Yanis Varoufakis:Read it at a Yanis Varoufakis
Just before the Crisis erupted, in April 2010, with Greece falling into the troika’s embrace in May 2010, I had written an article (A New Versailles haunts Europe) to argue that Germany was about to commit the error that the winners’ of World War I had committed by imposing upon Germany the Versailles Treaty. It was a unique Treaty in the history of humanity in the sense that the winners (the ‘strong’) has imposed upon the losers (the ‘weak’) a Treaty which was not only cruel but, in the end, one that backfired on them, turning out to be just as catastrophic for the winners (the ‘strong’) was it was for the losers (the ‘defeated’, the ‘weak’). My fear was that the method Germany seemed ready to utilise in ‘dealing; with Greece would end up being disastrous for Germany itself. This is how I concluded that piece: “In this context, turning countries like Greece into sundrenched wastelands, and forcing the rest of the Eurozone into an even faster debt-deflationary downward spiral, is a most efficient way of undermining Germany’s own economy. Assuming, for argument’s sake, that Greece is getting its just deserts, do the hard working Germans deserve a political elite that quickmarches them straight into economic catastrophe?” It seems that the answer was, tragically, in the affirmative.
Marshall Auerbach has just written an article that seems to confirm this gloomy assessment of the effects of the way Greece was treated by Germany on Germany. Here it is:
Guest Post: Today Germany is the big loses, not Greece
by Marshall Auerbach
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