Bill Mitchell — Greek austerity – a denial of basic human rights, penalty should be imprisonment

I have just finished reading a report published by the Transnational Institute(TNI), which is an “international research and advocacy institute committed to building a just, democratic and sustainable world”. The Report (published November 19, 2018) – Democracy Not For Sale – is harrowing, to say the least. We learn that in an advanced European nation with a glorious tradition and history an increasing number of people are being denial access to basic nutrition solely as a result of economic policy changes that have been imposed on it by outside agencies (European Commission, European Central Bank and the IMF). The Report shows how the food supply has been negatively impacted by the austerity programs; how food prices have been forced up at the same time as incomes have been forced down, and how collective and cooperative arrangements have been destroyed by privatisation and deregulation impositions. The Report concludes that the Greek State and the Eurozone Member States violated the Greek people’s right to food as a result of the austerity measures required by three Memorandums of Understanding (2010, 2012 and 2015). In other words, the austerity packages imposed on Greece contravened international human rights law. Not one person has gone to prison as a result of this deliberate and calculated violation of human rights. 

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Greek austerity – a denial of basic human rights, penalty should be imprisonment
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Michael Roberts — Greece: on parole

Backgrounder on Greece (and the IMF and Eurocrats). A sad tale of elite rule and rent extraction off the back of ordinary workers with no power or influence — unless they rise up angry and are willing to pursue it.

Michael Roberts Blog
Greece: on parole
Michael Roberts

Bill Mitchell — Massive Eurozone infrastructure deficit requires urgent redress

The latest – EIB Investment Report 2017/2018 – published last week by the European Investment Bank tells anyone who cares to take those Europhile Rose Coloured Glasses off for just a second how deep the failure of the European policy making structures are and how long the negative impacts of those failures will resonate. This is the true ‘burden for our (their) grand kids’ sort of stuff. In claiming they had to run tight fiscal policy biased towards surpluses to avoid forcing the future generations to carry an unfair burden, these European policy makers and leaders have done exactly the opposite, as predicted – they have created an appalling future for their youth and their children to follow. The whole European monetary experiment is a failure and is beyond reform. It needs to be scrapped, national sovereignty restored and people within their own countries left, through democratic institutions to determine how the public sector operates in their best interests. The Troika technocrats should be led out to pasture. And, to the Europhile Left: take of your rose coloured glasses.

The actual issue is the availability of real resources in the present and for the future, access to which determines a society's standard of living.

The investment ratio is the proportion of Gross Domestic Product accounted for by Gross Capital Formation and indicates how much of the current production each nation is allocating to expanding productive infrastructure.

Potential GDP and hence longer-term growth is driven by capital formation. A nation that is not investing in its future productive capacity will see declining productivity growth, falling standards of living and leave its grandchildren materially deprived....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Massive Eurozone infrastructure deficit requires urgent redress
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE)

Bill Mitchell — Latest Greek bailout – a recipe designed to fail

I have been looking at the latest Greek bailout deal between the Greek government and the European Commission/IMF), which was concluded last week (June 16, 2017) and released a further 8.5 billion euros in new loans to the Greek government which means it can make bond payments due in July. Despite all the statements from the European Commission and the IMF to the contrary, the terms of the deal with the Greek government confirms that these institutions have abandoned any pretence to being interested in serious economic policy. For the European Commission, the desired irrevocable status of the euro, as a political statement, is all it seems interested in when it comes to Greece. They just don’t want to admit that Greece cannot reasonably function in this monetary union. Just like the previous bailout agreements, this deal will fail. It actually only stalls the reality for yet another day and the only goal it serves is to keep Greece using a currency it cannot afford to use – afford in both monetary and real terms....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Latest Greek bailout – a recipe designed to fail
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Lara Merling — Greece has a Private Debt Crisis and We Can Blame the Troika

The Greek public debt debacle and the bailout received by the government from the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – referred to collectively as the “troika” – has been making headlines for years. 

However, very little attention has been paid to the debt crisis in the Greek private sector. An alarmingly high portion of private sector borrowers is behind on their debt payments, and the Greek banking system currently has one of the highest ratios of delinquent loans in the European Union....

