Posted on 10/09/2012 11:35:07 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has stamped her seal of approval on Greece's austerity plan and vowed to stand by the country as "partner and friend", signalling almost certain approval for the next tranche of EU-IMF Troika aid.
The German leader – protected by 6,000 police – braved hostile crowds in Syntagma Square and Nazi insults in the Greek press as she made her first visit to Athens since the debt crisis erupted three years ago. The Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper said Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had an easier time visiting Greece in 1954, just a decade after Wehrmacht occupation.
The unflappable Mrs Merkel offered a symbolic message of solidarity for the Greek people – now in their fifth year of recession, with an economy reduced by 22pc and youth unemployment at 55pc.
"I have not come here as teacher or judge," she said after meeting premier Antonis Samaras. "I come in the full awareness that the Greek people are going through a difficult period, and that many are suffering badly.
"You are making progress, you are coming to grips with the hard task ahead. It is in all our interests to ensure that Europe regains credibility, and to make it clear that we members of the eurozone can solve our problems."
The conciliatory tone marks a clear shift in German policy, a recognition after months of hardline talk by her ministers that a full debacle in Greece would be hard to contain. "This is all about Spain," said Mats Persson from Open Europe. "They concluded that it would be too risky to kick Greece out now: contagion would spread to Spain and lead to a euro break-up."
Christian Schulz, from the German bank Berenberg, said Mrs Merkel has come under heavy pressure from the US and NATO
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Well, well... Germany is going “all in”.
...With off-suit 7 and 2 in the hole.
LOL, good luck with that!
They are just going to keep digging until they all become Zimbabwe “together”... then they will say the crisis forces them to create a single federal EUSSR to “solve” it.
” NUTZ “
I loved the pictures of the Greek demonstrators dressed as Nazis; 60 years later and the Germans can’t get the Greeks to “get right”. Germany has its “greater reich”, and is having no better luck with it than it did back then...
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