I'm back from vacation and the news is even more depressing than when I left. But I "called" all of this.

Just came back from a week's vacation in Florida and I had a great time, but now I am back in this shit weather of New York City. I am really starting to hate it here, but I digress.

During my vacation I barely kept up with the markets and the news; especially the news because it's pretty much almost all bad and I didn't want any buzz kill to wreck my good time.

But, alas, I am back and scanning the media again and of course there is the Greece situation right out there in the forefront and it's really sad and depressing as all hell.

Syntagma Square, until today a queues-free area of Athens, has fallen. Long lines in front of ATMs getting longer. Depressing

— Nikos Chrysoloras (@nchrysoloras) June 28, 2015

I'll start by taking some credit for predicting all this, to a "t."

Right from the election of Syriza and even before with the comments of then candidate, Alexis Tsipras, followed by the appointment of Varoufakis as Finance Minister, I said that Greece would cave to the Troika; that the last remaining wealth of the public would be stripped away and looted to pay the ransom that the banksters demanded.

Today we see that really accelerating to its final conclusion with the Greek government looking to shut banks and impose capital controls Monday morning.  (i.e. steal all the remaining cash.)

Now this is really sad and depressing on so many levels. It's depressing due to the weakness of Tsipras and the Greek government, which like so many others that have delivered false promises (Obama) and sold the people out on day one.

It's sad and depressing because of the callous and gluttonous voracity of the financial mafia who will stop at nothing and want everything despite their ineptitude and their orgies of destruction, which seemingly cannot be stopped.

It's sad and depressing on the loss of Greek sovereignty and the crushing down of the world's oldest democracy; of the crushing of democracy in general, universally, no matter how old and the sheer criminality of it.

Worst of all, however, it's sad and depressing due to the fact that we are witnessing THE MODEL that will be applied by the neoliberal criminals on the rest of us all over the world.

Make no mistake: the actions being forced upon Greece are meant to be a lesson to us all: that's what's coming our way unless we submit to the demands of this mafia and the corrupt governments they control (yes, the U.S. included, which may be most corrupt) and the lackeys who do their bidding and the law enforcement goons that fill their prisons with those who protest or refuse to submit and the armies they unleash--overt and covert--to plunder the wealth of nations.

This is the path via which, the general citizenry will be conquered, taken, enslaved, subjugated and consumed in every which way possible and it is under way as we speak and there is really nothing we can do about it.

Say good bye to Greece. Say good bye to Democracy. Say good by to us all and the way of life we have known.

On a bittersweet note there is one final irony to all this even though it's just a sort of mini, micro, "unintended consequences" thing, but at least it's something we can take a little solace in (or, better yet, make money in). That is, the vaunted euro, the thing that caused much of this misery--indeed, the thing that was CREATED EXPRESSLY as a vehicle so that the elites could steal--will go down in flames, perhaps collapsing to near-valueless in some months or at most a couple of years.

I feel sorry for the Greek people, who have been pleading for an end to austerity for so long and who have put false hope in disingenuous or timid leaders. The truth is, they have been so deluded they have not seen the poisonous nature of this currency and have not understood that it was really their mortal enemy, a Trojan Horse, all along.

For whatever reason, maybe past history of corruption under the drachma or, the inflation that the corruption seemingly always brought, the Greeks did not want to go back to the drachma. In the end I predict they will be begging for the drachma; it'll be their savior from the euro.

Make no mistake: the euro is going down. To zero, perhaps. To say the euro is getting harder to get is folly. Under the current arrangement, which necessitates that an elite few must figuratively and literally kill off everyone else for their corrupt gang to survive, and to have a currency based on this, basically means that the currency--the euro--is intrinsically worthless.

Yanis Varoufakis — As it happened – Yanis Varoufakis’ intervention during the 27th June 2015 Eurogroup Meeting

Yanis tells his side of the story.

