Euro-Mess

Posted by LK on 5/05/10 • Categorized as Blog, Featured, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Psychology, The Economy and Markets

The Germans are pissed. Some of their taxpayer dollars are probably going to be used to bail out the Greeks, too many of whom buy 63″ plasmas before they pay their rent, and, in fact, expect the government to buy the big screens for them. So Chancellor Merkel has her hands full convincing the German legislature to climb aboard the bailout bandwagon.

It doesn’t help the cause of European unity and harmony that she’s speaking of the Greeks as if they were irresponsible children, but that may be the necessary posture she’s got to take to get her fellow citizens to begrudgingly share the risk and burden of lending money to a nation of people who aren’t good at paying loans back.

Making things even more difficult are the Greeks themselves, who have become so used to excessive vacation time, sumptuous pensions, and all sorts of other government goodies that, in protest, they’re currently shutting down airports, schools, hospitals and other vital public services to the point that the country’s paralyzed, which indicates they’re not having an easy time accepting the austerity measures required to slowly but surely climb out of their pit of debt.

Not exactly confidence inspiring to potential lenders, which is why the bailout that seems to be announced daily still hasn’t formally come to pass.

And waiting in the wings is Spain. The government officials there are taking great pains to remind the world, and the Eurozone in particular, that their problems are nowhere near as severe as the Greeks, in the hope that no one will notice that their economic house has also crossed the border into the land of disorder.

This doesn’t bode well, economically or politically. The delusions that national mind sets can be changed overnight (a year or two, historically speaking, is overnight) and that one nation’s citizenry won’t resent another nation’s citizenry for behaving less responsibly than they themselves have behaved, won’t last long.

The dissolution of the Euro is the least of their, and our worries.

And we’re all reminded that grown-ups, like kids, have an aversion to medicine that tastes bad.