Greece’s Public Enemy #1: Schaeuble

He may have received a reception fit for Royalty and heads of state – the center of Athens was virtually shut down and demonstrations banned – during his visit on July 18, but to most Greeks, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is a hated man.

He is despised by workers, pensioners and the poor, who have been hardest hit by the austerity measures Germany has insisted upon in return for backing $325 billion in two bailouts for Greece.

He saw none of them during his whirlwind one-day visit, orchestrating a selected audience of politicians, the rich and Greece’s elite, who have escaped the austerity measures he prescribed for Greece in return for Germany’s support and loans.

He did charm the people who saw him and who were just like him. The British newspaper The Guardian reported, in a piece headlined, “Greece: Hate Figure Wolfgang Schäeuble Succeeds With Ulikely Charm Offensive”.

“In Greece Schäuble is a hated man; loathed as much for the austerity he has personally prescribed as the manner with which it has been handed out. No one is more identified with the twin ills – runaway unemployment and rising poverty – now bedevilling the county than he. To pretend otherwise is to play a fool’s game,” the paper said.

But it said the people who have benefited from austerity: businesses who pay their workers less, have seen the minimum wage fall and collective bargaining phased out, loved the guy. “Schäeuble pulled off a stellar performance doing just that as he made his first visit to the country since the eruption of Europe’s debt crisis in Greece in late 2009,” it added.

But in the end, it said, Schaeuble was talking to a small circle of friends and saw none of the effects of austerity. “But on the streets of a capital that resembled a ghost town for most of the day, there were few – if any – who believed him” while adding that “The German finance minister may have pulled off the impossible but he had done so in a country that remains a minefield in the Eurozone.”