The Eurogroup Meeting of 27th June 2015 will not go down as a proud moment in Europe’s history. Ministers turned down the Greek government’s request that the Greek people should be granted a single week during which to deliver a Yes or No answer to the institutions’ proposals – proposals crucial for Greece’s future in the Eurozone. The very idea that a government would consult its people on a problematic proposal put to it by the institutions was treated with incomprehension and often with disdain bordering on contempt. I was even asked: “How do you expect common people to understand such complex issues?”. Indeed, democracy did not have a good day in yesterday’s Eurogroup meeting! But nor did European institutions. After our request was rejected, the Eurogroup President broke with the convention of unanimity (issuing a statement without my consent) and even took the dubious decision to convene a follow up meeting without the Greek minister, ostensibly to discuss the “next steps”.

Can democracy and a monetary union coexist? Or must one give way? This is the pivotal question that the Eurogroup has decided to answer by placing democracy in the too-hard basket. So far, one hopes....

Neoliberalism or democracy but not both. Actually this is an instance of Rodrik's trilemma:  Internationalism, national sovereignty and democracy cannot exist simultaneously. One must be sacrificed. Under neoliberalism two are sacrificed. National sovereignty and democracy are sacrificed to transnational corporatism-technocracy.

Yanis Varoufakis
As it happened – Yanis Varoufakis’ intervention during the 27th June 2015 Eurogroup Meeting

Lars P. Syll — Greece and the true purpose of the euro

Robert Mundell devised it that way. It was anti-democratic out of the gate and bound to be disruptive of social democracy in Europe. As Wynne Godley pointed out in Maastricht and All That.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Greece and the true purpose of the euro
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Francois Houtart — The citizen revolutions in Latin America

The countries of the ‘citizen revolution’ in Latin America are post-neoliberal, but not post-capitalist.

Open Democracy
The citizen revolutions in Latin America

Francois Houtart | Emeritus profesor at the Université Catholique de Louvain and full profesor at the Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales del Ecuador (Quito)

Matt Bruenig — Institutions Matter Except When They Are Socialist

Robert Solow once remarked:

Every discussion among economists of the relatively slow growth of the British economy compared with the Continental economies ends up in a blaze of amateur sociology.

This is the final move of right-wing economists whenever the assumptions of their ideologically-infused policy prescriptions end up contradicted by observed reality. After a few forays into some exotic economic indicators, they eventually propose strange half-assed sociological theories that, quite remarkably, end up concluding that laissez-faire capitalism is still definitely the way to go....

My only argument with Bruenig is that in conventional economics, institutions don't matter, only individuals do, that is, the representative individual. Institutions are socialist.

Oh, and Piketty's work shoes that inequality in core European nations would be worse than the US if it were not for social democracy. This is what the neoliberal eurocrats are trying to "fix."

Matt Bruenig
Institutions Matter Except When They Are Socialist

Constantin Gurdgiev — Greek Political Outlook: June 2015

True Economics
Greek Political Outlook: June 2015

Constantin Gurdgiev

See also

IMF Gun, Greek Voters

Sandwichman — Evil EuRobot and Abolition Implosion of the Wages-Rut System

Today, June 27, is the 150th anniversary of Karl Marx's declaration that workers "ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: 'Abolition of the wages system!'"

Econospeak
Evil EuRobot and Abolition Implosion of the Wages-Rut System

Sandwichman

Iain Martin — There’s method in Greece’s madness – it could pay off

The action is now political.

The Telegraph
There’s method in Greece’s madness – it could pay off
Iain Martin

ht Clonal

Navel-Gazing vs Exploring Aggregate Options. A Metaphor. The Paleolithic Aggregate_Brain Diet.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

I this what "nature intended?" Or, like capitalism, is EVERYTHING we come across just a statistical blip in the path of "Context Nomads" .... and "nature" didn't give us any instruction other than to survive (even ourselves)?

That brings up an analogy.

The Paleolithic Aggregate_Brain* Diet

To avoid you know what.

