![\"\"](\"http:\/\/boilingfrogs.info\/files\/2013\/04\/debt-war-germany-greece.jpg\" "\\"debt-war-germany-greece\\"")
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Just like Greece should not repay its current public debt to foreign investors, Germany should not repay Greece for war reparations debts.<\/span><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n Greek newspaper recently unveiled that a special commission mandated by the greek government has calculated how much money Germany owes Greece form the World War II. From Der Spiegel<\/a>:<\/p>\n The [greek] newspaper offered no concrete figure regarding the possible extent of reparation demands outlined in the report. But earlier calculations from Greek organizations have set the total owed by Germany at \u20ac108 billion for reconstruction of the country\u2019s destroyed infrastructure and a further \u20ac54 billion resulting from forced loans paid by Greece to Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944. The loans were issued by the Bank of Greece and were used to pay for supplies and wages for the German occupation force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, it is said that 80% of the Greeks<\/a> want their government to pursue Germany to get the money back.<\/p>\n But there is a little problem. If we follow the reasoning, should Germany also repay the reparations debt that were owed to France after World War I, as \u2018agreed\u2019 in the treaty of \u2018peace\u2019 of Versailles<\/a>? After all, these debts too were never fully repaid by Germany, which eventually caused the Occupation of the Ruhr<\/a> by the French and Belgians, choked off production and led to the so-called Weimar inflation period. We all know what these war-related debts result in: more resentment, more crisis, and eventually fascism to rule a country.<\/p>\n Do we really want to open this Pandora\u2019s box?<\/p>\n Really, it\u2019s not about having Germany repaying these debts. Rather, what History tells us is that some kind of debts should not be repaid. <\/strong>Or, as Michael Hudson<\/a> puts it:<\/p>\n Debts that can\u2019t be paid, won\u2019t be<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/strong>And this is valid as for the greeks claims on Germany as for the Greek current public debt. Let\u2019s not distort the debate around cross-border resentment, and try to understand the very nature of debts: mere promises made at a certain point of time, under certain circumstances. Therefore, when circumstances change, so do the promises made beforehand.<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, if you wonder how to get out of this mess in an orderly and peaceful way, I recommend you to have a look at some proposals such as the Modern Debt Jubilee<\/a> or quantitative easing for the people<\/a>.<\/p>\n Just like Greece should not repay its current public debt to foreign investors, Germany should not repay Greece for war reparations debts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,416],"tags":[399,350,400,14],"class_list":["post-603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-eurozone-ecb","tag-debt","tag-eurozone-crisis","tag-germany","tag-greece"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2om4O-9J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6843,"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603\/revisions\/6843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stanislasjourdan.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Opening Pandora\u2019s box\u2026<\/h3>\n
\n![\"Paternit\u00e9\"](\"http:\/\/l.yimg.com\/g\/images\/cc_icon_attribution_small.gif\" "\\"Paternit\u00e9\\""){kind=icon}
![\"Pas](\"http:\/\/l.yimg.com\/g\/images\/cc_icon_noncomm_small.gif\" "\\"Pas"){kind=icon}
![\"Partage](\"http:\/\/l.yimg.com\/g\/images\/cc_icon_sharealike_small.gif\" "\\"Partage"){kind=icon}
odysseasgr<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/a>
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