Greece’s accession to the Eurozone was followed by a largely ignored, rapid, and unsustainable build-up in private sector debt. Once the Greek government was forced to impose severe austerity measures and the economy collapsed, the private debt crisis followed. Now, the large ratio of delinquent loans held by Greek banks is adding to the factors hampering economic growth. For Greece to recover, its private debt problems need to urgently be addressed with an approach that offers relief to both borrowers and lenders....

The Minskys
Greece has a Private Debt Crisis and We Can Blame the Troika
Lara Merling

Greece Passes New Austerity for New Loans — Sharmini Peries interviews Michael Hudson

Michael Hudson: ​I wouldn't call it a negotiation. Greece is simply being dictated to. There is no negotiation at all. It's been told that its economy has shrunk so far by 20%. It has to shrink another 5% making it even worse than the depression. It's wages have fallen and must be cut by another 10%. Its pensions have to be cut back. Probably five to 10% of its population of working age will have to immigrate. The intention is to cut the domestic tax revenues because labor won't be paying taxes and businesses are going out of business. The intention is to lower the government's revenues by so much that Greece will have to sell off even more of it's public domain to foreign creditors. Basically it's a smash and grab exercise and the role of Tsipras is not to represent the Greeks because the TROIKA have said, "The election doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what the people vote for. Either you do what we say or we will smash your banking systems." Tsipras's job is to say, "Yes I will do whatever you want. I want to stay in power rather than falling in election."

Neoliberalism, neo-imperialism, neocolonialism.

Michael Hudson:​ It's being held an example for the same reason the United States went into Libya and bombed Syria. It's to show that we can destroy you if you don't do what we say. If Spain or Italy or Portugal seeks not to pay its debts, it will be ... Its banking system will be destroyed, its currency system will be destroyed and basically the principle is that finance is the new form of warfare. You can now destroy a country's economy not by invading it. You don't even have to bomb it as you've done in the near east. All you have to do is withdraw all credit in the banking system, isolate it economically from making payments to foreign countries so that you essentially put sanctions on it. You'll treat Greece like they've treated Iran or other countries.
​We have life and death power over you. The demonstration effect is not only to stop Greece but to stop countries from doing what Marine Le Pen is trying to do in France: withdraw from this Euro Zone, which is basically: the class war back in business. The class war finance against labor, imposing austerity, imposing shrinking living standards, and lowering wages, and cutting back social spending. It's demonstrating who's the winner in this economic warfare that's taking place.

The hidden agenda of neoliberalism that distinguishes it from economic liberalism is the assumption, based on history, that democracy has never existed and that oligarchy has been the rule.  Therefore, classical liberalism is pie-in-sky, but it can be used to fool the masses into accepting oligarchical rule under the guise of "freedom and democracy." Liberalism can able to used as a subterfuge for carrying out a policy of global domination by the capitalist oligarchy of the West enforced by the military and intelligence services.

Students of contemporary history and international relations know this, but most people have no idea about what is actually happening and are beguiled by the narrative that the oligarchs feed them in the media they control.

A big problem is that the left is internationalist and falls into the trap of supporting the neoliberal globalist power grab without realizing it. This leaves the nationalist right to oppose the power grab and the nationalist right is rising in power.

TRRN
Greece Passes New Austerity for New Loans

Sharmini Peries interviews Michael Hudson

Michael Roberts — Memoirs of an erratic Marxist [Yanis Varoufakis]

Varoufakis more erratic than Marxist?

Roberts contends that there is no solution for Greece within the structure of capitalism as institutionally dominant. Varoufakis's memoir bears this out.

Michael Roberts Blog
Memoirs of an erratic Marxist

Michael Robert

Bill Mitchell — The destruction of Greece – “only a down payment” according to the IMF

