I’d like to apologize to the people of Greece.
I’ve been pretty hard on them over the years. I’ve made fun of their freewheeling spendthrift habits, their unwillingness to pay their taxes, and their early retirement ethos.
When they were given membership in the Euro zone, I made fun of that too, or at least of the rest of Europe’s willingness to cast its lot with the Greeks. “That’s like going mountain climbing with your safety rope tied to the town drunk,” I said.
Nor did I let up when the Greek economy went blooey and was forced to go, worry beads in hand, to Europe’s banks and ask for a bailout. “You might as well contribute to Bernie Madoff’s Defense Fund,” I said.
Shame on me.
Not that what I said was factually wrong, but it was insensitive to the people who invented democracy and whom we’ve treated shabbily.
Because, while the Greeks got their bailout five years ago, it was attached to draconian conditions that made it virtually impossible for the country to pay off its debts — ever.
Europe, led by Germany, demanded that Greece cut its pensions. It did. Then it ordered the Greek government to raise taxes. It did. It told Greece to brutally cut government employment as a way of returning to prosperity.
The Greek government did all of that for four grinding years and prosperity never came calling. It had lost Greece’s telephone number.
Unemployment spiked to 25 percent and youth unemployment was twice that.
Finally the Greek people got fed up. They threw out the conservative government that was meekly acceding to austerity demands in favor of leftist leaders who refused to let other European powers — particularly Germany — push them around anymore.