This is just one part of a bigger spectrum of tasks: ... HOW do we get people to KEEP exploring their (personal PLUS aggregate) options?

Hint, adequately provision the components (individuals) AND exhort them to do something other than just brainlessly over-consume whatever they initially market to one another.

Beginning minds start out over-consuming, yet growing minds soon graduate to lean exploration of insanely exhilarating options (personal plus aggregate).

Here's a quick example, below, featuring another review of evidence for human adaptation to low-grain diets (any combo of veggies/fruits/meats, plus occasional seeds thrown in).

Current uber-capitalists won't like this either, since they "don't do nuance".

Note that this data is curated & promoted by the USA NIH NCBI - National Center for Biotechnology Information. Think of it as analogous to Fed_Data, for Public Health, not economic data.

Comparison with ancestral diets suggests dense acellular carbohydrates promote an inflammatory microbiota, and may be the primary dietary cause of leptin resistance and obesity

Ian Spreadbury, GIDRU WingKingston General Hospital76 Stuart StreetKingston, Ontario K7L 2V7, Canada(613) 549-6666 x6520is15@queensu.ca

My synopsis (for those intimidated by non-economic, discipline-specific jargon):

Sure, grains/milk/cheese let large populations of humans occupy nutrient-poor regions, yet such high-density nutrients need never be eaten in more than micro quantities.

Note: I'd emphasize LOW-GRAIN, not no-grain. Even foragers find whole grains periodically.  

This fits into the general story of over-utilization.
We no longer know how little we need .... even while advertisements exhort us to over-use EVERY form of food (& other commodities, even fiat IOU numerals themselves).

Face it. Humans everywhere are bored. Not just Americans. There's more to life than consuming random stuff that advertisers ("pushers") encourage one another to over-consume. That covers more than just food.

What minimum food supply will get humans to the moon? How about to Mars? 

... 

How about to the future?

Analogously, what dynamically right-sized-commodity-supply will get homo sapiens to the future?

It's worth asking every 10-yr old worldwide these questions, so that they're primed to be interested in SOMETHING besides just over-consuming ... i.e., uselessly hoarding ... like the Koch brothers, or Warren Buffett, or all sociopaths, er, "billionaires."

Of course we can go somewhere from here. Where?

Just where advertisers suggest?

Or something beyond current imaginations? Surely there's no point in limiting ourselves. Instead, let's adequately provision our grandchildren, and overweight them with aggregate options, not just fat cells or hoarded public fiat.

Ever see an advertiser advertising tomorrow? Or just what feebly small amount they can imagine today? The difference is bigger than our Output Gap, it's our grandchildren's Options Gap.

This is, after all, just one of many necessary but not sufficient steps to take. Every human could and probably should, by age 10, grasp the Anti-Hypocritic Oath: "First, Do No Harm, Personal OR Aggregate." There are plenty of subsequent challenges, and we don't want to get in the way of all of those, current or as yet unrecognized.

Sure we've found ways to fix that. And we've also found ways to go too far. 

Can't we just fix that too? You'd think so, if more of us would only think, more often ... about how little matters, long term, ... instead of mindlessly spouting advertising to one another, without thinking ... and listening to advertising, again without thinking.




* For those with un-exercised imaginations, the intelligence of a "brain" depends on the organized inter-connections of all the neurons it contains (developed by practice). A GroupBrain depends on the patterns of discourse exercised among all the citizens of that group. Capiche? Imagine if Americans knew more of what Americans know to matter. That requires group practice, to whittle down how little matters to successive, fleeting contexts. We can only get there by selecting to practice, enough, on an aggregate scale.

Alexrpt — Here is the simple proposal Yanis Varoufakis should have given to the IMF’s Lagarde…

Red Pill Times
Here is the simple proposal Yanis Varoufakis should have given to the IMF’s Lagarde…
Alexrpt

See also

Democracy is like kryptonite to the EU. EC President Juncker furious that Greece will exercise right to vote. Calls on EU to withdraw support

Francesco Saraceno — It’s the Politics, Stupid!

