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IPFS News Link • Economy - International

And The Biggest Beneficiary Of The Greek Crisis Is...

• http://www.zerohedge.com, by Tyler Durden

While it was certainly no secret that Germany, the EMU's bastion of prudent finances and sound money, was no fan of the fiscally irresponsible eurozone periphery going into 2015, the extent to which Berlin's relationship with Athens and the Greek people deteriorated over the course of six months of bailout negotiations was truly remarkable. 

To let former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis tell it, the German finance ministry was determined to push Greece from the eurozone from the time Syriza swept to power in January on an anti-austerity platform, and while it was clear from the beginning that the ideological divide between Varoufakis and German FinMin Wolfgang Schaueble was likely unbridgeable, the relationship between the two eventually transformed Schaeuble into a symbol of repression for the Greek populace. 

Tensions between the Greeks and the Germans eventually reached a boiling point when, in a farcical effort to extract war reparations Athens claims it's still owed from World War II, Greece began showinglooped video footage of the Nazi occupation to commuters on public transportation. 

Germany would ultimately have the last laugh after Schaeuble and Angela Merkel extracted a humiliating set of concessions from Greek PM Alexis Tsipras and while it's true that the German taxpayer is on the hook yet again for a Greek bailout, a new report argues that for all the sharp-tongued criticism and Grexit threats, it is none other than Germany that has benefited the most from the ongoing crisis in Greece.