Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis wrote “A Speech of Hope for Greece” on Friday, the day when Greece didn’t pay its dues to the IMF. His text begins by casting the focus on US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes who traveled to Stuttgart in September 6, 1946, to deliver his historic “Speech of Hope“. The address marked America’s post-war change and gave Germany, a fallen nation a chance to imagine recovery, growth and a return to normalcy. “Seven decades later, it is my country, Greece, that needs such a chance,” writes Yanis Varoufakis on the site Project Syndicate.

Greek protesters, one waving a national flag, gather in Athens, Wednesday, June 15, 2011. Hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police in central Athens Wednesday as a major anti-austerity rally degenerated into violence outside Parliament, where the struggling government was to seek support for new cutbacks to avoid a disastrous default. (AP Photo/Kostas Tsironis)

“Byrnes’ speech signaled to the German people a reversal of that punitive de-industrialization drive. Of course, Germany owes its post-war recovery and wealth to its people and their hard work, innovation, and devotion to a united, democratic Europe. But Germans could not have staged their magnificent post-war renaissance without the support signified by the Speech of Hope,” says Varoufakis. “Prior to Byrnes’ speech, and for a while afterwards, America’s allies were not keen to restore hope to the defeated Germans. But once President Harry Truman’s administration decided to rehabilitate Germany, there was no turning back. Its rebirth was underway, facilitated by the Marshall Plan, the US-sponsored 1953 debt write-down, and by the infusion of migrant labor from Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece.”

Varoufakis states that now it is Greece that needs hope. “Moralistic objections to helping Greece abound, denying its people a shot at achieving their own renaissance. Greater austerity being demanded from an economy that is on its knees, owing to the heftiest dose of austerity any country has ever had to endure in peacetime. No offer of debt relief. No plan for boosting investment. And certainly, as of yet, no Speech of Hope for this fallen people.”

In his article, he states that he is fully aware that as he pens his thoughts the Greek government is presenting the EU with proposals. “But if Greece is to implement these reforms successfully, its citizens need a missing ingredient: Hope.”

He states that in his mind, the speaker of a Speech of Hope for Greece “should be German Chancellor Angela Merkel, addressing an audience in Athens or Thessaloniki or any Greek city of her choice. She could use the opportunity to hint at a new approach to European integration, one that starts in the country that has suffered the most, a victim both of the eurozone’s faulty monetary design and of its society’s own failings.”