I have been silent on Greece, because scores of excellent economists from all sides commented at length and in real time on the developments of negotiation, and most has been said.

But last week has transformed in certainty what had been a fear since the beginning. The troika, backed by the quasi totality of EU governments, were not interested in finding a solution that would allow Greece to recover while embarking in a fiscally sustainable path. No, they were interested in a complete and public defeat of the “radical” Greek government.

The negotiation has not been one....

Tsipras had only two red lines it would and it could not cross: Trying to increase taxes on the rich (most notably large coroporations), and not agreeing to further cuts to low pensions. if he crossed those lines, he would become virtually indistinguishable from Samaras and from the policies that led Greece to be a broken State.

What the past week made clear is that this, and only this was the objective of the creditors. This has been since the beginning about politics. Creditors cannot afford that an alternative to policies followed since 2010 in Greece and in the rest of the Eurozone materializes.

Austerity and structural reforms need to be the only way to go. Otherwise people could start asking questions; a risk you don’t want to run a few months before Spanish elections. Syriza needed to be made an example. You cannot survive in Europe, if you don’t embrace the Brussels-Berlin Consensus. Tsipras, like Papandreou, was left with the only option too ask for the Greek people’s opinion, because there has been no negotiation, just a huge smoke screen. Those of us who were discussing pros and cons of the different options on the table, well, we were wasting our time.

And if Greece needs to go down to prove it, so be it. If we transform the euro in a club in which countries come and go, so be it.

The darkest moment for the EU.

TINA as "My way or the highway." Neoliberalism.

Sparse Thoughts of a Gloomy European Economist
It’s the Politics, Stupid!
Francesco Saraceno | senior economist at OFCE Sciences-Po

Noah Smith — I.Q. and the Wealth of States

One of the simplest theories of human prosperity is the idea that societal wealth comes from an intelligent populace. Obviously this is true to some degree; if you went around and forced everyone in the country to take a bunch of brain-killing drugs, economic activity would definitely decline. The question is how much this currently matters on the margin. 

Some people think it matters a lot. Richard Lynn, a British psychologist, wrote a book called I.Q. and the Wealth of Nations, suggesting that average population I.Q. drives differences in national wealth. Garett Jones of George Mason University is writing a book called Hive Mind that suggests much the same thing, asserting that there are production externalities associated with high I.Q. Motivated by this hypothesis, there is a line of research in development economics dedicated to finding interventions that boost population I.Q. 

Well, here is some new and relevant evidence. Eric A. Hanushek, Jens Ruhose, and Ludger Woessmann have a new NBER working paper in which they look at U.S. states.....

Noahpinion
I.Q. and the Wealth of States
Noah Smith | Assistant Professor of Finance, Stony Brook University

Costas Douzinas — Referendum and democracy: putting the demos on stage

It is against this background that the Greeks elected in January 2015 the Syriza government committed to reverse these policies. A period of negotiations followed. But these were not proper negotiations. The huge gap between the two parties in power resources and ideology made the talks brutally asymmetrical. I have called these ‘negotiations’ a European coup, an attempt at ‘regime change’ using banks and not tanks. The economic stakes for the lenders are relatively small - the Greek economy is only 2% of European GDP - and does not justify the risk of a breakdown in relations. The precautionary principle of risk theory, inscribed in the European DNA, demands that the unpredictable effects of Grexit on the European and world economy should be avoided. If the collapse of Lehman Brothers created such a huge crisis, even the consideration of Grexit is more dangerous

The perceived threat of a Syriza success and of a haircut of the Greek debt, repeatedly declared unviable by the IMF, is political not economic. The European elites fear a contagion throughout Southern Europe of the anti-austerity stance of the Greek people and government. The result in the Spanish local elections, the Scottish anti-austerity vote and the Sinn Féin opinion poll results indicate that the people hit by austerity have started stirring. The Syriza government is leading the attack on the ‘there is no alternative’ neoliberal mantra. Even a limited success would show that the only fight that cannot be won is a fight not joined.

