All big countries disregard EU rules. France has been disregarding rules a lot more and never gets punished according to EU law. Small countries in Eastern Europe get picked on for violating the same stuff France / Italy / Germany violate. So that system has no credibility if not all countries are treated equally.

Your point about deficits (Maastricht Treaty and other EU regulations after the crises that passed), everybody ignores that but only small countries every get in trouble for it. And when it comes to deficits, Germany is actually one of lesser offenders compared to others.

Also, it has been known for a long time that an agreement when EU was being formed was made and areas of influence setup. Germany was promised to get leading influence in ECB in exchange for basically turning Deutsche Mark into Euro and allowing the whole continent to use the German currency. French got full control of the IMF, for example, and also EU parliament being located partly in Strasbourg plus more influence in some other core EU bodies outside of ECB.

Greece wouldn't have been punished, either, except that they were also asking for help at the same time. At least, I don't think they would have...

The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes. Apparently there was a popular video about an area in Athens where the people paid almost no taxes, but an overhead view showed houses with swimming pools.

Well, yes. But also they had to be very stringent to justify the bailout to their constituencies. Just try to imagine being Angela Merkel and having to sell the idea of German taxpayer money being sent to bail out Greece which got into problems because of their irresponsible and exorbitant spending (instead of spending that money in Germany on healthcare, infrastructure, education etc). Really difficult to sell that to regular German voters. The only way to politically survive that was to be super tough and in exchange for German taxpayer money demand very strict rules of how they will behave after receiving the money.

>The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes

Of course when the corruption was done by and was in favor of German companies getting some job, all it was well (Fraport, Siemens, subway bribing, etc).

Germany even refused to cooperate to clean things up, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal

With Greece the problem was German/French banks would go under if Greece defaulted on its debts. That's why the pressure on Greece was so high. Basically EU taxpayers sending money to Greece which just sends money right back to the banks so they don't have to write off their loans and bonds.

The thing is, he might be pragmatic in his assessment of the situation, but when people press him for solutions (not of the pro Euro, not of the pro "Fascist inc intl" variety) he starts listing things out like people aren't already trying to invest in them as if they will be sure bets, while at the same time saying he doesn't know what the future will hold politically.

Idk, long otm calls on BundGreenInc Intl (esp since the Euro and EU has been sold as being "long europe" the past two decades, its a crowded trade), doesn't seem as much as a sure bet as selling those otm calls and using the proceeds to long deep otm puts on grasshopper trash… but everyone in the mean time will write you off as someone who wants to bring death, destruction and chaos to europe if you don't join in on their crowded trade that people aren't even buying now (because they're buying more of "Fascist inc intl" as he admits).