{"id":53965,"date":"2015-02-23T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=53965"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:26:05","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:26:05","slug":"athenae-delenda-est","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/02\/athenae-delenda-est\/","title":{"rendered":"Athenae Delenda Est"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Paul<\/a>

Paul Krugman<\/p><\/div>\n

16 Feb 2015 – <\/em>OK, this is amazing, and not in a good way. Greek talks with finance ministers have broken up<\/a> over this draft statement<\/a>, which the Greeks have described as \u201cabsurd.\u201d It\u2019s certainly remarkable. On my reading, here\u2019s the key sentence:<\/p>\n

The Greek authorities committed to ensure appropriate primary fiscal surpluses and financing in order to guarantee debt sustainability in line with the targets agreed in the November 2012 Eurogroup statement. Moreover, any new measures should be funded, and not endanger financial stability.<\/em><\/p>\n

Translation (if you look back at that Eurogroup statement): no give whatsoever on the primary surplus of 4.5 percent of GDP.<\/p>\n

There was absolutely no way Tsipras and company could sign on to such a statement, which makes you wonder what the Eurogroup ministers think they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

I guess it\u2019s possible that they\u2019re just fools \u2014 that they don\u2019t understand that Greece 2015 is not Ireland 2010, and that this kind of bullying won\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, and I guess more likely, they\u2019ve decided to push Greece over the edge. Rather than give any ground, they prefer to see Greece forced into default and probably out of the euro, with the presumed economic wreckage as an object lesson to anyone else thinking of asking for relief. That is, they\u2019re setting out to impose the economic equivalent of the \u201cCarthaginian peace\u201d France sought to impose on Germany after World War I.<\/p>\n

Either way, the lack of wisdom is astonishing and appalling.<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

Paul Krugman<\/em> received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. He joined <\/em>The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. He is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rather than give any ground, they prefer to see Greece forced into default and probably out of the euro, with the presumed economic wreckage as an object lesson to anyone else thinking of asking for relief. That is, they\u2019re setting out to impose the economic equivalent of the \u201cCarthaginian peace\u201d France sought to impose on Germany after World War I. The lack of wisdom is astonishing and appalling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nobel-laureates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}