<story><title>Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece</title><url>http://syriza.net.gr/index.php/en/pressroom/253-open-letter-to-the-german-readers-that-which-you-were-never-told-about-greece</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>Well, no. The fundamental problem is that Germany has been treating the rest of the EU as an expedient export market while refusing to allow equivalent imports, and at the same time aggressively insisting that countries in the EU should somehow magically not need debt... to continue buying from Germany.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s also the minor point that this is yet another excuse to indulge the usual neoliberal hatred of social spending and everything else that improves the condition of ordinary people who work for a living.&lt;p&gt;Germany has a long post-war history of renegotiating or ignoring debt. So crashing the Greek economy by enforcing murderous austerity - &lt;i&gt;literally&lt;/i&gt; murderous in its effects, and not hyperbole - is a new peak in self-serving hypocrisy.</text></item><item><author>vijayboyapati</author><text>This one sentence sums up what I think is the fundamental problem: &amp;quot;An insolvency problem was thus dealt with as if it were a case of illiquidity.&amp;quot; That is, the problem isn&amp;#x27;t some ephemeral panic where people are temporarily unwilling to lend. The problem is there are massive capital losses that have yet to be acknowledged. The problem is that Euro politicians believe that by continuing to bankroll Greece they will stem a wider panic. But as John Mills observed in a speech given to the Manchester Statistical Society in 1867, “panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its
betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works”&lt;p&gt;The losses must be acknowledged. The only question is by whom? By the people who made the loans? Or will the taxpayers of Europe be called upon, as the taxpayers of America were, to eat the losses?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jahewson</author><text>Your statement about Germnay refusing to allow imports is manifestly false. The EU is a free trade area and its member states are not permitted to engage in such activities. The EU has its own courts to enforce such rules.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s certainly true that Germany is a net exporter: this is because of their ability and competitiveness in engineering and technology, combined with the fact that Germans are not big consumers and prefer to save their money. It would be good for Europe as a whole if Germans spent more money on imports - but the idea that they are deliberately blocking imports is bogus.&lt;p&gt;Europe doesn&amp;#x27;t really have neoliberals, so I&amp;#x27;m not sure what your point is there. If anything, Europe leans to the left.&lt;p&gt;If you want to find a country with a long history of ignoring  debt, then look no further than Greece, which has defaulted over 20 times. It is a country in deep need of structural reforms in order to have a viable economy. Yet the reforms haven&amp;#x27;t happened, due to corruption, cronyism and general foot-dragging. This is the real problem and debt-reduction isn&amp;#x27;t going to solve it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Open letter to German readers: What you were never told about Greece</title><url>http://syriza.net.gr/index.php/en/pressroom/253-open-letter-to-the-german-readers-that-which-you-were-never-told-about-greece</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>Well, no. The fundamental problem is that Germany has been treating the rest of the EU as an expedient export market while refusing to allow equivalent imports, and at the same time aggressively insisting that countries in the EU should somehow magically not need debt... to continue buying from Germany.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s also the minor point that this is yet another excuse to indulge the usual neoliberal hatred of social spending and everything else that improves the condition of ordinary people who work for a living.&lt;p&gt;Germany has a long post-war history of renegotiating or ignoring debt. So crashing the Greek economy by enforcing murderous austerity - &lt;i&gt;literally&lt;/i&gt; murderous in its effects, and not hyperbole - is a new peak in self-serving hypocrisy.</text></item><item><author>vijayboyapati</author><text>This one sentence sums up what I think is the fundamental problem: &amp;quot;An insolvency problem was thus dealt with as if it were a case of illiquidity.&amp;quot; That is, the problem isn&amp;#x27;t some ephemeral panic where people are temporarily unwilling to lend. The problem is there are massive capital losses that have yet to be acknowledged. The problem is that Euro politicians believe that by continuing to bankroll Greece they will stem a wider panic. But as John Mills observed in a speech given to the Manchester Statistical Society in 1867, “panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its
betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works”&lt;p&gt;The losses must be acknowledged. The only question is by whom? By the people who made the loans? Or will the taxpayers of Europe be called upon, as the taxpayers of America were, to eat the losses?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>&amp;gt; while refusing to allow equivalent imports&lt;p&gt;That very much is in citation needed territory, please give at least one example of how Germany is refusing intra-European imports in any category. Free trade is one of the cornerstones of the EU, Germany imposing a tariff or blockading goods produced elsewhere in Europe would make some pretty fat headlines.</text></comment>