Submitted by Thomas Kolbe
Revenge is sweet. It tastes all the sweeter the longer one has had to wait for it to arrive, and the deeper the pain of the humiliation that preceded it.
Some may still have the images of the great debt crisis of a decade and a half ago before their eyes: German politicians, led by then-Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, traveled to Athens at regular intervals to make sure everything was in order. Greece, the supposed sinner of the debt crisis, had gone off the rails, accumulated too much debt and was quickly made the scapegoat for the financial-market and sovereign-debt crisis. It was convenient - because it diverted attention from Germany’s own failures.
That someone had apparently left a score to settle was made clear by Greek Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis in an interview with Handelsblatt on Monday. When the conversation turned to the debt question, Pierrakakis, who also serves as president of the Eurogroup, noted that reforms in fiscal policy might be painful at first, but would ultimately pay off politically and economically.
The man is right. And Berlin should listen to him, because the debt club around Friedrich Merz is knowingly driving the budget into the wall with new borrowing of more than 5 percent next year.
It really does sound like an open score to settle when the Greek generously praises Germany’s economic potential in flowery language while at the same time noting that the country is not untouchable: “Germany is the industrial locomotive o
