Here's the "deal" that Tsipras agreed to in what is being described as anything from a whipping to a torture chamber. Frankly he deserves a whipping, but not this kind.
In the end what has emerged as the "deal" is nothing more than an orgy of neoliberal grab.
Here we go:
- Privatization program. Greece will be forced to sell off 50 billion euros in valuable assets. Of course, this is what the oligarchs were after. These are primo assets. Once again it's the looting of long-paid-for assets by theives with fraudulent claims to them. These assets have benefited the people. Now The Powers That Be can charge money for their use.
- Ambitious pension reforms. So the pension money will be stolen by the banksters to make them whole from their horribly wrong speculations. Off the backs of the innocents. What scum. This is exactly what the Greek voters voted against, but hey, referendums in Greece are not binding so too fucking bad, people.
- Liberalization of Greece's economy. That means deregulation, which is one of the favorite scams of the neoliberals who disguise this as fake competition and freeing up the "free market" when in fact it's nothing more than state sanctioned racketeering by large multinationals--European and American. They come in, take control, boost their profits and impose their will.
- Modernizing the labor market. Haha. How funny. You knew this was coming. It's a euphemism for union destruction and labor subjugation.
- Depoliticizing the Greek government establishment. Talk about brazen. These guys have gone above and beyond with this one. It's basically saying we're going to take politics out of politics. In other words, the end of any form of representative government. Don't even think about it. We'll be taking over from here on.
- Ending or rolling back legislation that Syriza passed in its first six months. This one goes hand in hand with the bullet point above. Your government passed laws? Too fucking bad, we're cancelling those laws.
Anyone who says this is not a coup is a fool. By the way, the hashtag #ThisIsACoup is trending on Twitter.
On another note, let's not get smug or overly critical of the Greek people or for that matter go on any sort of rant against this outcome for that would be hypocrisy. The same thing goes on here in America and in Europe all the time.
While we don't have binding referendums (a direct democracy) in the USA or, in most European countries, (we have representative government) the will of the people is almost always ignored just the same. We know this by looking at polls and then seeing what laws are passed, which are almost always against what the people want and almost always aligned with what the elites want.
We have seen it here in the USA with Citizens United, the many trade deals (in fact, one that Congress just gave to Obama), endless foreign wars, tax giveaways to they rich, law enforcement and police brutality, NSA surveillance and much more. So we are just as much sheep being led to slaughter as the Greeks.
14 comments:
If there evert was a perfect post, this is it. You covered all the principal bases, Mike.
The only thing you left out is a rather minor point: Prostitutes for all the eurocrats.
Well said, Mike.
I want to still see how Europe swallows this deal. Kind of hard to believe they can talk about European integration and friendly nations with a straight face on after this.
What's funny is that those of the left will still be talking about how marvellous the EU is and how *different* it is from the Eurozone.
All with a straight face.
Total denial of reality.
The way it has been framed it is about "the lazy Greeks" and their bloated welfare state with a leftist government looking to be on the dole paid for by everyone else's taxes. Probably most voters in the EZ are OK with the way that Greece is being treated.
There's a mass neurosis operative in the West in general which at least in part explains mass Stockholm syndrome and a bias toward blaming the victim.
Meanwhile, BRICS is moving forward. Of course the Western line is that they are "isolated."
Gd post.
You know what's interesting is that varoufakis intiall plan involved using the EIB (European investment Bank) to act as a EU federal treasurer and investment in the Greek economy.Alongside some debt reduction.
Instead Greek assets are going to be privatised and held by the German Kfw which is the German state development bank,.Which,alongside internal debt reductions and foreign debt cancelling,allowed germany to invest her economy at zero cost and develop world class industry and export companies,in the post war period.
So Germany benefitted from debt cancellations a public finance/banking,but now those institution s are being used to extract rents from a foreign country(Greece) with this privatisation program.
Worst case scenario. This is just a disaster.
