Basil Fawlty would have been proud.
A French economist (Thomas Piketty) was interviewed by a German paper (Die Zeit). This links to an English translation.
An extract gives you a flavour of Piketty’s no-holds-barred approach
Piketty:… After the war ended in 1945, Germany’s debt amounted to over 200% of its GDP. Ten years later, little of that remained: public debt was less than 20% of GDP…. We never would have managed this unbelievably fast reduction in debt through the fiscal discipline that we today recommend to Greece. Instead … our states employed … debt relief…
ZEIT: That happened because people recognised that the high reparations demanded of Germany after World War I were one of the causes of the Second World War. People wanted to forgive Germany’s sins this time!
Piketty: Nonsense! This had nothing to do with moral clarity; it was a rational political and economic decision….
via Thomas Piketty: ‘Germany Has Never Repaid its Debts. It Has No Right to Lecture Greece’ | The Wire.
Borrowing Ideas 