Angela's so friendly, smiling face.
A Cypriot banking official recalls a meeting in Brussels in 2011 when Merkel, French President Sarkozy, International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde und right-wing European Union leaders Juncker and Barroso made decisions on Greece and even more helpless Cyprus which determined developments up to the present. As the International Herald Tribune put it, "in the three years since Europe's rolling debt crisis first exploded in Greece, governments and citizens in the hardest-hit countries have fumed that decisions taken in Brussels paid little heed to their interests and were dictated instead by the economic concerns and election cycles of Germany (3.17.13, p. 19)." Speaking of such treatment, above all by Germany, one Cypriot expert grumbled: "It was very brutal -- like warfare."
Such burdens include cutting wages and government salaries, amputating pension rights, letting prices on staples rise, watching joblessness soar while cutting the means of helping those afflicted, and privatizing key elements of the economy, selling them off to the best bidders -- or the most favored ones. Must hospital and child care be reduced, schools starved out? Such prices must be paid if economies are to be rescued "within the framework of the euro." That is Austerity, Merkel's magic codeword for economic revival.
But to ever more of those at the receiving end, such rescues and such a revival are worse than the perils or ailments they aim at. That is why furious people from Lisbon in Europe's far west to Nicosia in easternmost Cyprus, including Rome, Athens, even some in northern Dublin, are painting nasty comments about Germany on posters or even scribbling ugly Hitler mustaches over Angela's so friendly, smiling face.
A Cypriot banking official recalls a meeting in Brussels in 2011 when Merkel, French President Sarkozy, International Monetary Fund boss Christine Lagarde und right-wing European Union leaders Juncker and Barroso made decisions on Greece and even more helpless Cyprus which determined developments up to the present. As the International Herald Tribune put it, "in the three years since Europe's rolling debt crisis first exploded in Greece, governments and citizens in the hardest-hit countries have fumed that decisions taken in Brussels paid little heed to their interests and were dictated instead by the economic concerns and election cycles of Germany (3.17.13, p. 19)." Speaking of such treatment, above all by Germany, one Cypriot expert grumbled: "It was very brutal -- like warfare."
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/for-the-finance-minister-of-germany-crisis-is-a-necessity-by-victor-grossman
