Germans Forget Postwar History Lesson on Debt Relief in Greece Crisis
JULY 7, 2015
As negotiations between Greece and its creditors stumbled toward breakdown, culminating in a sound rejection on Sunday by Greek voters of the conditions demanded in exchange for a financial lifeline, a vintage photo resurfaced on the Internet.
It shows Hermann Josef Abs, head of the....
Federal Republic of Germany’s
delegation in London on Feb. 27, 1953, signing the agreement that
effectively cut the country’s debts to its foreign creditors in half.
It
is an image that still resonates today. To critics of Germany’s
insistence that Athens must agree to more painful austerity before any
sort of debt relief can be put on the table, it serves as a blunt
retort: The main creditor demanding that Greeks be made to pay for past
profligacy benefited not so long ago from more lenient terms than it is
now prepared to offer.
But
beyond serving as a reminder of German hypocrisy, the image offers a
more important lesson: These sorts of things have been dealt with
successfully before.
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