Greece must rediscover the spirit of Marathon to burst its euro shackles
German proposals to take over Greek state assets are tantamount to tyranny and must be resisted
By Boris Johnson
9:09PM BST 12 Jul 2015
There is a moment in most action-adventure movies when the hero is surprised by something nasty. There he is, trying to sneak his way into the enemy HQ when he hears a terrifying noise in his ear.
It is an oily little click. It is the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. His eyes widen; he holds his breath – and he knows he is being given a choice: surrender, or I will blow you away. That is the choice that faces Greece today, and the man with the gun is the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.
On Friday, the Germans tabled a document that is breathtaking in its candour and brutality. It marks a new departure in modern European diplomacy; indeed, at first I thought it must be a spoof. It cynically abandons the old pretence about the euro – that it was irreversible, a marriage for life. On the contrary, it turns out that divorce is very much on the cards, unless the Greeks submit.
If Greece wants to stay in the single European currency, Athens must prostrate herself in an act of doglike self-abasement that the ancients called proskynesis. If the Greeks want more of our money, says Schäuble as he waves his Glock/Schmeisser/Walther, they will have to do as follows.
First, they must simply hand over “valuable Greek assets of €50 billion” to be privatised – flogged off to decrease the debt. Who will do the privatising? Schäuble proposes that these Greek state assets – airports, electricity companies, whatever – should be surrendered to a body called the “Institution for Growth in Luxembourg”. And who is in charge of this institution, eh? Jawohl, meine Freunde! It turns out to be a front for the German KfW, the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, the state development bank that was set up, ironically, as part of the postwar Marshall plan to rescue the bombed-out German economy.
These Greek state assets may be tarnished, they may be indebted, but they belong to the Greek people; and now the 72-year-old Schäuble is seriously proposing that this family silver should be taken and sold by the Germans. Why the Germans? Because it is obvious from Schäuble’s proposals that he has complete contempt for the Greeks’ ability to run their own affairs.
More:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11734869/Greece-must-rediscover-the-spirit-of-Marathon-to-burst-its-euro-shackles.html