Much ado about Christine Lagarde’s interview with the Guardian this morning — and understandably so. After all, the head of the IMF is normally so restrained and delicate, yet here she lets that drop. When it comes to Greece, she says, ‘I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education… I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.’ And she also stresses that the Greek people should ‘help themselves collectively… By all paying their tax.’ Common sense? Sure. But in the annals of euro-rhetoric this is a particularly blunt example of it.
Putting the tone of what Lagarde’s saying aside, though, the content of it isn’t too surprising.
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