Bloomberg View Editorial Board — Greece Should Just Quit

The US elite join the Brits in dissing the deal.

Enough is enough: Greece should leave the euro system.

The terms forced on Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras last weekend have little chance of being accepted, carried out and sustained by this Greek government or its successors. Greece's parliament may accept them this week because it thinks the alternative is worse -- and in the short term, that may be true. In the long term, a deal imposed under extreme duress, and bitterly resented by most Greeks, won't succeed.

Not long ago, a better outcomewas imaginable. It would have required compromise on both sides. Greece would have recognized its need to undertake far-reaching economic reforms and to rebuild trust with its creditors. Europe would have responded with fresh, conditional assistance -- sufficient to support the Greek economy through a painful transition.

Such a compact is no longer possible. Trust has collapsed to such a point that Greece is being told it must become an EU colony, not a sovereign state. It is being forced into a deal it will resent for years, and to which it will feel no sense of obligation. Under these circumstances, leaving is the best available choice.….

The subtext is a recommendation for Greece to leave the EZ with and understanding with the Anglo-Americans will cut a favorable deal that precludes the need to turn to BRICS for the support that Europe is refusing.

Bloomberg View
Greece Should Just Quit
The Editors

See also Clive Crook, Europe Owns This Disaster

Germany isn't straightforwardly nationalist in outlook. It wants further "rule-based integration" in Europe -- but it wants the rules to be German, and tightly enforced.

Exactly the same as the US with respect to global rules, as President Obama clearly stated.

Best paragraph:

Finally, the crisis has demonstrated the EU's impressive incapacity for government. The sheer dysfunction of recent months has been an education, to me at least. Pathological indecision has been institutionalized. As the deal was announced, Pierre Moscovici, the European Commissioner for economic and financial affairs, said it showed how important it was to increase the EU's political integration. In a way, of course, he's right -- but what sane voter anywhere in the EU will any longer trust this thrashing doom-loop machine with more power?

The clown show.

See this, too:

Leonid Bershidsky, Want the Euro? Be More Like the Germans

It's hard to imagine a country that has not lost a war giving up its sovereignty to the extent that Tsipras has promised.

Greece lost the economic, financial and political war. If Greece were not a NATO member it would be risking a military action.

The agreement has, however, demonstrated that a common currency like the euro has a low tolerance for democracy's wilder extremes.

Neoliberalism and democracy are antithetical.

He then cites the Allied Occupation post-WWII but omits to mention the Nazi occupation of Greece during the war. Of course, this is what Europeans and especially Greeks will be reminded of more than the Allied Occupation.

Tsipras did not want an alliance with the Germans, but he has now agreed to let them and other northern Europeans control Greek ministries, veto bills and oversee a holding company set up to monetize -- through selloffs and otherwise -- Greece's most valuable state assets. The country will be under outside supervision as tight as that which Germany was forced to accept after it lost World War II.

The lesson for others.

The message for other euro countries is that if they want to enjoy the trade, convenience and interest-rate benefits of the common currency, they cannot afford to elect the far left and far right. The German-led currency union will fight back and make it painful. If Podemos wins in Spain, or if the Finns Party triumphs in Finland, they will need to take their countries out of the euro area to escape Greece's fate.

Those on the extreme right get it: They are all anti-euro.

Not too difficult to see where this is headed.

Also

Eric Beinhocker, Europe's Insane Deal With Greece

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, the leaders of Europe and Greece are insane.

This is kind of humorous. The Americans and British actually do regard the Continentals as slightly off.