Fox News
November 3, 2011
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel emerged from emergency talks Wednesday where there was just one topic on the agenda: Greece.
They’d summoned Prime Minister George Papandreou to explain himself for having "outrageously" announced that he would let the Greek people vote on their continued membership of the Eurozone and, more specifically, whether they’re prepared to accept greater austerity as the price for continued financial support.
Only in Brussels could the thought of consulting the populace be more controversial than deliberately rigging your economic data to get into the Euro in the first place.
Have no doubt about it, Greece is bankrupt. Without the billions of dollars that the EU and IMF are pouring into Athens, Papandreou’s government couldn’t pay their bills. But there is no such thing as a free lunch, and Greece has had to impose some of the most stringent austerity measures in Europe to get the cash.
Many of these reforms—raising the retirement age, cutting its bloated welfare state, reducing over-generous public pay— are much-needed, but there is no economic growth to cushion the austerity blow. Daily rioting on the streets of Greece have left three people dead. It makes the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations almost look like a knitting circle.
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