- It is difficult to overstate how deeply Europe’s leaders betrayed the ideals of European integration in their handing of the Greek crisis. The first and most fundamental goal of European integration was to blur the lines of national feeling and interest through commerce and interdependence, in order to prevent the fractures along ethnonational lines that made a charnel house of the continent, twice. That is the first thing, the main rule, that anyone who claims to represent the European project must abide: We solve problems as Europeans together, not as nations in conflict. Note that in the tale as told so far, there really was no meaningful national dimension. Regulatory mistakes and agency issues within banks encouraged poor credit decisions. Spanish banks lent into overpriced real estate, and German banks lent to a state they knew to be weak. Current account imbalances within the Eurozone — persistent and unlikely to reverse without policy attention — implied as a matter of arithmetic that there would be loan flows on a scale that might encourage a certain indifference to credit quality. These were European problems, not national problems. But they were European problems that festered while the continent’s leaders gloated and took credit for a phantom prosperity. When the levee broke, instead of acknowledging errors and working to address them as a community, Europe’s elites — its politicians and civil servants, its bankers and financiers — deflected the blame in the worst possible way. They turned a systemic problem of financial architecture into a dispute between European nations. The brought back the very ghosts their predecessors spent half a century trying to dispell. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame.
I think the EU is a fantastic idea but perhaps they need to scale back some of the integration. Free movement of people is fantastic as is having interconnected transportation and no real borders etc, but having a political and economic union that dictates the fate of nations seems a bit too far.
Following post is extremley opinionated, I just want to warn any reader that you might take offence. EU is a horrible idea that is even more horribly administered. I wish my country never joined EU, at least we're not in the Euro which is always positive. From the begining it was to reduce nationalism within (western) Europe and to, in the long term, reduce the risk of another pan-european war that escalates into a world war (after all within half a century europe was the breeding ground for two world wars). In the end it turns out to be a really beurocratic and slow machine which mainly manages to agree on teivial things, like standardising what curvature a banana or a cucumber needs to have to legally be allowed to be sold within the EU. Oh and on the reduce nationalism part hasn't worked out that well either, every two months the entire parlament moves from Belgium to France, because that's was a condition from Frances side since they started to feel sidelined. Further on the nationalism side, if anything, EU is increasing it. With increasing resentment between the greek people and the germans or Romanian beggars and every other state within the EU. Specially now when the economy is weak. This thing will crash and burn and it will not be plesant. Cultural differences within Europe are to big for it to ever work out. Only way this would work is with one conquering nation taking control and ruling Europe with an iron fist (an option that I personallly would rather not see).
I don't think I really grasped just how much blame Greece's creditors bore in this clusterfuck until I read through that article. Banks (mostly German and French) knew damn well what a horribly high credit risk Greece is due to its sketchy as fuck government, regardless of any zero risk weightings the EU tries to assign them. Lends them money anyway because of the returns they get through higher interest rates. Greece defaults (what a fucking surprise!). ECB and IMF bail out French and German banks by giving Greece money to repay loans to said banks, turning private debts into public debts. Banks come out clean as a whistle with a tidy profit to boot, and all blame is placed on Greece. This feels a lot like what happened with the US housing crisis, where the banks' fuckups were transferred to the taxpayers.
I thought the point of European integration was to put the final nail in the coffin of nationalism and destroy any silly notion of national sovereignity... But I think they overdid it a little, and now it's backfiring - unless our dear leaders had predicted that this would happen, and it's all part of their masterplan.