David Stockman — History In the Balance: Why Greece Must Repudiate Its “Banker Bailout” Debts And Exit The Euro by David Stockman

You read that right, David Stockman and not Bill Mitchell or Michael Hudson. And, yes, it is that David Stockman.

Now and again history reaches an inflection point. Statesman and mere politicians, as the case may be, find themselves confronted with fraught circumstances and stark choices. February 2015 is one such moment. 

For its part, Greece stands at a fork in the road. Syriza can move aggressively to recover Greece’s democratic sovereignty or it can desperately cling to the faltering currency and financial machinery of the Euro zone. But it can’t do both. 

So by the time the current onerous bailout agreement expires at month end, Greece must have repudiated its “bailout debt” and be on the off-ramp from the euro. Otherwise, it will have no hope of economic recovery or restoration of self-governance, and Syriza will have betrayed its mandate. 

Moreover, the stakes extend far beyond its own borders. If the Greeks do not take a stand for their own dignity and independence at what amounts to a financial Thermopylae, neither will the rest of Europe ever escape from the dysfunctional, autocratic, impoverishing superstate regime that has metastasized in Brussels and Frankfurt under cover of the “European Project”. 

Indeed, the crony capitalist corruption and craven appeasement of the banks and financial markets that have become the modus operandi there are inexorably destroying the EU and single currency. By fleeing the euro and ECB with all deliberate speed, therefore, the Greeks will give-up nothing except the opportunity to be lashed to the greatest monetary train wreck ever recorded. 

So Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has the weight of history on his shoulders as he makes the rounds of European capitals this week. His task in not merely to renounce the ham-handed “austerity” dictated by the Troika. Apparently even the French are prepared to acknowledge that the hideous suffering that has been imposed on Greece’s less fortunate citizens must be alleviated. Yet the latter is only a symptom of what’s wrong and what stands in the way of a real solution.

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David Stockman's Contra Corner
History In the Balance: Why Greece Must Repudiate Its “Banker Bailout” Debts And Exit The Euro
David Stockman |  former Congressman from Michigan, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, and former partner at The Blackstone Group