Germany vs Greece

My Advice to Italy and France: Don’t Poke Germany, They Might Leave

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Varoufakis has said this in the past, that if maintaining the illusion of an artificial fiat monetary union becomes too expensive for those who have to support it (Germany), then Germany will simply exist. There is no problem with Germany going back to the Deutschemark. Or Mark. Or whatever it is. (Or GOLD or God’s sake.) It would cause a minor disruption but nothing catastrophic.

Then again, even Germany is sporting 80% debt to GDP. Back in the 19th century governments never ran more than 10%. Germany may well just leave because they cannot afford to finance the debts of even more indebted countries. France is at 93%. Italy, well, you know, they’re the second highest debt in the Eurozone.

France and Italy are now ganging up on Germany. This hasn’t gone well in the past. Those two should shut up, or they might push Germany out, simply because it doesn’t want to fund all this nonsense anymore.

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70 Years too late? Greece Now Demands Money from Germany over WWII

rafifarber Eurozone Crisis, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

This won’t go over well with the Germans. The Greeks are now playing the Nazi/WWII card.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras accused Germany on Tuesday of using legal tricks to avoid paying reparations for the Nazi occupation of Greece and said he would support parliamentary efforts to review the matter.

His comments are likely to heighten tensions between Athens and Berlin as Greece’s new, leftist government struggles to persuade its euro zone partners to renegotiate the terms of a 240 billion euro ($260 billion) bailout.

Germany last month rejected renewed calls from Greece for war compensation, saying the issue had been settled at world power talks that led to German reunification in 1990.

But Tsipras said his government approved plans to revive a parliamentary commission to look into the issue.

Forget whether the Germans owe anything. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. Legally, I have no idea, as legalism are made up by the victors. Morally, maybe, I’m not God. But clearly, this is a soured attempt by the Greeks to actually pathetically bully the Germans into giving them more money, and it is so plainly obvious it won’t work that you have to wonder if Tsipras is such a dark red commie that maybe he’s actually insane.

You don’t bully a country that’s bailing you out to the tune of $240B. It’s just nuts. If Greece is daring Germany to kick it out of the Eurozone, this pissant move might actually accomplish that.