Merkel: I got your debt payment right here.
He’s right about that.
And the Greeks never paid reparations for all those Persians killed at Thermopylae, either... (/s)
“It Has No Standing To Lecture Other Nations”
Maybe not, but I doubt they are obligated to continue paying for the people of Greece forever either.
The ramblings of a socialist. Perhaps he should call his new debt restructuring plan “Versailles II”. What an ahole.
And now I'm just supposed to know that Germany never repaid its debts.
Huh? What?
Britain is paying off its WWI debt this year. That's been questioned though. How do you separate out one part of a massive national debt and attribute it to one specific loan period?
Merkel: I got your debt payment right here.
“However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt.”
Well, the French were too meek to call their bluff and tell them where to stick their reparations. Probably still haven’t learned that lesson, to this day.
Piketty is lying his ass off.
1. The Treaty of Versailles was not only vindictive, it demanded reparations from Germany and forbade Germany from running an export surplus with which to make the payments. The only possible way Germany could have complied with the terms of the treaty would have been to discover gold within its territory.
John Maynard Keynes wrote about this in his little book The Economic Consequences of the Peace. He didn’t get all the details right, but he was absolutely correct as to the effects of the treaty. France and England bear part of the responsibility for WWII because of that treaty.
2. We, the U.S., did not ratify that treaty and, after Harding was elected, made a separate peace with Germany and each of the other belligerents. Harding started, and the Coolidge concluded negotiations for the Dawes Plan to deal with the debt problem.
3. We, the U.S., would have none of the vindictiveness of Versailles following WWII. Instead, through the Marshall Plan, we sought to build up the democracies of Europe, including those of former enemies as well as those of former allies. We did not take any territory after WWI or WWII, nor make reparations demands after either. We’re a decent country that views wars as evil and the result of evil governments, not of the people of the nations. We view them mostly as victims themselves.
4. Greece does not have a debt problem because of war. It has a debt problem because of welfare socialism. Even if all its debts were wiped out, they’d still have a budget deficit to deal with and nobody in their right mind will “lend” any more money to them. Lending money to Greeks is like lending money to crack addicts. You’re not going to be repaid. Not ever. The modern country of Greece has never repaid its foreign debt and has repeatedly wiped out its domestic debt through inflation.
5. Greece’s foreign debt has already been reduced. Twice.
Piketty can’t be so stupid to not know these things. It must be that he is such an anti-capitalist and anti-American, radical left-wing progressive socialist that there is no connection between reality and what he says.
Hey, maybe he could be an advisor to Pope Francis.
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