Greece: "there was a problem. Even in a single country, it is not easy to run a single currency."

Arrogance of Europe’s ruling class

brought ruin to Greece

BY BRUCE ANDERSON

Some of the answers seem to lie in Greek mythology. Procrustes’ bed: too short, and you were stretched until you fitted: too long, and bits were chopped off until your dimensions matched the space. That is not a bad analogy for Greece and the European single currency. The Trojan Horse: “Fear Greeks bearing gifts,” said one priest, but apart from Cassandra, no-one took any notice. The modern equivalent should have been “fear Greeks bearing central government financial figures” and still no-one took any notice.

But Greece is a symptom as well as a crisis. Everyone who had given the subject two minutes’ thought knew that it was absurd to allow such a backward country to join the single currency. The fiscal system was a shambles; government spending was out of control; public administration was burdened by a Pelion piled on Ossa of public dishonesty. One or two Cassandras had been proclaiming the need for reform. No-one was paying attention.

That all leads us to the outer core of the problem: Euro-arrogance. In Brussels, those in charge knew that the government statistics which the Greeks would present as part of the price for entry amounted to a Trojan Horse full of monopoly money. But there were two assumptions. First, that as Greece was only about two percent of the Eurozone’s GDP, its moral delinquencies could be swept up in the small change. Second, that the great European idea was far too important to be delayed by a few million fictitious olive trees.

This takes us to the inner core: the danger of intellectuals in politics. By definition, intellectuals are intelligent. In practice, they often have a religious temperament.

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