VER-NOS-EMOS GREGOS

O New York Times publicou ontem uma entrevista a um armador grego, destacando o desencanto do magnata que, muito provavelmente a olhar o flute de um Grand Siècle, lamentava a forma como os seus compatriotas se embriagaram com o euro, e vaticinava que a bebedeira lhes imporá agora uma dolorosa ressaca.

.

Por cá, aconteceu-nos o mesmo, mas como sempre acontece aos ébrios relapsos, continuaremos por mais algum tempo a garantir a pés juntos que estamos sóbrios.

“The Italians, the Spaniards, the Greeks, we all have been living in happy land, spending what we did not have,” said George Economou, a Greek shipping magnate, contemplating his country’s economic troubles and others’ from his spacious boardroom. “It was a fantasy world.”
For some of the countries on the periphery of the 16-member euro currency zone — Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain — this debt-fired dream of endless consumption has turned into the rudest of nightmares, raising the risk that a euro country may be forced to declare bankruptcy or abandon the currency.The prospect, however unlikely, is a humbling one. The adoption of the euro just a decade ago was meant to pull Europe together economically and politically, ending the sometimes furious battles over who could devalue their currency the fastest and beggar their neighbor."

.

more