France and Germany are reaping what they sowed nearly a decade ago

Where the political ideological push towards a home-owning democracy, pushed the US to the brink back in 2008. An obsession with fiscal disobedience by the Euro’s leading economies, has played no small part in the current crisis.

In yesterday’s address in Strasbourg, Monti rightly stated that France and Germany were at the genesis of the crisis.  Back in 2003, The New York Times and The Economist, amongst others, commented on Mr Chirac and Mr Schöder’s decision to break the Stability and Growth Pact. Both claimed that deficits were important to maintain growth.

To balance this binge of spending cuts have to be made at some point. Politicians have put it off to the extent that they no longer control the matter. The market has forced their hand.

Small countries too are facing a new recession. It is hard not to feel sorry for The Netherlands and Austria. The Dutch finance minister at the time, Gerrit Zalm, called storming the Bastille a better idea than Mr Chirac’s storming of The Stability Pact.  Karl-Heinz Grasser then finance minister of Austria claimed that any compromise would eventually damage the credibility of the Euro.

Unfortunately both Zalm and Grasser have been proven right. The Germans and French may be pointing at the Greek politicians, who have been the lowest form of political scum in the past decade (Corruption, cronyism, fraud and embezzlement seem to have been rife). It is wrong for Greeks to display Angela Merkel in a Nazi uniform. It is however appropriate if the French and Germans, instead of just blaming the South, did some soul searching of their own.