Politico
February 13, 2012
I grew up in a different Greece — where saving, not debt, was a virtue. Everyone I knew had a savings account, and felt it wrong to borrow money.
Now Greece is trading more austerity measures for a 130-billion euro loan to avoid default. Unfortunately for the citizens of my native country, this strategy will likely send Greece back to where she was in 1949 — a country destroyed during World War II by German occupation and a subsequent communist war.
I hope I am wrong. But fear I am right.
Greece should have never joined the euro-zone. Had there been a referendum in 2000, we never would have joined in 2001. But there wasn’t.
Unequal and different nations should not share a common currency. Greece abandoned the fixed exchange rate in 1973, and began the slippery slope toward the common currency trap. The social cost has been infinitely negative.
After the Socialist Party gaining power in 1981, Greece changed drastically. We accepted European subsidies, ostensibly meant to improve competitiveness. Who knows where that money went. But it certainly wasn’t used to bolster technology or improve the once-strong agricultural, shipping, tourism, textile and other manufacturing sectors.
Athens’s 30-year history of government waste was the prelude to its decision to join the European Union. If we had taken our time and first put our financial house in order, a gradual entry might have worked.
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