It's also beyond my (and almost everybody else's) level of comprehension why all the fiscal & monetary hawkishness coming from German ruling elite. All the ideas & measures for stronger euro, more austerity, no transfer union, no (more) eurozone solidarity etc.
OK, I get it some Germans are victims of nostalgia ... craving for strong Deutsche Mark and "good old times" (also a consequence of mainly US financial help & patronate over Germany after WWII, making Germany strong again - and allowing it to become a pillar of EU). But those were different times. Different situation in Europe and in the world. So those times are irreversibly gone, and are not coming back. They even can't.
So, then came the fall of the iron curtain, the German unification, the Euro, the EU expansion ... New times. Different times. New, greater challenges. It's like when your company grows from a local garage business to a proper multimilion global corporation. Completely different organisational structure is needed, the challenges are different, you have to care about a lot more of issues & problems. You have to man up, and to profesionalize yourself & your enterprise.
That's what happened to Germany after 1990. And first it seemed Germany is up to the new role ... with Kohl, and then Schroeder. But then came "the She", who has been not up to the role. She can handle the crisis well. Just telling the folks that everything's gonna be all right is not proper crisis handling & management.
So ... Let's say that our American friends were very much responsible (others too, since they had all been playing the US game) for the financial crisis in 2007. For which EU and eurozone weren't ready. Why?
As said: after acquiring Euro, Germany needed its value to be under control - meaning Euro should not be too strong (since that would hurt German export). That's also why Germany acquired Euro - since Deutsche Mark would be just to strong, and monetary measures would be necessary (QE, printing more money, lowering interests rates) to devalue the DM, probably causing huge inflation.
So, instead Germany allowed weaker EU members to join the eurozone (like Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and some of the EE countries) to keep Euro weaker - due to economic & political & fiscal instabilities in those countries.
So, Germany - despite being fiscally and economically strong enjoyed relatively weak Euro, and the German industry profited much from that fact.
Sure consumption / consumer power dropped, standard of middle class dropped - but Germany enjoyed high rate of employment & high rate of welfare.
So, when financial crisis happened in 2007 ... (more to come soon (TBC) ... Windows 10 latest update keeps my laptop crashing sporadically! Fu*k you Microsoft!!!!) .... some new eurozone suffered a lot since they were not ready for the eurozone membership in the first place but Germany needed them there anyway, so they were allowed to join. Especially eg. Greece that was a buffer zone between Europe and the ME - and was strategically important for Europe, EU, Germany, NATO etc ... so it was allowed to cheat and lie to ECB and to EU about the Greek financial & fiscal fitness.
The crisis in so called PIGS states (Portugal, Ireland, Greece & Spain) caused a lot of intervention from ECB, EU (and also IMF) - the so called Troika - where especially Germany had a leading role & also motive (to save German banks that were exposed in those countries). And then turning to strict austerity in Germany, and also across eurozone, disabling a quick(er) economic recovery in Europe.
And that extreme austerity caused some serious problem in those countries (eg extremely high youth unemployment rates), and almost a complete breakdown of all the state / social sub-systems in Greece. And Greece had to agree to some very hard concessions to get some help. And it was helped but recovery was slow and painful.
And when the immigrant crisis hit in 2015, Greece was still not fully recovered. Still in quite poor financial & fiscal state. EU (and Germany) was reluctant to give Greece more money for the handling of the immigrant influx (nor Frontex - the EU border control & customs units -wasn't ready for extensive deployment) And was not able (nor it was willing) to take responsibility for all the immigrant influx - especially when most of them were heading to Germany (since German immigration office had been very active in promoting immigrant rights across the internet - and many in the ME and beyond acknowledged that).
The Greek revenge to Germany was very sweet. They opened the borders, and so did all the countries on the so called Western Balkan Route - from Greece all up to Austria.
All "the She" could do was to open the German borders for all the immigrant influx - otherwise the whole Balkan would be set on fire again ... countries deploying military on the fragile (and historically disputed) borders across the Balkans. It was the lesser evil. But the real issue was the Willkommenskultur in Germany - which caused all the influx towards Germany (and also eg Sweden) when ME became unstable.
My point? Most of the issues arose from the improper German handling of the crisis situations. Before and during the crisis. The lack of proper vision, lack of proper challenges & proper threats detection ... Were German ruling elite so myopic? So blind? Or perhaps the advisers to the Chancellor & the government are incompetent? Or perhaps BND didn't do all the "homework" properly?
Whatever it was it points towards German ruling elite incompetence, unprofessionalism, lack of vision, lack of foreign affairs knowledge etc.
It's like Germany had been bubbled up from 1945 - 1990, and than thrown into the pond ... to lead the post-Cold War Europe (after French powers faded; and after UK wasn't even interested in EU affairs anymore .. ok, they never have been, honestly). They did something right - under the US guidance: unifying West & East Germany, accepting EE countries into EU club ... But then, after "the She" was appointed Chancellor, everything went down.
Not that all is her fault. Not at all. The foundation far all the troubles was set years before. But she hasn't been up to the challenge. Is she incompetent? Are her advisers incompetent? Is the entire political elite incompetent? Is it the BND incompetent? I don't know. I just know they are not up to the challenges. Sadly.
The situation is complicated and it will be very hard to solve. A wrong move here or there could make a spark that would set the whole EU or world on fire. Especially when very, very dangerous people are in power in USA, China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, ME countries etc. And many rulers (and the entire ruling elite) in Western Europe are incompetent - including German & British "the Shes".
Sometimes status quo is better than any false "progress" ... since it could be a "progress" for the worse. As said many times: populist, extremist powers, parties & leaders ARE NOT a proper solution. They will even worsen the situation. Especially in divided Europe. Unstable & divided "my country first" Europe / EU is an easy prey for the bigger fish like US, China, Russia ...
So, again ... Germany, please man up & lead. Stop the blaming game, stop playing a victim & stop searching for shortcuts - because there are none! You're the adult in this house!