If the deal is that bad, why don't the Greeks revert to the Drachma? Bill Mitchell claims that's not difficult. I agree.
Greeks used the Drachma rather than the Euro prior to 2000. I don't remember hearing horror stories about life in Greece in those days.
Wish this whole fiasco would be framed in an honest and simple way. Like this:
The Greek bailouts all the back to 2010 came about not because Greek workers are profligate, shiftless bums, but rather because private Greek banks got caught up in billions of dollars in non performing loans like the rest of the world. Instead of winding down the bad banks in an orderly fashion (not sure that was even possible under EZ charter), Greece's Parliament decided to offload banker liabilities to European sovereigns under onerous, self defeating conditions. EZ taxpayers are now on the hook for Greek bank losses, which from a political standpoint ties EZ member nation hands. The EZ had to assume Greek banker liabilities because they were not ringfenced and thus the contagion risk to it's and the global economy was palpable. Furthermore, any forgiveness of Greek debt in the EZ's mind will lead to similar demands from Spain, Portugal, etc. In other words the risk of financial contagion has been largely taken away, but not revolt from various other EZ nations if it was to capitulate and let Greece off the hook. Greece now must be gutted of whatever assets it has as a lesson to other recalcitrant members, and as a way to recoup actual bailout monies to satisfy EZ plebs. Given how far along Greece is in this bailout process, along with it's insatiable desire to remain in good standing in the EZ, Parliament simply has rolled over and given it's European masters the keys to state sovereignty in hopes that their overlords will show mercy on them once bled dry of all thier treasure. ....to be continued.
I'd only report here some piece of Varoufakis' interview
YV: The complete lack of any democratic scruples, on behalf of the supposed defenders of Europe’s democracy. The quite clear understanding on the other side that we are on the same page analytically – of course it will never come out at present. [And yet] To have very powerful figures look at you in the eye and say “You’re right in what you’re saying, but we’re going to crunch you anyway.”
HL: You’ve said creditors objected to you because “I try and talk economics in the Eurogroup, which nobody does.” What happened when you did?
YV: It’s not that it didn’t go down well – it’s that there was point blank refusal to engage in economic arguments. Point blank. … You put forward an argument that you’ve really worked on – to make sure it’s logically coherent – and you’re just faced with blank stares. It is as if you haven’t spoken. What you say is independent of what they say. You might as well have sung the Swedish national anthem – you’d have got the same reply. And that’s startling, for somebody who’s used to academic debate. … The other side always engages. Well there was no engagement at all. It was not even annoyance, it was as if one had not spoken.
This tells everything, that is
@ Malmo's Ghost
It's even simpler than that to explain.
It's chiefly a balance of payments issue that adversely affects all net importers in the EZ to the advantage of the net exporters.
The result is inevitable.This is why the EZ is doomed to failure on the present configuration.
Greece is simply a special case of that. It was the first to fall because it never should have been admitted in the first place and the eurocrats knew it at the time. Failure was built in at the inception.
This has zero to do with the Greek people, who are now being forced to bear the brunt of the consequences of eurocrat hubris and outright fraud, and "the lazy Greeks" are getting blamed for it because of a gigantic propaganda effort that is so far successful.
This is a crime scene.
It remains to be seen but considering current economic outlook and political situation, It looks likely that in 2016 we are talking about a bailout and Grexit again. Greek economy will pretty much collapse after this, unemployment will soar etc. Syriza will be gone by then probably.
Always bet on the ability of elites to screw over their own constituents. Tspiras will get all these required measures passed on time and then negotiate another round of bludgeoning.
The aristocracy always wins.
Remember that the Germans are masters at privatization-looting.
This is what the unification was all about, billionaires were made during the unification and looting of east Germany.
OFC it was later paid by their own people and the east hasn't never completely catch up after the looting (now is a nest of neo-nazis and poor compared to the rest of Germany).
Note that the Greek citizenry is rather underarmed compared to the govt.
http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/greece
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