А трябва ли да сме изненадани че гърците исвен да крадат са прибягвали и до лъжи когато са се натискали да приемат еврото а и сега пак лъжат. Защо на тях им дават да лъжат а нас ни хващат.
[
www.project-syndicate.org]
Moreover, the Greek government turned out to be untrustworthy. In 2004, Greece admitted that it had lied about the size of its deficit ever since 2000 – precisely the years used to assess Greece’s application to join the euro zone. In other words, Greece qualified only by cheating. In November 2009, it appeared that the Greek government lied once again, this time about the deficit in 2008 and the projected deficit for 2009.
--------
Current European rules prohibit other European countries or the EU itself from helping Greece. But recent history teaches us that European rules are made to be broken. Already, many (former) politicians and economists (no prizes for guessing whence they mostly hail) are proposing that the EU issue its own sovereign debt, which would alleviate the problems of countries such as Greece and Italy.
But such schemes would come at a high cost. They would punish fiscally prudent governments, as interest rates would inevitably increase in countries like the Netherlands or Germany. Just a 0.1% increase in borrowing costs would mean hundreds of millions of euros in extra debt-service payments a year.
Moreover, even if the plan for EU sovereign debt never takes off, fiscally prudent euro-zone countries will face higher borrowing costs. As financial integration in Europe deepens, the lack of fiscal discipline in one or more euro-zone countries will push up interest rates throughout the currency area.
A member of the euro zone cannot be expelled under current rules, allowing countries like Greece to lie, manipulate, blackmail, and collect more and more EU funds. In the long term, this will be disastrous for greater European cooperation, because public support will whither.
Europe should therefore consider bearing the high short-term costs of changing the rules of the game. If expelling even one member could establish a more credible mechanism for guaranteeing fiscal discipline in the euro zone than the SGP and financial fines have proven to be, the price would be more than worth it.
_________________
Редактиран 1 път(и).Последна редакция на 2010-02-08 08:21 от Ivel.
