Greece Explained

An excellent video from VOX. No more oversimplified than the final demand letters Greece is getting from Angela Merkel.

I keep going back to the meme I invented a couple of years ago: Kiss Up, Kick Down. Is this crisis just an international version of junior high bullying? The powerful preying on the powerless? Noam Chomsky writes about this.

Vox has discovered that NSA wiretaps reveal Angela Merkel's cynical calculations prior to the Greek bailout. Why did Merkel and Germany send Greece so much money knowing the debt would be unsustainable? Maybe the potential profit caused them to ignore the risks. No intention of fixing a problem, just a strong impulse to milk that problem for profit. The payday loan model again.

Europe isn’t a family. Families don’t starve the child that does poorly in school. Families don’t think how they can profit from a family member’s failure.

I realize it gets complicated in families too. But nations and organizations of nations need to lean toward the helpful model rather than the exploitive one. Think St. Francis not some mob kingpin. Keynes not Friedman. The Marshall Plan, not the Versailles Treaty.