Hisssssssssss!!!!!!! (GreeceFire)
Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker
Yes, that’s the pressure vessel reaching critical you hear….
ATHENS, Feb 18 (Reuters) – Greek opposition lawmakers said on Thursday that Germans should pay reparations for their World War Two occupation of Greece before criticising the country over its yawning fiscal deficits.
What does this have to do with what appear are alleged to be intentional cooking of the books to get into the EU in the first place.
You know, what we civilized folks would call "fraud"?
"How does Germany have the cheek to denounce us over our finances when it has still not paid compensation for Greece’s war victims?" Margaritis Tzimas, of the main opposition New Democracy party, told parliament.
"You shot my brother sixty years ago and so damnit, I’m going to commit fraud with impunity because you never paid me for my brother’s death!"
Uh huh.
Didn’t we try something like this before? I seem to remember a couple of instances over in Europe that had a rather significant part of their root in economic mismanagement and outright scams by sovereigns, no? Weimar-Cough-Weimar-Cough for one, but not the only one. If you think the only reason we had WWI was the assassination of Archuduke Ferdinand you were "educated" in a government school.
Never mind The Hatfields and McCoys of US fame, where people shot at each other long after nobody could remember who killed who first and why (it was allegedly over ownership of a pig) or the United States own "Civil War" – slavery was in fact a secondary, not primary, cause of that conflict (the primary cause was – big surprise – economic looting by Northern States…. gee, where have we seen that recently on WALL STREET?)
Look folks, if you think a nice war would solve our little economic mess, you just might get one if this crap keeps up.
I prefer not, thank you very little, given the fact that too many people have things that make very large "bangs", and when faced with defeat – whoever winds up in that position – the temptation to use them will become irresistible.
The proper response of the EU is to expel Greece and to permanently bar any and all banking interests that had any hand in the deception foisted off on the EU Statistics office. Further, it must be made clear that such games will not be tolerated and that if there are any other states that wish to confess, now’s the time – but they must name all banking interests involved who also will be permanently barred from business in the EU. We should do the same here in the United States when it comes to state finances.
This is both an opportunity and a time of great peril. Should we as an international community not force those who committed fraud to cease, desistand confess we will solve nothing, and the sort of demand that was put forward in this story will continue to escalate until someone breaks out a rifle – at which point the opportunity to obtain a reasonable outcome from this crisis will disappear.
PS: In the latter case – war – you can bet the bankers will be happy to loan everyone involved the money necessary to buy the weapons to fight with. After all, they’ve done it in every major conflict over time – why change now?
