Don't Mention The War

The ever ongoing 'Greek Crisis' has thrown up some bad politics, worse economics and an awful lot of bile ..... but one has to hand the prize red ribbon for the bile to Mr Yanis Varoufakis, the now 'Ex' finance minister of Greece. He hardly pulled his punches when it came to insulting those whose money he wanted to get hold of.

Images Much Like This Are Circulating The Web ....

 

"Germany must be proud of the fact that Nazism has been eradicated here", he said on a visit to Berlin, and he then carried on and brought up the economic depression in Weimar Germany that brought Adolf Hitler to power ..... hardly tactful, and as he then went on to mention the rise of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party in Greece, the inference was plain and brutal to his hosts. 

Lessons Of History

Spain is in full-blown economic meltdown .... a 'depression' rather than a 'recession', with the overall unemployment rate at 23.6 per cent, which is comparable to the US/Europe in the depths of the Great Depression of the late 1920's and 1930's (with the youth unemployment rate over 50 per cent) .....

Communist and Nazis Street Fights - Berlin

This simply can’t carry on without risking the kind of social breakdown last seen in the 1930's (Street fighting and extreme political parties on the march .... Communists and Nazis), as the rise of the Far Right and Left in France, and perhaps more worryingly the Far Right  'Chrysi Avgi' ('Golden Dawn') in Greece illustrates.

Extremist Parties Rise In Economic Crisis

This is an era that modern Europe is starting to replicate in ever more faithful detail.

Greek Political Factions Fighting Over Economic Ruins

The 30's depression only ended after countries exited from the gold standard, which is the equivalent  of an exit from the Euro today, and the restoration of national currencies .... as an alternative to carrying on imposing ever-harsher austerity on countries that were already suffering Depression levels of  unemployment. However its the course of  imposing ever-harsher austerity that the European governments and ECB have reinforced.

It's hard not to conclude that rather than admit that the policies being followed are wrong, most European leaders seem determined to drive their economies and their societies into the ground  ..... you would think the Germans and the French leaders would be worried. Certainly many others fear that the whole world may pay the price.