This rainy morning,after turning on my laptop I started looking at the tweets I've received at that marvellous software called http://echofon.com/, through which I manage my Twitter via Firefox,like RSS.
Well, one of these tweets came from the Greek newspaper TA NEA-THE NEWS and had the very 'provocative' title "Germany is responsible for the economic crisis in Greece". Yiorgos Pappas, a Greek reporter at the Greek service of Deutsche Welle and of the newspaper,interviewed Heiner Flassbeck. Flassbeck is a former minister of Economics in Germany and is an acting director at the Dept. of Globalization and Strategic Development at UΝCΤΑD.
Flassbeck argues that the problem facing Greece, and other European countries, is not just their fault. Germany has severe responsibilities for that situation. At the same time countries like Greece, Portugal,Spain and Italy had a deficit at their transactions while Germany had a surplus, which led to a constant dubbing of the salaries at Germany. As Flassbeck states, Germany took most of the advantages which came from the Eyrozone. However they didn't try to balance the situation and we were driven at a Eurozone of two levels with a great distance between them. Germany didn't follow the general standard set at Maastricht about the salaries, which says that the increase of salaries should be equal to 2% of the inflation plus the national percentage of increase of productivity.
Both Flassbeck and Tilford, at Financial Times, agree that Germany has to take its responsibility about the crucial situation in which the Eurozone is. Flassbeck wonders why Grece is not using these data as an argument to support their position.
It's high time we started thinking of all those who are responsible for the problem even if they are outside the country.
