Europe, a big phony

On September 11, 2001, the US was the target of an unprecedented terrorist attack. But the country quickly regained its composure. The Americans reacted in the way they felt was the most appropriate, as a unified country ready to defend its vital interests.

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank in the US went bankrupt, but the United States bounced back, some way or another, proving itself to be a country with a sovereign currency and strong leadership.

Later, cities in California defaulted one after the other, similarly to other US states which had also gone bankrupt in the past. The issue of exiting the dollar was never raised.

Of course the US is a unified country, with a single, sovereign currency, the most powerful and advanced war machine ever to exist in the history of mankind, while the European Union is a big phony. The bloc’s biggest achievement, the euro, was never a sovereign currency in any country, not even in Germany, although it was developed based on the latter’s fears and old ghosts.

Greece went bankrupt in 2010 and the country which accounts for just 2 percent of the eurozone’s GDP created major panic. Europe’s gigantic bureaucracy was deemed insufficient to devise a plan for dealing with the problem. And so Germany called for the International Monetary Fund to intervene.

Europe looks down on Alexis Tsipras’s government, and not unjustly, for its obsessions, amateurism and hard to justify delays – it was the same, although to a lesser extent, with previous Greek governments. But what is emerging from Brussels right now is positively morbid. How can a eurozone country and government leaders publicly state that proposals submitted by the Greek administration form a “basis” for discussion and have the IMF take it all back a few days later. Tsipras may well be leading a group of unruly and at times rude associates, but the eurozone leadership’s image is not far from that of a group which changes its mind depending on the whims of one of the three institutions. By the way, Antonis Samaras’s government was brought down because of the IMF’s obsessions.

In any case, this is where things stand right now. Wednesday night saw yet another impasse. Even if we assume that the negotiations are successfully completed on Thursday, the damage done to the notion of the euro is very serious. One way or another, the wall put up by Russia excludes any EU economic expansion to the east. Meanwhile, Germany’s dangerous expansion is being averted for the third time – only this time due to the euro. We Greeks, but also our partners, should stop pretending. The current dynamic lies outside Europe.