NP - Europe's Empress Stays Silent

[David Morris]

http://www.politico.eu/article/grexit-greece-merkel-empress-stays-silent-germany-debt-default/

When Greece first called on Europe to save it from collapse in 2010, Merkel
faced a stark choice: follow the advice of the world’s leading economists
and offer Athens a path to debt relief in exchange for reform or heed the
demands of her center-right coalition by extending loans at punitive
interest rates with no debt forgiveness.

Europe’s other power centers — Paris, the European Commission and the
European Central Bank — would have endorsed the softer approach.

But German public opinion was solidly opposed. Germans feared letting
Greece off the hook would create a dangerous precedent, leaving Germany to
bail out Europe’s other Schuldensünder, or debt miscreants.

Merkel, with a PhD in physics and a reputation for cool calculation, chose
politics over economic reason. That strategy now lays in shambles.

“When it comes to the eurocrisis, one can’t ignore that her government’s
crisis policy has not worked,” Henrik Müller, professor at the University
of Dortmund wrote in a Sunday column for Spiegel Online. “What the
chancellor might see as the path of least resistance has created an
untenable situation in the long-term.”
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20150629/54885c0b/attachment.html>