The Greek crisis and the blame game

This article was published in Spiked Online 6 May 2010

Greece’s woes have revealed a Euro-elite more interested in blame-shifting than tackling the economic crisis.

Despite the huge amount of media coverage on the Greek financial crisis, there is a remarkable omission. Instead of probing the underlying causes of Greece’s troubles there’s a bizarre blame game in which every player is intent on holding someone else responsible.

The list of potential culprits is long. Not surprisingly the alleged greed of Greek workers and the laxness of the Greek authorities are among the favourites. Financial speculators and the credit-rating agencies are also near the top. Then there is the prevarication of the European authorities and particularly the German government. Even ordinary Germans have come under attack in the British media for being too concerned about their own prosperity to bail out Greece.