Wednesday, October 9, 2013

George Soros Says That Greece Can Never Pay Back Its Debts

And if any country were to recognize how such an approach could work, he argued, it was Germany, which "ought to remember that it has benefited from debt writedowns three times, with the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan and in connection with the Marshall Plan." 
On the other hand, French insistence on war reparation payments after World War I led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis: "The Golden Dawn in Greece is a similar development."
He adds:
 ... "The situation that emerged from the crisis is neither tolerable nor stable...The current situation is not the result of an evil German plot. But Germany cannot escape the responsibilities and liabilities that go with that role. Germany must learn to act as a benign hegemon. Doing so would earn Germany the lasting gratitude of the other countries that are currently subordinated to it, just as the United States earned the lasting alliance of Europe with the Marshall Plan." Failure to do so, he warned, would lead to the disintegration and eventual breakdown of the European Union. 
"Many nations have lived through nightmares and survived. However, the European Union is not a nation; it is an incomplete association of sovereign states that will not survive a decade or more of stagnation. That is not in Germany's interest. It would leave Europe worse off than it was when it embarked on the European Union."
I wouldn't trust Soros any further than I could throw him, but he is probably correct in this instance.

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Weekend Reading -- A New Weekend Knowledge Dump

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