HP. Stubborn idiot who's putting the entire Europe (his own country comprised) in danger just to please her public opinion.
The true responsible for the Euro debt crisis.
Yeah. Obviously not the countries in massive debt and little interest in cleaning up. That'd be too easy!
Massive debt ? The only country which qualifies as "massively indebted" is Greece, all the others managed to pay off their debts without problems before the crisis started. So yeah, Grece's debt was the spark which caused the explosion. BTW, I'd like to remind you that "a country" isn't collectively responsible for its debt. The government is, and, in this case, Caramanlis' right-wing government.
Anyways, the crisis didn't become what it is now because of Greece. It has become what it is because of the governments' poor reaction to the Greek crisis. It would have been sufficient to establish Euro-bonds, with the possibility for countries to effectively collectivize Greece's debt, and the crisis would have been solved from the beginning. You just can't have a common money and not have financial solidarity among countries, it just can't work. Of course, once they saw the pathetic half-assed measures Merkozy have put forward, the markets realized that after all, all the EU countries were at risk. Of course : they were left to their own devices regarding debt, but couldn't use monetary tools to fight against it because the Euro was managed by the ECB ! So they began speculating against Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy... France is the next on the list, and, in the end, Germany's turn will come too. The result is what we have now : the whole Eurozone is in danger.
Let's also talk about the way Merkel&co shoved austerity plans through these countries' throat. Is there in the world a more mind-numbingly retarded measure to fight against deficits ? Those countries are dismantling their whole welfare states, leading to mass poverty. We're turning them into third-world countries to "punish" them for their deficits ! You might not care about people dying from starvation and these kind of things, but do I have to remind you that poverty means recession ? And that recession means less tax revenues, and thus, more deficit ? Yeah, that's it : austerity plans are just
the way to raise deficits. What will we do once deficits will have risen ? New austerity plans ! Austerity ! Austerity ! Austerity ! Until the countries will be reduced to the stone age. After all, that's just the eventual goal of all neoliberals, isn't it ?
So yeah, sorry if I don't buy into the moronic idea that "evil southern countries deserve it because they are BAD". I'm just sad you fall so easily into such a ridiculous view, and I'm sure you genuinely think so. After all, you're not the only one : the neoliberal dogma has dominated Europe for over 30 years now. But I'm fairly confident that the pack of lies, caricatures, populism and primary insticts it carries will be eventually exposed for what it is.