Monday, July 6, 2015

Michael Hudson — Why No Means Yes

...Syriza leaders did not begin immediately upon their January election victory to educate voters on what actually is at issue: why remaining subject to the junk-economics dictates by the IMF and ECB will make the economy subject to chronic debt deflation. Instead of spending the past six months educating the public over what is at issue with the Troika, Syriza focused on playing political rope-a-dope to demonstrate how firmly the ECB and EC were committed to austerity....
Good summary of the lead up to the crisis. Way beyond ignorance. Rampant malfeasance.
The Troika’s position was and is: “Impose austerity now. We’ll talk about debt writedowns later. But first, you must sell off what remains of your public domain. You must lower wages by another 20%, and force another 20% of your population to emigrate. Only then, when we’re sure that we can’t get another euro out of you anyway, then we may be willing to talk about writing down some of your debt. But not until we have stripped you of anything left to pay in any case!”....
Michael Hudson
Why No Means Yes

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And Tsipras knows that if he were to agree to the structural changes before getting the debt writedowns, and put all those changes in motion, he would lose all of his bargaining power and the writedowns would never come.