The fear of political contagion is the only credible interpretation of the actions of Europeans and the IMF. The aim is clear. Either overthrow the government, if it does not accept the onerous conditions imposed on it, or humiliate it so much as to make it impossible to keep party and government together. There are many signs of this attempted ‘regime change’. Every time the Greek government presented to the European leaders a political proposal solving the long-term problem of debt sustainability, it was asked to go to the technocrats and cost it. When the Greeks returned with a detailed costing, the lenders would challenge the political framework behind it....

Open Democracy
Referendum and democracy: putting the demos on stage
Costas Douzinas | Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London

ht Clonal

Lucinda Shen — A high school drop out who delivered donuts and sold lingerie is a major advisor to Janet Yellen

After delivering donuts, working at a deli, and selling lingerie, Daly earned her GED and continued on to the University of Missouri-Kansas City and eventually got her Ph.D in economics at Syracuse University....

Daly grew up in Missouri as the daughter as a postman and a stay-at-home mom. Her parents' divorce would prompt her to drop out of school and earn her own living. At 16, Daly was living on her own — and it would be those experiences that prompted her interest in economics. 

“People lived on such a margin that they lived or died based on whether their job fell through,” she said in an interview. “That made me really interested in the labor market, interested in how people could be on this knife’s edge, of climbing up the economic ladder or falling down into the trench.”

Business Insider
A high school drop out who delivered donuts and sold lingerie is a major advisor to Janet Yellen
Lucinda Shen

ht Stephanie Kelton

James Fallows — How the World Works

Weekend reading

Americans persist in thinking that Adam Smith's rules for free trade are the only legitimate ones. But today's fastest-growing economies are using a very different set of rules.

Friedrich List, Alexander Hamilton, and the American system.

Today's Anglo-American world view rests on the shoulders of three men. One is Isaac Newton, the father of modern science. One is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of liberal political theory. (If we want to keep this purely Anglo-American, John Locke can serve in his place.) And one is Adam Smith, the father of laissez-faire economics. From these founding titans come the principles by which advanced society, in the Anglo-American view, is supposed to work. A society is supposed to understand the laws of nature as Newton outlined them. It is supposed to recognize the paramount dignity of the individual, thanks to Rousseau, Locke, and their followers. And it is supposed to recognize that the most prosperous future for the greatest number of people comes from the free workings of the market. So Adam Smith taught, with axioms that were enriched by David Ricardo, Alfred Marshall, and the other giants of neoclassical economics.

The most important thing about this summary is the moral equivalence of the various principles. Isaac Newton worked in the realm of fundamental science. Without saying so explicitly, today's British and American economists act as if the economic principles they follow had a similar hard, provable, undebatable basis. If you don't believe in the laws of physics—actions create reactions, the universe tends toward greater entropy—you are by definition irrational. And so with economics. If you don't accept the views derived from Adam Smith—that free competition is ultimately best for all participants, that protection and interference are inherently wrong—then you are a flat-earther.

Outside the United States and Britain the matter looks quite different. About science there is no dispute. "Western" physics is the physics of the world. About politics there is more debate: with the rise of Asian economies some Asian political leaders, notably Lee Kuan Yew, of Singapore, and several cautious figures in Japan, have in effect been saying that Rousseau's political philosophy is not necessarily the world's philosophy. Societies may work best, Lee and others have said, if they pay less attention to the individual and more to the welfare of the group.

The Atlantic (1993)
How the World Works

James Fallows | national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly

Press TV — Practicing Jihad al-Nafs during Ramadan

The month of Ramadan is the most sacred month for Muslims. It is the month in which the Quran was revealed to the emissary of Allah.

