In response to an FT article by Wolfgang Münchau on 12th February 2016, entitled 'A failure to tell the truth imperils Greece and Europe'
After months of challenging the FT’s complicity with governmental denial on a gamut of economic issues, it is a very pleasant change to highlight an article which drops all the ‘bull’ and acknowledges what anyone with a functioning nasal passage has known for years:
1. Greece is up to its neck in debt that will never be paid back and cannot be serviced
2. Failure to acknowledge this and engage with reality is sapping the lifeblood of the Greek economy and creating very negative consequences for many 'ordinary' people
3. The European Commission, the ECB, the IMF and many of the most powerful political leaders in Europe have been in total denial about this
4. The longer it goes on, the worse the inevitable denouement will be
Over to Wolfgang Münchau:
“Failure to tell truth to power lies beneath much of what is going wrong in Europe right now. It may not be the principal cause of the Greek debt crisis, which is now on its umpteenth iteration. But it is more than a mere contributing factor. You notice it particularly at those moments when others speak the truth, as the staff of the International Monetary Fund have done recently. In its latest survey of the Greek economy it states that “public debt has reached 179 per cent [of gross domestic product] at end-2015, and is unsustainable”. Europeans are not used to such bluntness. The Germans protested. The European Commission protested. So did the Greeks. They all want to keep up the fairy tale of Greek debt sustainability for a little while longer” – Wolfgang Münchau
Thank you
"Failure to tell truth to power lies beneath much of what is going wrong in Europe right now"
Obfuscation and lies of omission have been running this show for over a decade...and the majority of the media have been complicit with it. Neither is this singular to Europe. The cowardly and corrupt nature of our politics is pandemic...the antidote to which is 'tell the truth and shame the devil'. If this is not a conscious purpose of the media then it turns itself into nothing more than a collection of political operatives in fancy suits.
Bravo Mr Münchau