Lad falde hvad ikke kan stå!
På det sidste er der blevet så underligt stille om en ny folkeafstemning om tilslutning til øv-roen. Det hed sig ellers, at vi snart skulle have en omkamp, idet de tidligere afstemninger faldt forkert ud og altså var ugyldige. Man ventede blot på at Waffen-SF også på dette punkt faldt til patten, og da dette nu blot er et spørgsmål om at vifte Villy Vendekåbe om næsen med en taburet, skulle den bagatel vel være i orden? – Men kan forsinkelsen monstro hænge sammen med tilstande så langt borte som Grækenland? – Er de ellers så lalleglade, EU-liderlige politikere ved at få kolde fødder?
Her på bloggen gør vi os ikke til af at have forstand på økonomi – i modsætning til alle ‘finanseksperterne’, som heller ikke har det. Var det ikke dem, som for et års tid siden jublede, at her gik det så godt, så godt at vi snart kunne købe hele verden? – Men så meget ved vi dog, at hvis man vil konstruere et eurabisk imperium med forlæg i Sovjetunionen og Det Tredie Rige – dog med den forskel at ville udskifte den oprindelige befolkning med et stenalderfolk tillige – så går det galt. Helt, helt galt. Kan det virkelig tænkes, at politikerne kan lugte en ny, fejlslagen folkeafstemning? – Er de pludselig blevet grebet af pessimisme?
Det er vi ikke. Det eurabiske projekt har været en dødssejller fra første færd og at grækerne nu hiver bundproppen ud skal tjene dem til ære. Lad plimsolleren gå til bunds og redde sig, hvo der kan. Det kan kun gå for langsomt.
Paul Belien i The Brussels Journal: “The Euro currency is economically flawed because it is politically flawed, and it politically flawed because, as the Dutch professor Jaap Koelewijn pointed out, it is culturally flawed. The euro is doomed to fall because of insuperable cultural differences.
Ten years ago, the common currency was introduced for political reasons. The aim was to foster the political unification of the EU member states by removing economic barriers, such as different currencies, that existed between these states. This plan might have worked if the European states, especially those from the (predominantly Protestant) north and the (predominantly Catholic) south (plus orthodox Greece) had shared the same culture.
In the southern countries, governments are characterized by a higher degree of corruption, which is generally accepted and, up to a point, even considered benevolent and beneficial, because it is compensated by the government’s inefficiency and sloppiness in collecting taxes. The southern citizens do not expect much from the state, but the state does not expect much from them either. Southerners do not trust the government, but the political system works and is not even perceived to be oppressive because the state in return adopts a laissez faire attitude: it does not worry about being cheated by the citizens. Outwitting the taxman is generally accepted behavior and may even make a man so popular that he can rise to the political top. This is what happened with Silvio Berlusconi in Italy.
Before the euro was introduced, the states in Southern Europe made up for their losses in taxes by occasionally devaluating the currency as a method of indirect tax collection. The introduction of the euro, however, has made the latter impossible, and has put pressure on the governments in the south to improve their efficiency in collecting taxes. As the latter would make these governments hugely unpopular – by breaking the existing modus vivendi, a workable system which so far had not been perceived to be politically oppressive, they would in fact become oppressive – they preferred to accumulate huge budget deficits. When the euro was introduced, the EU authorities imposed upon the eurozone countries the obligation to keep their budget deficit below 3% of GDP and their government debt below 60% of GDP. To hide their real performance from the EU authorities, the southern governments cheated and fixed the figures in the same way that their own citizens had always been allowed to cheat.
The EU is now forcing the Greek government to clamp down on its citizens in a fashion which is incompatible with the political culture in Greece. If Greece fails to do so, the Germans will be forced to bail them out. The latter, however, is perceived by German taxpayers, who rebel against being forced to pay for the “cheating Greeks,” as unacceptable political oppression by the EU.
The northerners with their predominantly Protestant ethic expect a “high trust government” in return for not cheating on the government. The EU, however, has imposed on the northerners authorities who have cheated; the EU now expects these northerners to bail those cheaters out. The southerners, on the other hand, expect little from the government but are not expected to do much in return. The EU is now confronting the southerners with authorities which are about to put the fiscal screws on them. It is not clear yet at which end the system will snap – either the Germans (and the Dutch and the Finns) leave the eurozone, or the Greeks (and the other PIGS – Portugal, Italy, Greece & Spain) are forced out – but that the system will have to give at some end seems certain. When culture clashes with monetary politics, culture is bound to prevail.”
OPDATERING: In a bizarre twist to the Greek debt crisis, France and Germany are pressing Greece to buy their gunboats and warplanes, even as they urge it to cut public spending and curb its deficit.
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