During this month and from dusk to dawn, Muslims are commanded to refrain from food, water and sexual activity. Through abstinence from one’s needs and desires, man is taught self-control and purification.

In the Arabic language Jihad al-Nafs means struggles against the inner self and one’s desires. Ramadan, therefore, is the ideal time to strengthen one’s spirit.

Jihad al-Nafs is considered as the major struggle as it is much more difficult than fighting in the battlefield, for in the struggle against the self, one has to constantly battle enemies inside himself. In this episode we look at the significance of Jihad al-Nafs in Ramadan?

Jihad means "battle" or "struggle" in Arabic. Nafs means "self" in the sense of limited individuality. Life is a "battlefield" on which a person struggles with oneself to overcome individuality manifesting as self-interest and self-importance instead of love and humility. It is a battle against shaitan, the tempter. Psychologically, it means doing battle against one's own "demons."

Islam is derived from the Semitic root SLM. It means "peace" as in Arabic salaam and Hebrew shalom" (salem). The term islam also signifies submission to the Most High and obedience of divine commandments, that is, divine law — shari'a in Arabic and halakha (הֲלָכָה) in Hebrew. The consequence of submission is peace, both for individuals and society.

Press TV (Iran)
Practicing Jihad al-Nafs during Ramadan

Yves Smith — Tsipras’ Bailout Referendum Sham

Have Tsipras and Syriza bungled this?

Naked Capitalism
Tsipras’ Bailout Referendum Sham
Yves Smith

Erik Loomis — A Glimpse Into the Black, Shriveled Hearts of the Republican Class Warriors

Brad DeLong says this is a must-read. I agree. Bonus: It's short.

Sharpen the pitchforks.

Lawyers, Guns & Money
A Glimpse Into the Black, Shriveled Hearts of the Republican Class Warriors
Erik Loomis | Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island

See also

Naked Capitalism
Detroit: A Case Study of Oligarchs and Vigilantes Taking Over Public Safety in a Big City
Yves Smith

Two worlds.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Xinhua — China criticizes ‘terrible’ US human rights record

China hit back at the US' human rights record in a report published on Friday in response to "irresponsible" remarks about China.

The report, "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2014," was released by the Information Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet, in response to the "2014 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" issued by the US State Department on Thursday local time.

In its report, Washington called countries such as Iran, Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam "serial human rights abusers."

The reprot said that the US made comments on the human rights situation in many countries while showing no remorse for or intention to improve its own terrible human rights record.

Ji Hong, a research fellow at the Institute of American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who took part in drafting the report, said US racial problems even deteriorated during the Obama presidency....

In August 2014, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in its concluding observation on the periodic report of the US on the latter's implementation of relevant conventions, criticized the US for violating the rights of ethnic minorities, indigenous people, immigrants and other minority groups.
Also, "money is a deciding factor in US politics, and Americans' political rights were not properly protected," it says.

Global Times
China criticizes ‘terrible’ US human rights record

Xinhua

Branko Milanovic — The two trilemmas today

At a talk on global inequality that I gave at IESE Business School in Barcelona this week, Professor Francesc Trillas asked me a very good and unexpected question: how do you reconcile the Rodrik trilemma with what he kindly called the Milanovic trilemma (defined in my The haves and the have-nots). I had to confess that I never thought of these two trilemmas together, but the question looked most interesting and I promised to think about it. So, here is the preliminary result....

Roderick's trilemma: globalization, national sovereignty and democracy.

Milanovic's trilemma: globalization, regional income gap, labor mobility.

Timely.

Global Inequality
The two trilemmas today
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Steve Keen — Bureaucrazies Versus Democracy

The most recent of the almost daily “Greek Crises” has made one thing clear: the Troika of the IMF, the EU and the ECB is out to break the government of Greece....

A huge part of the European program was directed at taking economics out of the hands of wayward, corruptible politicians, and endowing economic bureaucrats with the power to make economic policy instead.

