France and Germany not saving the euro

https://www.rt.com/community/blogs/debunkin...y-euro-finance/

 

­What’s going on? Greece keeps sinking. Yet, France and Germany are forcing the country to spend its meager financial means on expensive weapons that it doesn’t need. So is it really about saving the euro?

 

The Greek problems are all over the news: an overstaffed civil service bloated with lazy public servants who think the adjective “public” in their title means “personal benefit”, tenders for public infrastructure considered to be 100 per cent corrupt, tax evasion a common practice in all sectors of society, even those without the financial wealth to hire fiscal experts, a totally inadequate justice system… The German media especially excelled in denouncing the Greek “problem”, and other EU countries followed their lead.

 

Some research on the internet makes me wonder what this is all about. It turns out the problems Greece faces today are not brand new. In fact most of today’s criticism could just as well have been voiced 10 years ago, when Greece was preparing to enter the European Monetary Union (EMU, “the eurozone”). Nobody raised as much as an eyebrow. Then.

 

Originally, Greece was not going to join the euro on 1 January 2002. The EMU preparations started in 1999 between Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. No Greece in sight – at first.

 

The Hellenic Republic only came into play two years later in 2001, just before the last stage of the euro implementation. It even managed to convince the other eurozone countries of a slight change to the euro banknote design. You probably never noticed it, but the Greek ‘ΕΥΡΩ’ letters are on all banknotes beneath the Latin “EURO” letters, from the modest 5 euro to the whopping 500 euro (the one you and I never get to see, let alone spend).

 

Considering the small part the country plays in the eurozone (for both population and Gross Domestic Product), that was a big sign of confidence! Now we hear financial “experts” speak out saying they knew all along. Where were they in 2001? Too busy getting Greece along? Too busy not seeing a crisis coming?

 

In 2009, the economic crisis was already going full speed. International talk was all about austerity this, austerity that for Greece. Really? In that same year the country was one of the biggest EU importers of weapons. It spent 4.3 per cent of its Gross National Product on defense. Military spending in Greece for that same year amounted to 911 euros per person, only surpassed by the peace-loving nations of the United Arab Emirates, the US, Israel, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and…Norway. The first European Union country to follow was France at 724, the United Kingdom at 697 and Germany a distant 414. (Just to compare, Russia was at 319, China at 55 while Greek neighbor Turkey spent 181 euros on defense per Turkish citizen in 2009.)

 

In other words, year after year Greece has been spending money it does not have on weapons it does not need. France and Germany encouraged the country with lavish credits to buy from their factories. Money that never left the “donor” countries. Only the debt payments and the “shiny useless weapons” did.Today those same countries are leading the onslaught on the Greek state to cut social spending. What they do not call for is banking and defense austerity. As we speak, France and Germany (and other EU arms manufacturers) keep demanding part of the debt relief be spent on expensive defense purchases.

 

The Greek government is forced to tax the poor and middle class and cut all social spending while sparing the bankers and wealthy elite that caused the crisis (and reaped enormous untaxed profits from it) and not saving one euro on military expenses. It makes me wonder. What is really going on here?

 

I am not claiming that Greece has no problems. It does, but just as much as it did in 2001 before joining the eurozone. Government structures were already weak then, so was their capacity to collect taxes. And yes, the euro is in danger. But is the financial aid package to Greece really about saving the euro?

 

I don’t think the eurozone finance ministers are stupid or incompetent. They must have other motives. Hence my conclusion: this is not about the euro, it’s about the destruction of post-World War II social democracy. Free market austerity for the common men, the neo-liberal nanny state for the wealthy.

 

The term “democracy” derives from the Greek “demokratia”, meaning “the will of the people”. The word “social” derives from the Greek “socios”, meaning “mate, comrade, ally”. Greece might become the first European country to lose it all.

 

Some technician in the euro banknote printing offices is probably wondering whether Greece leaving the eurozone means reprinting all banknotes without the Greek letters. The Greek people have more pressing issues to worry about.

 

In 2009, the economic crisis was already going full speed. International talk was all about austerity this, austerity that for Greece. Really? In that same year the country was one of the biggest EU importers of weapons. It spent 4.3 per cent of its Gross National Product on defense. Military spending in Greece for that same year amounted to 911 euros per person, only surpassed by the peace-loving nations of the United Arab Emirates, the US, Israel, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and…Norway. The first European Union country to follow was France at 724, the United Kingdom at 697 and Germany a distant 414. (Just to compare, Russia was at 319, China at 55 while Greek neighbor Turkey spent 181 euros on defense per Turkish citizen in 2009.)

 

In other words, year after year Greece has been spending money it does not have on weapons it does not need.

No, it shows that Greece spent a disproportionate on weapons in 2009. Those figures tell us nothing about any other year, let alone "year after year".

 

When Greece announced they were going to join the euro after all there were a lot of people (in the UK at least) questioning whether they really had satisfied the entry criteria. The general consensus seems to have been that the Greek government were lying. We can only speculate whether the UK government of the day would have tried to veto the Greek application if they were leading Britain into the euro.