MERCIAR BUSINESS CONSULTING

The beginning of the end of the Euro

In our last posting, we spoke about some of the technical concerns underlying the solution that had seemed all too temporal, in the problems of the Euro.

Today we hear that the Greek government, on whose behalf the Prime Minister had accepted the deal, may itself be close to failure. Apparently, the Greek Finance Minister has now changed his position on the suggested referendum, recently put forward by the Prime Minister. This referendum was proposed, one feels, as a matter of conscience on the part of the PM, in light of the austerity it would continue to impose on the Greek people.

Given that inevitably that question has to boil down to one of principle: should Greece be in the Euro or not? The PM is, at time of writing, looking like he may not survive the vote on whether to proceed with the referendum. The leaders of the Eurozone, notably France and Germany are stating that the first tranche of bail out funds will now not be paid, leading to effective default on the part of Greece, increasingly unable to pay its debts.

Some thinkers have now begun to rationalise what many of us have been saying all along – that the Eurozone will be little worse off without the Greeks. No bail out fund until a decision on the referendum, and if the answer is the wrong one, then no bail out fund period: Greece will default more legitimately than this slow strangulation, and return to the Drachma.

With the loss of its weakest member, the Eurozone could consolidate and strengthen…or unwind completely. We are at the end of the beginning, but of exactly what, remains to be seen…

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Publicising Death…

We are torn by the recent images of Muammar Gaddafi’s death. Perhaps we might not feel this, were we Libyan, and had first hand experiences of the horrors Gaddafi exercised on his all too suspecting citizenry. Yet…we are not Libyan; thankfully we have no direct knowledge of his megalomania, his methods of torture and international duplicity.

So we default to behaviour that has stood us in good stead for a long time: decorum, decency, privacy and sensitivity. In these times of instant media (which is almost wholly a good development), images can race around the planet in literally seconds – and can be broadcast, taken from an individual’s ownership, on national media only seconds later. This does not make it right.

There is a privacy in the death of another that we would do well to remember, whatever their crime. Are we not haunted enough by the images of Ceauşescu and his wife, seconds after their execution by firing squad? Did no stirrings of humanity reveal themselves in us, as we witnessed Saddam’s medical examination, knowing full well he was heading to a State Trial from which he would not return. Perhaps the latter was justified…The images of the killing of Gaddafi are amongst the most brutal and shocking ever shown on western media. Their publication has not been without controversy: both the BBC and the UK national press have had bulletin boards with hundreds of complaints. There is a widespread feeling of uncertainty: we wanted him removed, we sanctioned our representatives to achieve this end – we didn’t expect to see the result broadcast around the world, of a terrified, ashen old man covered in blood, seconds before his death. In the internet world of instant publicity, let us not abandon our ability to be shocked, even from those who deserve no pity from us.