@Mota:
It's nice of you not mentioning about the German WW2 reparations, because THERE WERE NOT ANY!
Take a good look at this picture. It's from 1953 where the second man from the left is the late Konstantinos Karamanlis. This man together with the leaders of 20 countries have signed off the "biggest since the Weimar era haircut" since Germany couldn't afford to pay its debt to those countries.
Germany has the OBLIGATION to remember that its growth and prosperity is based on the graciousness of its opponents to rub 50% of its enormous debt towards them. So please take this in mind and get your (historical) facts straight before start bashing (something you enjoy as a German, since you've mentioned it yourself).
Sigh... You really should freshen up on your history. We have absolutely no obligation to remember anything. You should read up on the cause of the rise of the nsdap before the second world war and the founding of the third reich. One of the causes was the issue of reparations for the first WW. The amount was huge (like mentioned before). Also there was no graciousness involved at all after WW2, there was simply no way a destroyed and divided country like Germany with nearly no industry left could have handled that amount of debt - Instead we paid the debt over time - and we still pay.
Germany paid off all the debts from WW1 in 2010 - 90 years after the war. For WW2: We still pay more than 500 Million € per year "Wiedergutmachung des Bundes" - google it. And those are not even the reparations, that is only for the victims (direct and indirect ones).
I told you I did not want to go into detail over WW2 because it was complicated, did you read that? Obviously not, so I will make it short and sweet: GDR paid ~200B € until 1953, West Germany paid ~4B€. The USSR dismantled nearly all of East Germanys infrastructure after the war and shipped it back to Russia. More than 3 Million Germans were used for forced Labour. The Allies confiscated significant values of German patents, copyrights and trademarks. Some of the German territory was annexed and incorporated into Poland.
You see, we Germans don't bash someone for nothing, some of you Greeks cry out because of your governments austerity policy - we Germans live under it for the better part of 15 years. Massive social reforms and privatisation - do you think we liked it? No, we did not.
Was it necessary? Indeed it was.
Your problem is, again, not the debt to the EU - you don't even have to pay back anything until 2019 iirc, and the interest is very low. Your problems are the private debts. And the lack of ability of your past Government to execute reforms and to collect taxes from the rich Greeks, which had free reign for so long that it's nearly impossible now to find the hidden banking accounts.
you seem to have fallen into the pitfalls of neolib propaganda. the so glorified agenda 2010 (initiated by the socialdemocrats who have sold their soul) led to the misery of millions, created a massive lowest-wages job segment and is/was one of the motors of the accelerating unjust and immoral difference between the growing numbers of poor and the rich elite getting richer. germany is doing an absolutely crazy thing: it lends out billions to foreign couintries/economies so they are able to buy german goods, so the german export blitz can celebrate a higher trade surplus every year. but what good is a trade surplus that is only existing on paper since it all financed with debt, that those countries can never pay back ?
it would be much better to strengthen the domestic side of the german economy (raise wages, import more goods) in order to balance the trade surplus. that would strenghten the foreign markets and they could actually buy AND pay german products.
the german "beggar-thy-neighbour" policy is the single most important cause for the current economic imbalance/problems in europe.
and btw: germany has paid close to nothing compared to their obligations resulting out of the 2nd WW. it is another one of those myths that the german mainstream media loves to tell and unfortunately, so many germans love to believe it. (here is a link, only in german - btw: mr ritschl is one of the most credited economic history professors.)
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/euro-krise-deutschland-ist-der-groesste-schuldensuender-des-20-jahrhunderts-a-769052.htmlhis research points to the fact that germany is by far the biggest debt defaulter in the 20th century.
we should help the greece people and stop kick them in the dirt.
