Former U.S. treasury secretary Timothy Geithner said that in 2012 “Europeans wanted to crush the squandering Greeks,” according to The Financial Times. In 2012, Geithner had met with ECB President Mario Draghi to discuss the threat of the economic crisis spreading like contagion all over Europe. At the time, Draghi had said that the European Central Bank would do “whatever it takes” to prevent that. The Financial Times have obtained transcripts Geithner had given to assistants preparing his book “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.” The 100 pages include interesting comments but also expletives and scathing remarks about the way Europeans were viewing Greece at the time. “…the Europeans came into that meeting basically saying: “We’re going to teach the Greeks a lesson. They are really terrible. They lied to us. They suck and they were profligate and took advantage of the whole basic thing and we’re going to crush them,” was their basic attitude, all of them,” Geithner says. For his part, the former U.S. treasury secretary noted his reaction, which was to try to curb the Europeans fury against Greece. “But the main thing is I remember saying to these guys: “You can put your foot on the neck of those guys if that’s what you want to do. But you’ve got to make sure that you send a countervailing signal of reassurance to Europe and the world that you’re going to hold the thing together and not let it go. [You’re] going to protect the rest of the place.” I just made very clear to them right then. You hear this blood-curdling moral hazard-y stuff from them, and I said: “Well, that’s fine. If you want to be tough on them, that’s fine, but you have to make sure you counteract that with a bit more credible reassurance that you’re going to not allow the crisis to spread beyond Greece, you’ve got to make sure you’re putting enough care and effort into building that capacity to make that commitment credible as you are to teaching the Greeks a lesson….” Elsewhere, the former U.S. official talks of his admiration for German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, whom he sees as a much more powerful figure than his nominal boss, chancellor Angela Merkel. source: Financial Times
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