Updated 6/28/2015
I'll get to Greece presently, but first I want to whip you around Friedman-style for a minute.
Remember the story 20 years ago of how the EU was going to force all the member countries to make cheese exclusively from pasteurized milk, thus basically destroying the ancient and glorious tradition of French, Spanish, English, and Italian raw-milk cheeses that are to dairy products what the symphony orchestra is to music? Have you ever wondered how that went down, or why your Camembert doesn't taste any different, although come to think of it it never has tasted quite the way it did that time you were in France?
The whole thing was bullshit. There was never any such EU plan, it was a stupid rumor. That particular bureaucrat in Brussels doesn't exist. Your Camembert isn't any better than you think it is, but it's because of the US authorities, who forbid the sale of any raw-milk cheese that has been aged less than 60 days, meaning
What the Brussels bureaucrats are concerned with is making sure that every employee in Europe has a contract and can't be terminated without a reason, and no fewer than 20 days annual paid leave, and all those standards, imposed on all the countries, rich and poor alike, and I'm for it, even if some of them are a little crazy. (When conservatives say such regulation is bad for business they mean it's bad for the rate of return on capital in relation to growth, whether they know it or not, or diminishing the excess of r > g, and I say fine.)
Every time I put up one of those pieces trying to suggest there's an off-chance the Trans-Pacific Partnership might not be the worst thing ever to happen in the history of the United States, it's at bottom because I'm an anti-exceptionalist, I believe there are things wrong with the US, as there are with other countries, and I believe we need more and denser international engagement on a non-exceptionalist footing, on economic matters, sort of wherever they come from; as I said at one point not long ago, the European Union started off as a trade deal. The multilateral work doesn't bring the community down to the level of its most mediocre member, but rather forces the laggards up. I want to see Australia forced to give up on its coal industry, and Vietnam forced to treat its workers humanely, and the US forced to allow competition in the pharmaceuticals market, just the way these things have been happening in Europe since the 1950s. Don't have much reason to expect that the TPP will do that, obviously, but I'm damn sure doing nothing won't.
And then there's the European Central Bank and its vile treatment of members with credit problems, climaxing with Greece, which seems like some kind of effort just to prove that I'm wrong about all of this.
Update: Krugman's blog post, posted while I was writing, agrees and has some more important things to say, in particular on the consequences of this endlessly repeated pattern for European politics:
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| Image via Wikipedia. |
Remember the story 20 years ago of how the EU was going to force all the member countries to make cheese exclusively from pasteurized milk, thus basically destroying the ancient and glorious tradition of French, Spanish, English, and Italian raw-milk cheeses that are to dairy products what the symphony orchestra is to music? Have you ever wondered how that went down, or why your Camembert doesn't taste any different, although come to think of it it never has tasted quite the way it did that time you were in France?
The whole thing was bullshit. There was never any such EU plan, it was a stupid rumor. That particular bureaucrat in Brussels doesn't exist. Your Camembert isn't any better than you think it is, but it's because of the US authorities, who forbid the sale of any raw-milk cheese that has been aged less than 60 days, meaning
cheeses like Tomme de Savoie and Gruyere can be imported, but none of those snow-white cylinders of fresh goat cheese, disks of creamy Brie de Meaux, or any young cheese marked ''au lait cru.''Since Camembert is aged for just two weeks the stuff you get here has always been made from pasteurized milk; you have to go to Europe to get the real thing. We can get our own terrific artisanal raw-milk cheeses in states where it is legal as long as they aren't snuck across state lines and therefore subject to federal law, and of course sometimes we can get out-of-state ones too, thanks to hippie Vermont cheese smugglers risking arrest to move that contraband chèvre over the border.
What the Brussels bureaucrats are concerned with is making sure that every employee in Europe has a contract and can't be terminated without a reason, and no fewer than 20 days annual paid leave, and all those standards, imposed on all the countries, rich and poor alike, and I'm for it, even if some of them are a little crazy. (When conservatives say such regulation is bad for business they mean it's bad for the rate of return on capital in relation to growth, whether they know it or not, or diminishing the excess of r > g, and I say fine.)
Every time I put up one of those pieces trying to suggest there's an off-chance the Trans-Pacific Partnership might not be the worst thing ever to happen in the history of the United States, it's at bottom because I'm an anti-exceptionalist, I believe there are things wrong with the US, as there are with other countries, and I believe we need more and denser international engagement on a non-exceptionalist footing, on economic matters, sort of wherever they come from; as I said at one point not long ago, the European Union started off as a trade deal. The multilateral work doesn't bring the community down to the level of its most mediocre member, but rather forces the laggards up. I want to see Australia forced to give up on its coal industry, and Vietnam forced to treat its workers humanely, and the US forced to allow competition in the pharmaceuticals market, just the way these things have been happening in Europe since the 1950s. Don't have much reason to expect that the TPP will do that, obviously, but I'm damn sure doing nothing won't.
And then there's the European Central Bank and its vile treatment of members with credit problems, climaxing with Greece, which seems like some kind of effort just to prove that I'm wrong about all of this.
On today's news, just a couple of remarks:
- The Tsipras plan to hold a referendum makes perfect sense and is indeed necessary. His government won the election on a very specific program, which the German finance minister is determined to stop his party from carrying out. He doesn't have a mandate to do what Schäuble wants him to do; indeed he has a mandate to refuse to do it. He can't do it, in a democracy, without consulting the voters first. In rejecting this idea, the European finance ministers are showing that they don't give a shit about democracy and regard themselves as colonial authorities.
- As Krugman in particular keeps saying, austerity doesn't work; and anybody watching the situation day by day can see that a Greece that complies with Schäuble's austerity plan will never get out of debt, because it is basically being prevented from making any money for the foreseeable future, a generation and longer. It will be like an entire nation in debtor's prison. The object is evidently not to rescue the country but to punish it. For the crimes of previous governments, their corruption and featherbedding and failure to collect the taxes owed by the wealthy? Or the crime of this government, for trying to do things a different way but not showing enough respect to Herr Doktor Schäuble?
Update: Krugman's blog post, posted while I was writing, agrees and has some more important things to say, in particular on the consequences of this endlessly repeated pattern for European politics:
As a political matter, the big losers from this process have been the parties of the center-left, whose acquiescence in harsh austerity — and hence abandonment of whatever they supposedly stood for — does them far more damage than similar policies do to the center-right.And a hope that Tsipras and Syriza may somehow be breaking the pattern.
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