Negotiating the Future

There were two headlines almost side-by-side, for a few minutes at least, on CNN Money page recently. One was about a failed meeting of EU finance ministers attempting to resolve the Greece crisis. The IMF Director was quoted as saying scornfully that “What we need are adults in the room.” One columnist commenting on the crisis remarked that Greece’s problem was that they lacked the competence to manage their finances properly. The scorn at Greece’s “childlike” attitude was obvious. Since then, other negotiations have failed and Greece faces potential default and departure from the EU after Tuesday. We shall see. But one interesting comment posted on CNN about the crisis was, “Wouldn’t Greece be better off owing more?”

The other CNN headline was about the anger and derision leveled at school administrators for disciplining a cafeteria worker who fed a hungry child who had no money to pay for his meal. Hmm. A malnourished child not in debt versus a healthy child in debt – how does that come out? Think of the budgetary impact if that were wide spread.  That was not a real issue of course, for everyone’s ire at school administrators reflected a shared view that the future of a child weighed far more than the cost of a school lunch.

Perhaps there should be more children in the room when Greece and Germany are negotiating, to represent the many Greek families struggling with a real unemployment rate now estimated at over 30 percent and a 25 percent drop in Greek GDP brought on by withdrawal of liquidity and demands for enforced austerity from the Germans. It might remind participants of the human costs of what is at once a deep cultural conflict between nations and an even deeper threat both to the EU and to the future of the nation state.

As a cultural conflict it is a whopper. Germany possesses both a “Protestant Ethic” regard for frugality as a virtue and an export-based economy which requires low wages and overheads as a key to success. Their culture imposes a stern preference for austerity as the solution to all problems (except at Oktoberfest.) But doing it the German Way is just not in the cards for countries like Greece. Over millennia, Greece’s major exports have been Democracy, Philosophy, the Olympic Games, architecture and small amounts of olive oil, feta and wine. Imagine telling Greek leaders not to listen to the voices of their people! Greece does not make heavy-duty export items. People come to Greece to experience the good life, if only briefly. That is their major product. The Greek crisis arose not because of Greece doing anything different from what they have always done, but because the global financial panic in 2007 caused an abrupt withdrawal of funds by international financial corporations and consequent loss of liquidity. And the German remedy destroys all the things Greece has always been attractive for. Tourists do not come to view factories and starving children.

There’s been a lot of furor about Greece leaving the EU, an organization they probably should never have joined in the first place. Their departure certainly would highlight the built-in fragility of a group that is too tightly bound to function with separate policies and too loosely bound to function as a unified group. And it could threaten the future of that alliance. But the real conflict is not state versus state, but corporations versus states. Greece is functioning as a traditional state, while Germany is serving as the voice of international financial corporations. If Greece becomes a “failed state” as some fear, they will be the first nation to fall under the onslaught of corporations, a signal that international corporations are not only capable of destroying nations in the name of profits, but are prepared to do so.. And it is the state that serves as both the voice and the protector of their people. Corporate profit calculations do not include the cost of mal-nourished children and ruined lives.  That is why remembering children is important in those negotiations rooms. If remedies, such as debt forgiveness, are not found that preserve traditional Greece the future of the small traditional nation state looks bleak indeed.