> A big part of the blame for this mess rests on the shoulders of the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel herself. Her statement that “if the euro fails, Europe fails” was understood by Athens as a carte blanche<p>Not really, they know she is lying. She had promised the German taxpayer that there would be no costs bailing out Greece. She falsely claimed the debt was sustainable. She promoted a bail out program that virtually destroyed the Greek economy and refuses to take responsibility for it. Talks about Greek claims and democratic vote and how it is against European peoples pretty much ignoring the humanitarian crisis. She sheds crocodile tears for elderly waiting for 60€ daily at the ATMs while monthly assistance for 400euro pensions was erased with a red pen. Knows exactly what austerity measures she wants and when she was presented with any program that does not include those measures "it is not clear enough bring another one".
And when Greeks can't there is a "breach of trust"
The journalist from Die Zeit simply promotes the usual rhetoric.<p>But politically she is right. I have noticed a constant attack against her in German recently but for all the wrong reasons.
<i>over the past five months Europe has heard way too much from his government about the impossibility of further cuts and way too little about possible sources of new income.</i><p>This is wildly untruthful. The last set of Syriza proposals included things like a one-off tax of 12% on business incomes over €500,000 (not unreasonable in either amount or in the context of a culture of corrupt tax evasion), as well as a small rise in corporate tax from 26 to 29%. Creditors rejected these proposals as being 'anti growth'. Now I don't think one can ta one's way to prosperity, but the last 5 years of austerity in Greece strongly suggest that you can't cut your way there either, and it's facile to pretend that taxes should only be considered for their pure macroeconomic effects considering the lamentable history of tax evasion in Greece (which has deep cultural roots in centuries under the Ottoman Empire.<p>Greece still has to undertake massive reforms, and Syriza's governance has been marked by brinksmanship and overheated rhetoric - but that's what happens when you put people's backs against the wall. It's a generational-scale problem that calls for a long-term rather than the nonsensical series of bandaids that have been thrown at it. I certainly felt that some austerity and fiscal adjustment was warranted, and indeed applying that approach has allowed countries like Ireland to to re-balance the books and regain access to capital markets. But this approach has plainly ceased to work in the case of Greece.<p>More detail on the specifics of said proposals here:
<a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/06/greek-bail-out-negotiations" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/06/greek-ba...</a><p><i>Neither the eurozone nor Europe is best served by holding on to Greece. Instead, the European Union needs to come up with a smooth way out of its dilemma, namely an orderly exit by Greece from the euro.</i><p>This is about as sensible as adopting a continental currency called the Mark and then trying to kick Germany out of it, or seeking to cure the pain of bad hangover by amputating one's own head. The very word <i>Europe</i> is of Hellenic origin, along with the concepts of democracy, a republic, and the bulk of our philosophical worldview. A Euro without Greece may make short-term fiscal sense but it makes absolutely zero political sense.
Thanks for the obvious!<p>My question is, HOW did they get INTO the euro in the first place? Obviously that's the insane part, and once the fraud that was perpetrated on Brussels became clear, why weren't they kicked out immediately?