Greeks bearing grudges AS a stiff Aegean breeze fluttered the hair and lapels of Angela Merkel’s pale-green jacket, one Greek reporter thought the outfit looked familiar. The German chancellor, making a one-day working visit to Athens, seemed to have picked the same jacket she wore in July while watching Germany trounce Greece 4-2 at this year’s European football championship. Was Mrs Merkel planning to blast the Greeks again, this time for foot-dragging over economic reforms?Antonis Samaras, the prime minister, need not have worried. The European Union’s toughest advocate of austerity gave a positive message, even if it was typically cautious. Mrs Merkel said she hoped and wished that Greece would remain a member of the euro zone, praised the country’s progress with cutting expenditure and offered “practical” assistance with structural reforms, such as German expertise on overhauling tax administration and modernising local government.The chancellor’s efforts to empathise with ordinary Greeks suffering the pain of a five-year recession were less successful. Hostile protesters outside...
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