Two Paragraphs That Explain Greece vs. Germany

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Neil Irwin has a very short and sweet explanation of Europe’s continuing fiscal woes:

Europe really does have a big and plausibly unsolvable macroeconomic problem. Germany and a couple of other countries are operating in a radically different economic gear than Southern Europe, and the ways you might normally expect those imbalances to work themselves out are not available. In pre-euro Europe, currency swings would have handled the job. In the United States, continuing fiscal transfers from rich states to poor states do the work. Neither is a palatable option in a Europe that has a single currency and deep aversion among Germans, Finns and Dutch to sending their hard-earned euros to Greece and Spain and Italy.

Either Northern European governments will accept bigger fiscal transfers and higher inflation than their citizens want, or the Mediterranean nations with economic challenges will have to accept falling wages and high unemployment as they try to restore competitiveness, which their citizens very much do not want.

Germany is the most inflation-averse of the big Northern European countries, and Greece is suffering the worst unemployment among the Southern European countries. This is why Greece vs. Germany has become the main front in the ongoing economic trench warfare of North vs. South.

As for myself, I can’t bring myself to believe that the euro will break up. But I also find it hard to imagine that Greece can avoid open rebellion much longer if Germany continues to maintain policies that make economic balance nearly impossible. So I don’t know. What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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