A Barbarian in the mirror

So the European Financial Stability Facility and the IMF have put together a bailout of Greece, to the great relief of the EU and the world financial community.  All the cooler heads have prevailed, as they see it.  The plan will lower interest rates and change payment terms on rescue loans already extended, saving Greece billions of Euros.  You can almost hear the sign of relief around to this side of the world.  I would imagine that  with this crisis behind the world can look to solving the financial crisis in the USA, perhaps in a similar manner.

But how did they ‘rescue’ Greece?  The Globe reports, “The €109-billion package from the rescue fund and the IMF means loans will have a maturity of at least 15 years, up from 7.5 years, while the interest rate will fall to 3.5 per cent from 5.5 per cent. All told, the move will would cut the country’s debt burden by about a quarter.

This is the second bailout for Greece. The first was in May, 2010.”

So in layman’s terms, the wealthy lent money to Greece on a promise (inital rounds of lending, leading up to their 1^st crisis).  Greece broke that promise, but promised not to break it again, so on that 2^nd promise they lent more money to Greece (May 2010).  Then then broke that promise but now make a new (3^rd) promise not to break the next one.  And the world should be happy at that.

GK Chesterton wrote, “It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through time, is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, but from brutes and reptiles…the promise, like the wheel, is unknown in Nature, and is the first mark of man.  Referring only to human civilization it may be sad with seriousness, that in the beginning was the Word.  The vow is to the man what the song is to the bird, or the bark to the dog; his voice, whereby he is known…It is not easy to mention anything on which the enormous apparatus of human life can be said to depend.  But if it depends on anything, it is on this frail cord.  On that solitary string the Barbarian is hacking heavily, with a sabre which is fortunately blunt.”

What GK was saying is that civilization as we know it depends on our ability to do what we said we would do.  That is the first mark of maturity as a man.  To that I wholeheartedly subscribe.  He then makes the point that only a Barbarian (in all the ugliness that he defines that term to be) would misuse the promise of a man’s word (or a nations word – indeed, he was speaking of Prussia when he wrote that in The Appetite of Tyranny).

If then it is only a Barbarian who would break a promise, what manner of person would allow them to break it repeatedly, and more than that, celebrate making a new promise with them?   Far from celebrating the ‘historic rescue’, I think we should send each other sympathy cards.  We are watching the destruction of our very way of life, right in front of our eyes.