Greece

Should the 25 January elections result in a Syriza-led government, we will find out whether the Germans can actually succeed in kicking Greece out of the euro and also whether their optimism about being able to contain the crisis in Greece was justified.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the eurozone is an unworkable construction which will condemn its members to repeated crises like the one first experienced in Greece. It is not too late to end this disastrous experiment.

In late 2009, Greece started the eurozone crisis. Five years later, the country’s problems are still large enough to trigger the next big eurozone disaster.

In that faraway wonderland that it is the eurozone, nothing is quite what it seems. It is a strange place where half-bankrupt governments can plan a return to capital markets at moderate yields, and a central bank is able to impress analysts by talking about things it cannot do. Both instances are patently absurd, but just because something is absurd has never stopped it from happening in Europe.

As government debt in the European periphery becomes a riskier investment, the yields on periphery government yields are not going up as one might expect. On the contrary: they are falling.

World War I cannot and should not be used as a justification for a European integration agenda that is visibly failing. Least of all should it be used in any discussion relating to Europe’s monetary problems. These are economic questions – and fortunately not questions of war and peace.

By announcing the next Greek package before the election, Schäuble is manoeuvring Germany into his much preferred position of actively supporting closer European integration.

For as long as Greece remains trapped in a cycle of troika consultations, it will not escape its predicament of economic decline. And the longer the Europeans continue to give Greece bailout after bailout, the more entrenched Greece’s dependency will become.