On April 22, 2017, the Italian Minister of Economy and Finance, Pier Carlo Padoan presented a briefing to the 25th Meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the IMF in Washington. He spoke on behalf of Albania, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and the Republic of San Marino. This annual event examines the “macroeconomic outlook” of the nations in question and conditions the IMF policy approach for the year ahead. Padoan, an ardent pro-Eurozone supporter, told the gathering that in the last year, the Greek economy was recovering and that “GDP remained stable in 2016, while for the first time since 2010 two consecutive quarters of growth were reported”. I wonder what data he was looking at. The official national accounts data for Greece doesn’t tell that story. With Greece still wallowing in the depths of recession, it is clear that the IMF hasn’t finished with the destruction of that formerly independent nation. The destruction to date (27 per cent contraction and increased poverty) are considered by the IMF to be “only a down payment” on what Greece has to do so satisfy the Troika. At what point do people start to realise that the on-going costs of this austerity dwarf the significant costs that would accompany exit? And the Troika is not done with Greece yet. They intend to screw it down even further. And the costs of remaining in the dysfunctional monetary union escalate by the day. At some point, the Greeks will realise they have been dudded. What is left is anyone’s guess – but it won’t be pretty. The destruction of Greece is “only a down payment” according to the IMF – keep that mentality in mind when you are working out whether Greece should remain obedient or tell them all to f*ck off and regain their currency independence and restore prosperity.

What happens when a country becomes a colony.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The destruction of Greece – “only a down payment” according to the IMF
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Edward Harrison — The negotiations over Greece aren’t about Greece

Earlier today, I was listening to an interview with IMF head Christine Lagarde dance around the issue of the unsustainability of Greece’s debt load. And she said something very telling. She said that debt haircuts were not on the table but that maturity extensions and interest rate reductions were, but only AFTER Greece implemented reforms demanded by the Troika.
What’s important to realize when Lagarde says this is that although she’s talking about Greece, the negotiations with Greece are not really about Greece itself per se. They are about the maintaining or imposing an economic paradigm for every country in the EU that Greece was not meeting – and this is a paradigm that the IMF supports as much as the ECB and the EU. Greece is just being used as an abject lessons for other larger EU economies.
Think of it this way: 25 years ago, the EU signed on to the idea of a single currency in Maastricht. The question marks at the time were Belgium and Italy – Italy because of its constant currency devaluations and Belgium because of high government debt loads. The EU figured out how to deal with Belgium and Italy by creating the stability and growth pact which said that all member states had to keep their deficits under 3% and get their debt under 60%, or at least moving in that direction. Underneath these simple rules lies a whole economic ideology though. And that orthodoxy says long-term growth and a stable currency are best maintained by liberalized free markets and fiscal discipline.…

"Liberalized free markets and fiscal discipline" is neoliberalism in a nutshell.

"Liberalized free markets" means minimized government "intrusion" in the form of regulation and oversight, along with privatization of state assets ("asset stripping").

"Fiscal discipline" means government finance based on "sound money" that limits a government's fiscal space in economic policy and thereby constrains its fiscal policy. This is tantamount to operating as if on a gold standard.

Credit Writedowns
The negotiations over Greece aren’t about Greece
Edward Harrison

Bill Mitchell — Greece still should exit and escape the grip of the vandals

Greece is back in the news as the IMF, the Germans and the European Commission slug it out pretending to talk tough and propose solutions to the Greek tragedy. There is no solution of course. All the debate about whether the primary surplus target should be 3.5 per cent of GDP (European Commission position) or slightly lower (IMF position) is just venal hot air. Anybody who knows anything and isn’t protecting their past mistakes would assess that a fairly large and sustained fiscal deficit is required in Greece to rebuild some of the lost capacity and to provide an inkling of hope to the youth who are facing a lifetime of diminished prospects as a result of the decisions the adults around them took. All the talk about ‘deficits mortgaging the grand kids future’ – sick. The austerity has meant the grand kids might not ever emerge given the constrained circumstances their would-be parents will face as they progress through adulthood. The reality remains – firmly – Greece should exit the Eurozone, convert any outstanding liabiliites into a new currency at parity, and stimulate its domestic economy with expansionary fiscal policy. It should continue to impose capital controls. As part of the stimulus, it should introduce an unconditional Job Guarantee at a decent wage to provide a pathway back into employment for the many that the Troika have rendered jobless....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Greece still should exit and escape the grip of the vandals
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Black — When will the EU and the ECB Stop Torturing the Greeks?

