Uneasy Lies the Head

As I read this post at Bloomberg by John Mickelthwait to the effect that Germans are tired of trying to cope with Europe’s problems:

Look, for instance, at Europe’s two main enduring crises. On Sunday the Greek parliament is supposed to approve another package of structural reforms, prior to a meeting of euro-zone finance ministers in Brussels on May 24. Greece needs another dollop of aid to meet its July interest payments, but the International Monetary Fund has been (rightly) worried that the country’s debt burden is too big and it will miss its target of a 3.5 percent primary surplus in 2018. A Merkellian fudge has been readied: In return for the new reform package, Germany and the IMF will accept some of Greece’s more heroic forecasts and stretch out debt repayments.

Default has thus probably been skillfully averted again. But nobody in Berlin believes Greece will ever be able to pay off its debts. “It is really an emerging economy, not a developed one,” says one senior German, adding wryly that the Greeks should be dealing with the World Bank, not the IMF.

Worse, from Germany’s perspective, the lack of progress in Greece is symptomatic of the whole continent’s uncompetitive economy. Six years into the euro crisis, France has barely started structural reform (German ministers roll their eyes whenever you mention “Francois Hollande” and “reform” in the same sentence), and Italy is still trying to fix its banking system. The single market is worryingly incomplete. Very few of the structural underpinnings of a successful single currency are in place.

This contempt comes with a hefty dose of hypocrisy and self-delusion. Merkel has done few structural reforms herself; the hard work was done by her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder. Content in their prosperous economic bubble, German voters have condemned the rest of Europe to needless austerity, resisted liberalization (notably in the country’s lackluster service industries), and refused to stomach common Eurobonds and other long-term solutions to preserving the single currency. So the Germans are not the thrifty saints they imagine themselves to be. But, as they endlessly point out, they are the ones who write the checks every time there is a bailout — and they don’t feel as if they get a lot in return.

Germans have more justification for their resentment when it comes to Europe’s other main crisis: the flood of Syrian refugees. On the plus side, Merkel has found a way to stem the flow of people that threatened to overrun her country (and her chancellorship). Turkey has agreed to hold refugees within its borders in exchange for 6 billion euros in aid from the EU, while Italy and Greece are also getting help in exchange for not letting refugees who land on their coasts surge northward.

it occurred to me that the problems that are being complained about are largely of Germany’s own making. Unless you can make a case that Syria’s problems are a direct consequence of the U. S. invasion of Iraq, something I think is a stretch. Greece wouldn’t be in the straits in which they find themselves if it weren’t on the euro and the primary advocates for expanding the eurozone are, you guessed it, the Germans. And Syrian refugees are begging, borrowing, and stealing the means to get to Germany because some mischievous, unnamed individual invited them. Who could that possibly have been? Oh, yes. Angela Merkel—German chancellor.

What country abetted the collapse of Yugoslavia? Germany. Wanted the Baltic states to join NATO? Germany. Urged the admission of Ukraine into NATO? Germany.

Here’s my suggestion. If the Germans are tired of dealing with the consequences of their own policies, why don’t they try changing policies? They’ve been largely getting their way for the last 60 years. Some people are never satisfied.