Dear Editor,
This is in response to the letter titled “Why Greece should matter to us in on St. Maarten.”
When I first saw the title I was enthused that someone had seen the connection between the Greek membership of the Eurozone and ourselves. I assumed that they had seen the obvious similarity in that we in St. Maarten are partnered in a monetary union with another country (Curaçao) and just like the Eurozone, every partner in such a monetary union is vulnerable to the consequences of the other partner through that union.
Instead the letter seems to assume that budgeting can be effectively managed by a better dialogue and a broader vision of human development, an assumption that I believe to be misleading.
Balancing a budget is a numbers game and one that requires a discipline that does not mix well with excuses. Development visions require to be defined before a budget is created, not after defaults have occurred. That Jeroen Dijsselbloem, a Labourite Minister, chose to focus on the actual budget is, to my mind, a positive reflection of his financial management skills. If he would not have done so there would have been no chance of finding a path to resolution in this political economic drama that has occurred because budgets were not balanced in the past.
If there would have been a hard-nosed CFT in Greece, the situation would certainly not have been as bad as it now is. The Greek people will have to suffer regardless due to the lack of discipline in the past, not because a warm humanitarian dialogue was eliminated from the financial resolution discussions.
Robbie Ferron