The troika refers to the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF, traditionally, was the greatest proponent of any international entity of inflicting extreme austerity on nations suffering economic crises. The IMF’s economists have increasingly reviewed the evidence and concluded that austerity reduces growth and that putting nations into inescapable debt traps is stupid and harmful. The EU and the ECB, however, have been impervious to these economic studies and intent on hammering the Greeks. The purported EU “bailout” of Greece is an exercise in EU propaganda. Overwhelmingly, EU aid involving Greece goes to Greek banks – and the bank bailout bails out the creditors of Greek banks. Those creditors, overwhelmingly, are EU banks.

The EU and the ECB have forbidden Greece to use stimulus and locked Greece into a debt trap that will crush the Greek economy for over a half-century....

The troika is the EC, the ECB and the IMF. Should be "European Commission" instead of EU?

New Economic Perspectives
When will the EU and the ECB Stop Torturing the Greeks?
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

Mark Weisbrot — The Deep Economic Roots of Italy’s Political Troubles

In one important sense there are similarities between the rise of Trump and the fall of Renzi. Both are the result of the long-term failure of neoliberal policies implemented by the major political actors. In both cases, the center-left lost a big part of its working and middle-class base because it was jointly responsible for this failure.

In the US, the neoliberal era was launched “big league” by Ronald Reagan, but Bill Clinton became a co-owner by bringing us NAFTA, the WTO, financial deregulation, and other neoliberal structural reforms that have done permanent damage.

In Italy there have also been neoliberal reforms since the 1980s, but the most devastating was adopting the euro in 1999. Now you might think that nothing could be worse than having to say the words “President Trump,” but adopting the euro put Italians in an even worse jam. They lost control over their most important macroeconomic policies (monetary, fiscal, and exchange rate), and gave it to some really wrong people in the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Eurogroup of Finance Ministers, and the IMF.

Counterpunch

The Deep Economic Roots of Italy’s Political Troubles

Mark Weisbrot

Michael Hudson — Review of James Galbraith, Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice (2016)

Galbraith expressed his “epiphany” already in 2010 that a “market-based” solution was a euphemism for anti-labor austerity and a reversal of political democracy. “In a successful financial system, there must be a state larger than any market. That state must have monetary control – as the Federal Reserve does, without question, in the Untied States.” 

That was what many Europeans a generation ago expected – for the EU to sponsor a mixed public/private economy in the progressive 20th-century tradition. But instead of an emerging “European superstate” run by elected representatives empowered to promote economic recovery and growth by writing down debts in order to revive employment, the Eurozone is being run by the troika on behalf of bondholders and banks. ECB and EU technocrats are serving these creditor interests, not those of the increasingly indebted population, business and governments. The only real integration has been financial, empowering the ECB to override national sovereignty to dictate public spending and tax policy. And what they dictate is austerity and economic shrinkage.…

“Europe has devoted enormous effort to create a ‘single market’ without enlarging any state, and while pretending that the Central Bank cannot provide new money to the system.” Without monetizing deficits, budgets must be cut and the public domain sold off, with banks and bondholders in charge of resource allocation.

As long as “the market” means keeping the high debt overhead in place, the economy will be sacrificed to creditors. Their debt claims will dominate the market and, under EU and ECB rules, will also dominate the state instead of the state controlling the financial system or even tax policy.

Galbraith calls this financial warfare totalitarian, and writes that while its philosophical father is Frederick Hayek, the political forbear of this market Bolshevism is Stalin. The result is a crisis that “will continue, until Europe changes its mind. It will continue until the forces that built the welfare state in the first place rise up to defend it.”

To prevent such a progressive policy revival, the troika promotes regime change in recalcitrant economies, such as it deemed Syriza to be for trying to resist creditor commitments to austerity. Crushing Greece’s Syriza coalition was openly discussed throughout Europe as a dress rehearsal for blocking the Left from supporting its arguments. “Governments from the Left, no matter how free from corruption, no matter how pro-European,” Galbraith concludes, “are not acceptable to the community of creditors and institutions that make up the European system.” …

Galbraith’s month-by-month narrative describes how the IMF and ECB overrode Greek democracy on behalf of creditors and privatizers. They sought to undermine the Syriza government from the outset, making Greece an object lesson to deter thoughts by Podemos in Spain and similar parties in Portugal and Italy that they could resist the creditor grab to extract payment by a privatization grab and at the cost of pension funds and social spending. By contrast, conciliatory favoritism has been shown to right-wing European parties in order to keep them in power against the left.…

The arena of conflict and rivalry has shifted from the military to the financial battlefield. Along with the IMF and ECB, central banks across the world are notorious for opposing democratic authority to tax and regulate economies. The financial sector’s policy of leaving money and credit allocation to banks and bondholders calls for blocking public money creation. This leaves the financial sector as the economy’s central planner. 

