Re: ‘The end of Europe as we know it’
Just to thank you for elucidating another perspective on the people?s desperation in Greece.
Normally, I would be on ?the people’s? side in these matters, but oddly, I have taken another tack in recent months — possibly because the way the media (mis)represents the actualities — and sided with the European money powers-that-be against the people of Greece, saying to myself, ?The Greeks just don’t realize the cost of their lifestyle and need to get real.?
Now, however, you’ve brought me back to my senses via your analogy of the financial earthquake and how the nations on the margins tremble. Of course the issue is global, and the money epicenters suffer least — NYC, London, Paris and Berlin (we’ll not discuss the Far East). To bring it down to this writer’s perspective, I am nearing the end of my career, and have less money and security than ever, and look forward to… well, I’m too afraid to look forward.
There is such an imbalance now between the rich and the rest of us, it’s incomprehensible. There are people in NYC and around the world with untold riches — as perhaps always but more unacceptable than ever — wealth beyond our wildest imagination, while in the street, Greeks are crying from tear gas, shrieking with rage about the destruction of any hope they may have had for themselves and their families and their futures.
I am one of them, though living here as an American and an impoverished New Yorker. It?s the same issue: a shocking imbalance between the haves and the have-nots. Again, I have to emphasize though you may already know, in my work and on a daily basis, I am made aware of the billions of dollars that have piled up in the coffers of the international few, billions and billions, while the other billions — of people — are going daily with less and less.
I’ll be watching the riots in Greece, Spain and the riots across North Africa, which are all basically about the same thing — injustice, social and financial (yes, yes, I know life’s unfair) — and wondering if the rioting will get better or worse, and where.
I appreciate what you had to say: It helps balance what I have read and heard before and elsewhere. To dust off that old and familiar word, I feel a new solidarity with all of us who have been excluded from a fair share of the world’s wealth. Thank you and best regards.
Paul Kearney
I read the article ?The end of Europe as we know it? and wish to comment that the push towards having Greece join the EU was one of the greatest mistakes that the EU core could ever have allowed to happen. I’m not an economist nor a politician, but I don’t think that the EU did not know Greece’s financial issues and if they did they turned a blind eye perhaps planning that this would happen.
Conspiracy theory? Perhaps. But has it not always been the desire of the northern-tier countries in the EU to have a port by the sea? I place the blame squarely with the EU and its henchman, the IMF, for what is happening. Perhaps Greece should default and return to its currency and resist the EU and the IMF. Greece needs to set the example for the other countries in the same predicament.
Emanuel Vergis
A good article, with some points to ponder about how we can make Europe work better than it does. Did you really need to drag that idiot Thatcher into it? She hadn’t a clue about much beyond Famous Grouse and what her millionaire husband told her would be good for his investments.
Chris Blackmore
UK
