Mitchell, B. (2015) “Germany has a convenient but flawed collective memory“, Bill Mitchell Blog, 02 February.
There is a lot of discussion at present about the historical inconsistency of the German position with regard any debt relief to the Greek government. Angela Merkel has reiterated over the weekend that there would be no further debt relief. Why she is now a spokesperson for the Troika that does not include the German government is interesting in itself. In this context, I recall a very interesting research study published in 2013 – One Made it Out of the Debt Trap – by German researcher Jürgen Kaiser, who examined the London Debt Agreement 1953 in great detail. After becoming familiar with the way the Allies handled the deeply recalcitrant Germany and its massive debt burden in that period, one wonders why the German government is so vehemently against giving relief to Greece. This is especially in the context that the only mistake that Greece made was joining the Eurozone and surrendering its own capacity to deal with a major financial crisis. The ‘mistakes’ of the German nation before the London Aggrement have been paraded before us all again with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp featuring in world events last week. Further, several recent elections around the world have categorically affirmed the obvious – citizens all over are starting to rebel against austerity and neo-liberal so-called ‘solutions’ (such as privatisation and public sector job cuts). In Australia we have just witnessed a remarkable electoral rout in the Queensland State Election where the neo-liberal, privatising conservatives were tossed out of office on Saturday exactly as a result of a widespread rejection of these policies. The Greek elections a few weeks ago are a larger signal. The European Parliament elections in May another. Time is running out for neo-liberalism.
Jürgen Kaiser is the “co-ordinator of Jubilee Germany – which is “an NGO with about 700 member organisations that strives for a fair and transparent international insolvency framework”. In other words, it analyses and comments on debt restructuring deals from a viewpoint of achieving equitable outcomes with the details being publicly-disseminated.
Relevant posts:
- Darvas, Z. & Hüttl, P. (2015) “Why a Grexit is more costly for Germany than a default inside the euro area – Contrary to the IFO institute, we conclude that German losses on both official and private claims would be much higher if Greece exits the euro“, Bruegel Institute, 16 January.
- Turner, A. (2014) “Germany’s Secret Credit Addiction“, Project Syndicate, 10 November.
- Wren-Lewis, S. (2014) “Getting The Germany Argument Right“, Social Europe Journal, 11 November.