A painful prediction

?Do you really think we?re going to make it?? I asked a wise-headed Greek who lives outside the country a couple of years ago. He?s the kind of person who feels deeply connected to the nation but, unfortunately, as the cliche goes, Greece hurts him.

His prediction was as follows:

First, he said, the country will come under the supervision of the International Monetary Fund because there will be a liquidity problem and everyone will try to hide the fact that the country is effectively bankrupt. After a year or so, he went on, there will be talk of restructuring the debt.

A few months later, the taboo will break and everyone will talk about a ?reasonable haircut.? This will also occur, but since the country will have hit an impasse by then, and none of the conditions will have been met, there will be talk of a bigger haircut and some form of default on its debts.

This too will happen, he said, and then there will be one more stage — if, as expected, things go awry — where the country will be forced to abandon the eurozone because it will not be able to stand anymore pressure.

His predictions are shared by virtually all serious observers these days. I am referring here of course to those people who have a clear understanding of what is happening in Berlin and Washington and not those who tend to analyze things from a narrow-minded, provincial perspective.

So, once again I turned to my ?wise? friend. He threw his hands in the air — not just because Greece made a mess of the situation; but also because of the huge leadership deficit in Europe. He did not want to make a prediction this time, but he did express a big fear: I dread the moment when Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, will turn around and say that she did all she could to save Greece — but Greece is a special case; a state that cannot be governed. Immediately after that she will turn to her voters and tell them that she is punishing the odd one out, but at the same time will urge them to dig into their pockets to rescue Spain, Italy and so on.

I sincerely hope that the predictions of my ?wise? friend will not come true. But things certainly appear to be heading that way, as Greece will not be able to blackmail the global economy for much longer.