Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

But by the same token, Papademos, the central banker turned prime minister, lacked legitimacy. Elections were scheduled for April 2012 and he would surely lose. The main opposition party, New Democracy, had presided over the onset of the crisis and had consistently refused to support Papandreou’s government in the negotiations since 2010. So that placed any new agreement with Athens in question from the start. How were the Greeks to be nailed down? With typical forthrightness, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble suggested that perhaps it would be better for the Greeks not to hold elections.8 Suspending Greek democracy would allow the key measures to be put through before the voters were given a chance to have their say. But that suggestion provoked outrage in Athens. So, instead, what the troika managed to extract was a promise from the hitherto evasive leader of New Democracy, Antonis Samaras, that if he were to take office he would abide by any deal negotiated by his predecessors. Whatever happened in the elections, the fiscal program would have priority. On that basis Greece and its creditors engaged in the latest round of extend-and-pretend.