The euro’s creation can best be viewed as a legalistic coup d’état to replace national parliaments with a coterie of financial managers acting on behalf of creditors, drawn largely from the ranks of investment bankers. Tax policy, regulatory and pension policies are assigned to these unelected central planners. Empowered to override sovereign self-determination and national referendums on economic and social policy, their policy prescription is to impose austerity and force privatization selloffs that are basically foreclosures on indebted economies. Galbraith rightly calls this financial colonialism.…

At first glance the repeated “failure” of austerity prescriptions to “help economies recover” seems to be insanity – defined as doing the same thing again and again, hoping that the result may be different. But what if the financial planners are not insane? What if they simply seek professional success by rationalizing politics favored by the vested interests that employ them, headed by the IMF, central bankers and the policy think tanks and business schools they sponsor? The effects of pro-creditor policies have become so constant over so many decades that it now must be seen as deliberate, not a mistake that can be fixed by pointing out a more realistic body of economics (which already was available in the 1920s).…

The EU cannot be “fixed” by marginal reforms. Greece’s treatment shows that it must be recast – or else, countries will start leaving in order to restore parliamentary democracy and retain what remains of their sovereignty. The financial sector’s ideal is for economies centrally planned by bankers, leaving no public infrastructure unappropriated. Privatized economies are to be financialized into opportunities to extract monopoly rent.

The gauntlet has been thrown down, posing a question today much like that of the 1930s: Will the alternative to austerity, debt deflation and the resulting economic breakdown be resolved by a pro-labor socialist alternative, or will it lead to a victory by anti-European right-wing parties?….

Not difficult to see where this is headed. The Left and it's chance and blew. Now it the Right's turn.

Michael Hudson
Review of James Galbraith, Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice (2016)

Julian Assange — IMF Internal Meeting Predicts Greek 'Disaster', Threatens to Leave Troika

The Greek situation is "evolving." 

Remaining in the Troika seems an increasingly hard sell internally for the IMF, because non-European IMF creditor countries view the IMF's position on Greece as a violation of its policies elsewhere of not making loans to countries with unsustainable debts.

Wikileaks
IMF Internal Meeting Predicts Greek 'Disaster', Threatens to Leave Troika
Julian Assange
h/t Don Quijones at Raging Bull-Shit

Bill Mitchell — Fiscal policy is a potent instrument for productivity growth

Sometimes we have to take a longer look at things to see the present in perspective. Greece has been a living experiment for the neo-liberal Groupthink machine that is the Troika. We rarely experiment on humans on any sort of large-scale if there is the likelihood of adverse result. That would breach any notion of human ethics. It is a pity that we relax those standards when dealing with other animals, but that is another story again, which I will leave silent here. The Nazis certainly conducted large-scale experiments on humans and we vilified them for it. The Troika is conducting different types of experiments on the citizens of Greece, which defy reason, and which also have had devastating effects. But still the mantra continues from the babbling mouths of the political leadership in Europe and its technocratic squawk squad (SS) embedded in the European Commission bureaucracy, the ECB, the IMF and various so-called ‘think tanks’ that continually pump out pro-Euro propaganda disguised as research – more structural reform, more fiscal austerity. Apparently, this scorched earth approach is the only alternative and will deliver higher productivity, increased international competitiveness and underpin a return to prosperity. Greece is on the front line of this approach. I never believed it would work because it defies economic reason. Economic reason that is not blighted by the neo-liberal Groupthink. It hasn’t worked. And now, the IMF, or at least segments within the IMF, are admitting that and producing research that supports the opposite case – the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) case – that expansive “fiscal policy is a potent instrument for productivity growth through innovation”. Correct!

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Fiscal policy is a potent instrument for productivity growth
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

system failure — The European industry of sell-off public property

Just like Michael Hudson predicted.

the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens
The European industry of sell-off public property

system failure due to insufficient evolution?

