Sir:
it is beyond my abilities to explain to you in a convincing manner how much damage you have done in the last 2-3 years to the stability of the Euro financial system with your ill-informed and often self-contradictory public statements. Sir, may I suggest that you not say anything publicly for a while?
You are, of course, not the only one who deserves such criticism but you are in the most visible position of all! So much more should you be conscious of the impact of every word and/or mimic that you say or project.
Mind you, you (and the “others”) have managed to accomplish something which only 3 years ago no sensible business man would have considered possible. You have transformed in the public’s perception a problem which under normal circumstances would be the most natural thing in the world (namely the fact that a borrower, be that a company or a country, who can no longer service his debts needs to sit down with his creditors to negotiate a rescheduling of those debts) – you, Sir (and the “others”) have transformed that perfectly normal problem into the fear of a Financial Armaggeddon. And today, we witness how such a transformation can become a self-fulfilling prophesy!
Please refrain from public statements and, instead, act more – and more competently – behind the scenes!
Bravo!
ReplyDeletegood letter but can we really blame him? If someone owed you money, wouldn't you do whatever necessary to ensure it's return? Would you say, oh, it's ok, pay it back if you can. If so, then the EU should have made it a gift and not a loan. No one made Greeks take the money, they were not forced to do it anymore than fiscally bankrupt people accept credit cards with high interest rates. There was a situation where these people (or Greece) got themselves into a mess and now are in a bind. I feel for them, but also business is business, why should these bond holders lose their money.
ReplyDeleteJunker is a politician in a political position, President of the Euro Group(PEG) which is made up of the Finance Ministers the 17 nations that use the Euro. One of the things politicians are expected to do is to communicate with their citizens. When Junkers is wearing his PEG hat, that's 330+ million people, most of whom have no idea who he is, where he's from, or what he does.
ReplyDeleteThe PEG is not the Grand Ayatollah of the 17 Finance Ministers, he's their spokesman, he says what they tell him to say.
The media, who have the responsibility to inform the 330+ million do know who, where and what Mr Junkers is. They expect him to have something to say on Eurogroup issues. If he didn't have something to say then tomorrows headlines would read "Junkers Hasn't a Clue About the Euro". People might then ask who gave him the job - someone might answer - your Finance Minister for one :)
The fact that different EU politicians sing from different hymn sheets is because they sing in different cathedrals, to different congregations, in different languages, using different liturgies, with different political cycles ....
A sovereign state with its own currency would conduct negotiations with its bond holders via its Finance Minister who would be advised by the Treasury and Central Bank chiefs. But the Eurozone does not have a Finance Minister, nor a Treasury, and arguably its doesn't have a central bank - what it has an committee of 17 neutered national central banks wrapped around a structurally weak monetary authority.
I'm not saying that Junkers shouldn't be criticised, but he's a boy on an errand, when what's needed is a man on a mission, sadly the planet hasn't had a Solomon or Hammurabi for a long long time.