Picture the scene: several climbers linked together by a single rope, elastic, exhausted after a hard climb of a peak never reached, fighting halfway point to the top.
As they are getting closer to the summit, on a steep path, on the edge of the void, the last climber on the rope, exhausted, slips and falls down the ravine. The lead climbers resist and the elastic rope absorbs the shock. The last climbers find a fragile support on the steep face of the mountain. For a moment everything is going well. No one wants to think about the worst case scenario; instead of helping each other along the way by pooling their resources and climbing up again quietly, climbers are fighting. Those below are crying for help. Those above are telling them they have to try harder.
In the end, those below say that they will do better on their own. Those above also think that it is much better to cut the rope. In the dispute, without anyone’s permission, the rope breaks. The last climbers fall at the bottom of the ravine and are crushed. The lead climbers receive the elastic straight in their face and, unbalanced, they too fall.
Some vultures then seize the remains of those killed.
This absurd story is that of today’s Europe. In the ascent of Mount Europe, all have faltered; and Greece fell; the others have helped a bit; not enough. The Greeks are now reluctant to leave the climbing team of the euro and fend for themselves. The Germans, as the lead climbers, want the Greeks to manage to go up the slope all alone.
If the rope were to break (by the voluntary exit of Greece, or the German stubbornness, or by the counter closures of the European Central Bank for Greece), do we measure the impact? Does Greece measure that its living standard will fall by at least 10% in one year? Does Germany realize that its own Central Bank will lose immediately more than its trust’s equity value and its foreign exchange reserves? Does France understand that it will lose as much as Germany and that some of its banks will lose the equivalent of twice their stock-market value? Does the Eurozone understand that each European country (and first Spain, Portugal and even Italy) can panic and suffer the same fate as Greece, obliterating the euro? Does the European Union thus understand that it will pay a higher price than the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany in 1919, with the consequences that we know? Does the world realize that it can thus enter into a major and lasting depression, next to which the current recession is only a soft lull?
Does everyone understand that the world’s rich (and primarily the wealthy Greeks who left the country before the crisis), will be able to buy land and businesses in Europe for nothing, taking advantage, as always, of the disaster of the neighbors to make a fortune?
Will Europe understand in time, that is to say Wednesday, that it has no alternative but the union of its forces, around a federal budget, by providing resources to invest?
After the crisis has been averted, will the world understand that, as there is bad debt and good debt, there is good and bad growth?
This is therefore a matter of urgency! Not only to save the climbing team, but to give a meaning to its ascent.