Yanis Varoufakis — How the ‘Troika Effect’ was dubbed the ‘Varoufakis Effect’ – Project Syndicate Op-Ed and beyond

As part of an impressive campaign to discredit the Athens Spring, and those of us who continue to honour and propagate its spirit, a cabal of journalists and ‘analysts’ have joined forces to depict me as the “destroyer of the Greek economy.” The purpose? To demonise the Greek people’s audacity to elect us with a mandate to oppose the Troika in the Spring and early summer of 2015, when they backed our stance with that magnificent 62% NO vote.

Their hideous campaign was summed up recently in the so called ‘Varoufakis Effect’ argument, by Berenberg’s Chief Economist, a Mr Schmieding. Using a chart that ‘shows’ business confidence to have collapsed during the days of my tenure in the ministry of finance (first half of 2015), he pinned on me Greece’s woes. Naturally, the troika’s Greek cheerleaders, with newspaper TO VIMA at the forefront, grabbed the opportunity to jeer and snarl. Except that they were caught with the smoking gun in their hands…

Count on the Right to blame the disasters it creates on the Left.

Yanis Varoufakis
How the ‘Troika Effect’ was dubbed the ‘Varoufakis Effect’ – Project Syndicate Op-Ed and beyond

Bill Mitchell — The total Greek election farce – RIP democracy

Last weekend, the Greece people (or a declining proportion of them) elected a new national government. It was a farce. There was no competing electoral mandates sought. The population know what is in store for them. The policy mandate in force wasn’t even supported by popular vote. It comes from the Troika, which now effectively governs the Colony of Greece. The new Prime Minister, who sold the people out prior to the election, is now talking about making changes. Yeh, right! He is now just a tool for the Troika. National elections where the people do not vote for anything much don’t look like a healthy democracy to anyone who isn’t in denial as to what has been going on. Democracy is about the people being able to change governments that do them harm. In the Eurozone that is an old-fashioned idea. National elections have become a sop, a pretense. And the people knew it and stayed away in droves. The Greek election was a total farce – democracy died.…

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The total Greek election farce – RIP democracy
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Alexrpt — Varoufakis, ‘During my time working in the Eurozone, I encountered evil that would be impossible to make up’

Yanis on the warpath.

Red Pill Times
Varoufakis, ‘During my time working in the Eurozone, I encountered evil that would be impossible to make up’
Alexrpt

James Galbraith and J. Luis Martin — The poisoned chalice

Part two of the insider view of negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup. When is a rescue not a rescue but a seizure of assets? Interview.

Just as Michael Hudson has been predicting.

James Galbraith: First of all, it’s important to distinguish between the public rationale for the policies that have been imposed on Greece, which are as you describe, and the underlying reasons which are quite different. The public rationale is the notion that so-called structural reforms will produce growth. The underlying reason is that the creditors wish to get their hands on as many Greek assets as possible at the lowest possible prices. Once you see that you’ll see that the policies are quite consistent with the reason, though not with the rationale.

What we are going to see now is an intensification of those policies and the liquidation of public and private assets in Greece: public assets which are being auctioned at undoubtedly low prices under the so-called privatization fund, and private assets because the Memorandum provides for accelerated liquidation, basically foreclosures of people’s homes and real estate and of the remaining Greek businesses. Basically that is the direction of policy, and if the Memorandum stays in place that is what we are likely to see.

LM: If you are correct, it would seem that the institutions (the IMF, the EC and the ECB) will have to rescue Greece indefinitely…?

JG: There is no “rescue” going on here. There is no “rescue,” there is no “bailout,” there is no “reform” going on. I really need to insist on this, because these words creep into our discourse. They are placed there by the creditors in order for unwary people to use them, but there is nothing of the kind taking place. What is going on is a seizure of the assets owned by the Greek state, by Greek businesses and by Greek households. There is no sense that this has anything to do with the recovery of the Greek economy or with the welfare of the Greek people. On the contrary, the policy is utterly indifferent to those considerations.…

Damning the neoliberal devils.

LM: Will Greece end up out of the euro?

JG: Somebody will be out of the euro at some point, because the politics of the choices here have now become exceptionally clear.…

The kiss of death. Greed.

More on the inside story, too.

Open Democracy
The poisoned chalice
James Galbraith and J. Luis Martin