Editor, RE: “Why the Greek deal will work” (The New Times, July 24). It’s not true, at all. It will only greatly exacerbate what is already an economic and major social disaster. Trust me, we in the developing world have been put by the IMF and creditors through this same debt and structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) wringer from the 1970s in order to squeeze out of us the last drop of revenue to pay debts that in the first place should never have been incurred nor lent. These SAPs have never worked except for the creditors. Our continuing experience is that they destroy a country’s social fabric and impoverish you beyond compare. They trap you in a death spiral towards an economic and social black hole from which you can never escape once you have reached its event horizon. Greece should have exited the Euro (it and many of the other PIIGS—Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain—shouldn’t have joined it in the first place as there just wasn’t sufficient convergence between their economies and those of the northern European powerhouses, like Germany for a single currency to work for them without a single federal fiscal authority as in the US to ensure financial transfers among constituent states). Everyone, including the Greeks and the Germans, knew this and yet they all pretended for political motives that all was fine. The Greeks aren’t, therefore, the only ones to blame for this fiasco. Everybody who knew and pretended otherwise is just as guilty. The Greeks shouldn’t, therefore, be made to face alone the fallout of their runaway debt, made immeasurably worse by attempts by France and Germany to ensure their creditor banks are repaid all their Greek debt holdings. If Europe wants to remain viable, they need to recognize reality and forgive most of the Greek debt as unrecoverable. Greece also really needs to exit the Euro in order not to tie its currency policy to Germany’s with totally different and non-complimentary economies. But more importantly, we in the East African Community must draw valuable lessons from this Euro fiasco and be very cautious with our own plans for a common currency. We are just not ready to jump into that reckless adventure. Mwene Kalinda
