The confession of Jean Claude Juncker, the EU economy minister, in a recent interview in New York, that the European leaders, including the German and French, were aware and concerned for decades about the problems inherent in Greece’s trading policies with its European partners, helps to understand the tragic crisis of our nation, in terms of the historical alliance and misalliance between men and women in traditional human societies regarding sex, intercourse and marriage.
Sex between men and women is usually a positive and essential experience for both men and women, and a reality that is socially beneficial and one of the cornerstones of human society. When sex between men and women turns bad, as in adultery or in prostitution, patriarchal society has always assigned all blame to the woman, and it has traditionally been women who have been stigmatized and punished, even though the oldest profession was created basically because men wanted more sex than was available at home. By punishing the woman for “antisocial” sex, society, in effect, designated the woman as the gatekeeper of sexual norms, even though it was essentially the man who was, most of the time, the partner most eager to break these norms. An excellent example of how the person in power, the patriarchal male in this instance, designs the rules that allow him to break them and yet assign all blame and punishment to the other party.
It is fascinating how this is exactly what has happened in the trade (sex) between Germany and Greece, in the last few decades. The formation of the European Union allowed Germany to eliminate all non-European rivals in its trading relationship with Greece, and thereby become an essential trading (sexual) partner of Greece. A couple of decades later, the Euro Zone made the German products practically the only available products of consumption; while Greece’s weak manufacturing capability simply disappeared. The Greek governments were forced to create jobs so that Greeks could consume, and had to borrow to finance these public positions. Germany was only happy to lend, using the surplus profits it was collecting each year from its trading (sexual) partnership with Greece.
This setup, as we all now recognized, was disastrous. It was maintained for decades due to the German trading greed, and due to the Greek consuming greed. It was a set up that primarily destroyed Greece, while it profited Germany, enormously. We now know through the recent confession, that Germany and others knew of the illegitimacy of its trading relationship with Greece. Germany knew how destructive it would end up being for Greece and for the European Union, and yet it pursued its greedy trading and economic policy.
Just like a man needs a woman to have sex, Germany needed Greece to trade with. But Germany made sure that the rules of this trading (sexual) relationship were designed so that if anything went wrong, only the woman (Greece) would get blamed and punished for what went wrong.
Look at the rules that Germany and its northern powerful partners have imposed. It is Greece (the woman in this trading relationship), that has been both punished and stigmatized! And it is Germany (the male in the trading relationship), which has refused to acknowledge any blame in the relationship, even when chastised by the French economic minister. It is Germany that is richer than ever. It is Germany that is more powerful than ever. Greece, on the other hand, has been sentenced and locked up in the prison of the memorandum and of the $300 billion debt and counting. And it is Greece that has to live with the rules that Germany designed, implemented and is now imposing.