Christine Lagarde, the director of the International Monetary Fund, makes some interesting headlines. In a recent interview, she talked about the consequences arising from the high surpluses in Germany. To put it mildly, this sounded not quite right to some people and they responded. Journalists like fancy big titles and Lagarde criticizing Germany is a hot topic. However, Lagarde also talked about other things and the Greek media spotted something rather interesting: Lagarde admitted that some countries were ‘saved’ in order to save the banks. Even Jeroen Dijsselbloem has recently confirmed this.
The question this poses is what leverage do we have if officials now admit to making the banks a much higher priority than the people of Europe? How do Greeks, Spanish or Portuguese feel when they hear that they were not only misled but also had their wages and pensions severely cut, for the sake of the banks? Obviously, Euroscepticism and anger rise, alongside the levels of mistrust towards EU institutions. In short: thoughts turn to X-exits (X=Gr, Br, It etc.).
At DiEM25, we hope that people will respond in ways that are progressive. We will fight for an EU that makes human values, not banks, its priority. We need your help and ideas collectively  to steer Europe away from its catastrophe. Join us here.
 
Aris is a member and volunteer of the DiEM25 movement.
 
 
Photo: Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune.
 

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