GREEK PROTESTS

Many leaders of countries in the European Union (EU) are understandably miffed at Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's on-again, off-again plan to put the EU's financial bailout bill to a public referendum vote in Greece instead of ramming the austerity measure through the Greek Parliament, but the EU ministers are not walking in Papandreou's shoes.

Papandreou is a shrewd politician who recognizes that the measure has absolutely no chance of being approved in a public referendum vote, and to try to force the draconian austerity measure upon the Greek citizenry by a parliamentary vote would be sheer political suicide for him. Papandreou might ultimately cave into his opposition in the Greek government to keep his government from falling, but he'll be putting his own career above the interests of the Greek people if does and the Greek voters will take out their anger on him during the next Greek election.

The people of Greece have been protesting the proposed austerity measures for months now, and some of their protests have even turned violent. I'm not condoning the violence, but it's not hard to understand why everyday Greeks are raving mad about what EU ministers and officials in their own government are asking them to do, which is basically to give up jobs, forfeit all benefits and starve.

Once more, the current Greek financial crisis was not of their making. It was caused by a corrupt Greek government that allowed the country's wealthy and affluent members to escape paying taxes necessary to fund the government and its public servants and pensioners. Now that Greece is awash in government debt and cannot meet its financial obligations, EU ministers and their Greek counterparts are demanding that Greece's retirees, working class and poor shoulder the overwhelming majority of the burden of dealing with the financial crisis instead of the people who caused the crisis. That's just not fair!

European Union ministers have been smug in pretending they played no role in Greece's current predicament, but they too bear a measure of responsibility for the Greek crisis. EU member banks have provided the wealthy and merchant class of Greece with safe haven for their assets with full knowledge that said funds were being held outside Greece to protect those funds from taxation. EU ministers have long recognized that Greek government spending could not be sustained given the massive amount of tax evasion that was permitted by the Greek government, but did nothing to stop those practices because their own member banks were profiting from Greek funds deposited in their banks.

One could hardly blame the Greek people for not giving support to the EU's call for austerity measures. Let Greece's wealthy and EU member banks do the suffering. They caused the problem. They should fix it.