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> That's all fine, but I'm pretty sure the sole purpose of the money was to save the Euro.

It actually hurt the Euro. What it did do is save/prop up some very large French and German banks. Nothing like gambling with other people's money to see if you can come out ahead and ask for a hand-out if your plan fails.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-06-05/german-ban...

The cynic in me says that no single politician that supported the bail out ever expected that money to be paid back. Greece would have to completely change its culture in order to be able to pay those loans back.

What I was trying to say is that most politicians at the time (this applies to the US as well, I guess) were willing do to almost anything to stop the collapse, even if that meant hurting the Euro in the long term. The (somewhat hypothetical) alternative could have been a lot worse.

> Germany is one of the riches countries on this planet.

A lot of that riches comes from the fact that EUR is a common currency both of economically successful countries like Germany and of economically weak countries like Greece. That makes the currency artificially undervalued, which boosts German exports and hurts Greek imports, making Germany more competitive and Greece less competitive (longer comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8954377).

I think it's time Germany admits to that and pays its dues, by which I mean help finance the rest of EU (via a fiscal union).

This is utterly ridiculous. West Germany was FAR better off economically when the D-Mark was strong.

You're assuming that the D-Mark would be as strong (or possibly even stronger) as it was back then today. Which is a bold assumption. As a matter of fact, nobody (apart from some utterly ridiculous right-wing politicians) even considerers this an option.

If you literally mean that Germany was richer in the time before the introduction of the Euro, then simple GDP statistics show otherwise - not surprisingly, as it was a long time ago. If you mean the Euro was bad for the German economy, I wonder why you think that? By removing exchange rate risk, the Euro has made it easier for German businesses to sell to other Eurozone countries.

I'm not entirely sure what it is you're suggesting. The EU is designed to make us (Germany, France, etc.) more competitive. That unfortunately also means that countries like Greece don't profit as much (or at all, for that matter), but then again, nobody was forced to join to EU.

> I think it's time Germany admits to that and pays its dues, by which I mean help finance the rest of EU (via a fiscal union).

Do you really think we don't know what we're doing? You say we need to "pay our dues". You do realize we're talking about the fact that Greece can't pay it's dues, yes? As far as help financing the rest of the EU goes, keep on dreaming. There is no way any german is going to vote for that given that we have plenty of kids growing up below the poverty line.

> I'm not entirely sure what it is you're suggesting. The EU is designed to make us (Germany, France, etc.) more competitive. That unfortunately also means that countries like Greece don't profit as much (or at all, for that matter), but then again, nobody was forced to join to EU.

I'm suggesting that Euro (this has nothing to do with EU directly) can't survive if PIGS countries keep on loosing while Germany keeps on winning. Personally, I think it would be beneficial to keep the Euro and instantiate a fiscal union (like the US), but it's not up to me to decide. If Germany thinks it's in their interest to keep the Euro (and not have current Euro members exit the currency), it will have to think about other's interests as well. Ultimately, it's not a question if EU/Euro makes some countries more competitive (edit: relative to others) on this continent, but rather, if we stick together as a major global player.

> You do realize we're talking about the fact that Greece can't pay it's dues,

That's just because it doesn't control it's own currency. Otherwise, it could just devalue it, reduce the real value of its debt, and export more, i.e. normal monetary policy.

> There is no way any german is going to vote for that

The politicians will have to convince them, or do without the popular vote. It's not like the Greeks voted for austerity either...

Just out of curiosity, how would Greece having control of it's own currency reduce the real value of it's debt at this point? Considering 90%+ (to my knowledge but I could be wrong) of it's debt is to foreign countries and currently in Euro, even if it left the Euro and returned to the Drachma, wouldn't printing more money just reduce the debt's real value to it's internal creditors (pensions)?

Wouldn't that also be against what the current government is trying to achieve?

Yes. My answer was assuming that Greece never took up Euro in the first place. In that case, it would probably issue debt in Drachmas (although not all countries do - e.g. Argentina issued it's debt in USD under NY jurisdiction, because having defaulted so many times, it couldn't sell bonds in Pesos under its own jurisdiction).

I expected that Germans might be sympathetic to a country whose economically struggling population are turning, in electorally significant numbers, to Fascism.

I expect that people do not judge Germans by one German's opinion.

> if he actually believes he can control the fate of his country even so slightly, I'm afraid he's delusional

He's the elected leader of sovereign nation. If you don't think repudiating the debt is an option (good or bad), I'm afraid he's not the delusional one. If that's not "control" of the fate of the country, I don't know what is.

Oh come on. "Elected leader of a sovereign nation". You gotta be kidding me. Merkel is the elected leader of a sovereign nation significantly more powerful than Greece will ever be, and yet, Obama is listening to her phone calls and she can't do anything about it.

One of the first things he did was meet with officials from other EU countries, no? Concluding that he's not gonna do anything for the time being. Go figure.

You're cynical. The tone of the open letter is nothing compared to the tone of your comment. If you truely believe that we Europeans aren't living in a democracy anymore and that politics shouldn't be about the peoples wellbeing in the first place then stop worrying about PEGIDA or Dschungelcamp and do something about that. You stance of "this is how the world works and I'm lucky to be on the winning team" is both short sighted and highly egoistic. I would be ashamed if many of our "fellow germans" would agree with your point of view.

I am not worried about PEGIDA. I am worried about the mischaracterisations of PEGIDA. I am also /very/ worried about Antifa.

Why are you more worried about anti-fascists than about fascists?

Because the "anti"-fascists are fascists and PEGIDA are anti-fascists. Their anti-fascism is one of the reasons why they are against Islam -- anyone who is against suppresion, violence, and fascism ought to be against Islam, just as they should be against Communism and Nazism.

I don't think you can call PEGIDA antifascists, since they're, well, far-right nationalists who hate immigrants and have violent tendencies. Just because the Antifa organization holds an intellectually inconsistent position doesn't mean the reverse position from Antifa is actually correct.

> Germany is one of the riches countries on this planet. We will do almost anything to keep it that way.

If the only practical effect of European union will be to enrich Germany at the expense of its neighbors, European union will fail, and rightly so.

> I appreciate that he needs to sell his own agency to his people, but if he actually believes he can control the fate of his country even so slightly, I'm afraid he's delusional.

Just a suggestion: before Germans start telling other people to get over the idea of having any control over their own affairs, it would probably be wise to reflect on how well that message went over the last two times they tried it.

> Just a suggestion: before Germans start telling other people to get over the idea of having any control over their own affairs, it would probably be wise to reflect on how well that message went over the last two times they tried it.

You should have gone with how we suck up the the US all the time; that would have been a way better put down. Given what went on in Greece over the last couple of years, I'd recommend you drop the nazi references for the time being.

Indeed. There are many better examples of post-war soft power projection through economic meddling that this case could be compared to.

Not the nazis. They are far on the other side of the economic meddling coin.

If you really mean "the last two times" and not "the last time", you should probably read some history books that were not meant for school children.