It was
typical Monday morning: I was in a coffeeshop reading the news while
outraged at some distant injustice. On Monday, I was angry at the
European Union for forcing small depositors in Cyprus to contribute
to a bailout. I expected my friend to be outraged with me, to show
some sympathy with my anger, but she started parroting some of those
German ideas about how Northern European countries are shouldering
all the corrupt, lazy Southerners and Russian money-launderers.
And true,
the North can make many legitimate complaints about the South, but
there seems to be a prevailing notion in the Netherlands and Germany
that their bankers were completely innocent in this global financial
crisis. Beyond the contempt at German politicking during this
electoral year, I have started to sense a punish-all attitude that
may tear the European Union apart.
Simply put,
it was wrong of faceless bureaucrats to ask for money from private
depositors; and small ones too, to greater outrage. As I sat in the
coffeeshop, Petra asked me: “You seem so concerned, it's almost as
if you have money in Cyprus.”
I don't, but
many economists have already come out talking about how the European
Union has now informed the world – and especially depositors in
troubled Eurozone economies – that deposits are not wholly
inviolable, something which could in a future crisis spark panic and
bank runs. But it didn't matter to Petra, she insisted that it was
time the Southerners started taking their own finances into account.
It's been a
few days, and Petra has now changed her mind. She's seen how this has
affected and will affect many innocent depositors. Whereas before she
criticized “Russian money launderers,” she now admitted that it's
best to let “99 guilty man go free, than for an innocent one to
languish.” Clearly this has been a PR failure for the EU.
I told her:
“Well, it's not like you've changed politics somehow. You and I
once had an argument about squatters and I remember you had very
strong opinions on the subject. You called it, 'getting something for
nothing.'”
I had once
told Petra that I wanted to squat some rich guy's unused home. I
wasn't serious, but I wanted to see how she reacted. She almost came
short of publicly denouncing me as a communist and ending our
friendship. I cited common law, and how ownership was not something
absolutely guaranteed by law. “There should be no people without
homes, no homes without people; especially if it's a rich guy's
abandoned apartment,” I argued until we eventually agreed to
disagree on the right for someone to squat under certain conditions.
In the
squatting and banking arguments I began to notice a massive
ideological rift in Europe. There is an increasingly socialist class
in the south of Europe that rejects modern banking, while an
industrial, capitalist North will go to any length in order to
preserve the status quo.
