It was a vocal panel at Davos— all of the major leaders of European nations were on hand to debate the future of Europe and the drama of the Greek financial crisis took center stage.
During one back and forth between Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, Tsipras said “We need more Europe… we need more solidarity,” citing his country’s loss of 25 per cent of its economy in the past year and skyrocketing unemployment.
Paraphrasing an old political jab made years ago by another politician, Schaeuble shot back “We could just say ‘Implementation, stupid!’” resurrecting the political ghost of then candidate Bill Clinton when he was campaigning against sitting president George H. W. Bush in 1992.
The problem is the implementation, Schaeuble told Tsipras. “If we want to make Europe stronger, then we should implement what we agreed to implement. We could just say ‘Implementation, stupid!’”, he finished, paraphrasing the famous line “It’s the economy, stupid!”
3 comments
That is a good sample of the kind of respect the finance monarch shows to the rest of Europe. Is it a paraphrase of a Famous quote …… from across the Atlantic? Slip of the tongue …. maybe
Must be his character. You can’t use the word ‘stupid” to another country’s leader, even if he meant it as paraphrasing the American slang. Tsipras is pretty cool. he should have gotten up and slapped the Nazi in the face