{"id":187235,"date":"2013-05-06T20:14:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T01:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/05\/06\/oskar-lafontaine-realizes-the-error-of-his-ways\/"},"modified":"2013-05-06T20:14:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T01:14:00","slug":"oskar-lafontaine-realizes-the-error-of-his-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/05\/06\/oskar-lafontaine-realizes-the-error-of-his-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"Oskar Lafontaine Realizes the Error of His Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The former German Finance Minister, who shepherded the implementation of Euro, has now declared that has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/finance\/financialcrisis\/10039329\/German-euro-founder-calls-for-catastrophic-currency-to-be-broken-up.html\">declared that it is a truly bad idea<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;The economic situation is worsening from month to month, and unemployment has reached a level that puts democratic structures ever more in doubt,&#8221; he said.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;The Germans have not yet realised that southern Europe, including France, will be forced by their current misery to fight back against German hegemony sooner or later,&#8221; he said, blaming much of the crisis on Germany&#8217;s wage squeeze to gain export share.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Mr Lafontaine said on the parliamentary website of Germany&#8217;s Left Party that Chancellor Angela Merkel will &#8220;awake from her self-righteous slumber&#8221; once the countries in trouble unite to force a change in crisis policy at Germany&#8217;s expense. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Mr Lafontaine said he backed EMU but no longer believes it is sustainable. &#8220;Hopes that the creation of the euro would force rational economic behaviour on all sides were in vain,&#8221; he said, adding that the policy of forcing Spain, Portugal, and Greece to carry out internal devaluations was a &#8220;catastrophe&#8221;.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Mr Lafontaine was labelled &#8220;Europe&#8217;s Most Dangerous Man&#8221; by The Sun after he called for a &#8220;united Europe&#8221; and the &#8220;end of the nation state&#8221; in 1998. The euro was launched on January 1 1999, with bank notes following three years later. He later left the Social Democrats to found the Left Party. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You will note that his critique is not the standard political wisdom in Germany, which turns economics into a nativist morality play about the respective national virtues of different nations.<\/p>\n<p>Seriously, we know what happens Germans base their policies on a vision of their own superior national virtue, there are still people who remember the <b>last<\/b> time, and it is <b>not<\/b> pretty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The former German Finance Minister, who shepherded the implementation of Euro, has now declared that has declared that it is a truly bad idea: &#8220;The economic situation is worsening from month to month, and unemployment has reached a level that puts democratic structures ever more in doubt,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The Germans have not yet realised &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,984,964,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-europe","category-foreign-relations","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}