This belief that economists know better than politicians how to run an economy was enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty itself, which limited government deficits to 3% of GDP and government debt to 60% of GDP. It was a set of rules designed to shackle political freedom, so that the economy could flourish under the incorruptible leadership of experts.

Some experts. Firstly they designed a system which would only work if capitalism never had crises. Secondly, when a crisis hit, rather than backpedalling on their flawed rules, they doubled up on them. Then, when the people had the temerity to elect a government which opposed their agenda… Well it’s obvious, isn’t it? The people must be overthrown....

But the conditions the IMF, EU and ECB are insisting upon here are so extreme, and their behaviour so counter to the very concept of democracy, that maybe the Greeks would do better to show them what a democratic government can do. Maybe they should leave the Euro, and default on all their debts—especially those to the Troika. The financial stimulus from throwing off the yoke of debt may counterbalance the initial chaos from re-instituting a national currency in a seriously damaged society.

It may also teach the bureaucrazies—and no, that is not a misprint—a lesson about the limits of bureaucratic power.

Forbes
Bureaucrazies Versus Democracy
Steve Keen

Raúl Ilargi Meijer — The People Must Be Overthrown

Still, the negotiations are nice and all, but they’re not going anywhere, and they never will. The Troika side of the table is interested in one thing only: to humiliate Athens and force it into ultimate submission, along the lines of those photographs we’ve come to know of Abu Graibh.

Yanis Varoufakis labeled the Troika policies vis-a-vis Greece ‘fiscal waterboarding’ when he started out as finance minister, and here’s thinking he should have stuck with that image in a much more persistent and a much louder fashion....

It’s time for Tsipras to turn to his people, on national TV, and say look, whatever we can discuss with the Troika, and whatever compromise we may be able to reach, there is no option on or off the table that would allow for you, the people of Greece, to not be debt slaves for the rest of your lives.

The European Union is merely a crude modern version of a feudal society (but without the debt jubilee older versions had), that’s all the morals that Brussels and Berlin can muster. And, Tsipras should say, if that is what you want, if you want to be slaves instead of a free people, tell me so. I will draw my conclusions from that....

And no, none of us get a free pass on this one. Your voice is long overdue. Because no matter where you are or who you are, whether you’re American or European, it’s still your government, acting in your name, that supports and magnifies the craziness unloaded upon the cradle of democracy.

All the Greek people know until now is that Europe and the IMF are attempting to strangle them. Still, so many among us don’t agree with that at all. Thing is, it’s time to let that be known. To the people of Greece, and to our own ‘leaders’ who if we don’t get vocal will continue to do as they please. Just because the people you’ve elected don’t have any morals doesn’t mean you don’t have to either.

The Automatic Earth
The People Must Be Overthrown
Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Jason Smith — Ramsey model and the unstable equilibrium of a pendulum

Magical economics.

Information Transfer Economics
Ramsey model and the unstable equilibrium of a pendulum
Jason Smith

Bill Mitchell — Greece has only one viable path – exit

Neoliberalism is a political theory based on economics and bad economics at that. This is all about politics, that is distribution of power, rather than economics, in that economic distribution is based on economic power that flows from political power, which in term flows from social power, that is, is class structure and interest.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Greece has only one viable path – exit
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

William K. Black — The BBC’s Inept but Revealing Attempt at a Game Theoretic View of Greek Crisis

This is published by the BBC but written by an economist that should know better. He misunderstands the basics of the game that is going on. Excellent analysis by Bill as usual.

New Economic Perspectives

The BBC’s Inept but Revealing Attempt at a Game Theoretic View of Greek Crisis

William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

John F. Henry — Fred Lee, the Industrial Workers of the World, and Heterodox Economics

Paper presented at the 15th World Congress of Social Economics. Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada. 

June 22-24, 2015
Dr. Fred S Lee
Fred Lee, the Industrial Workers of the World, and Heterodox Economics (by John F. Henry)

Jens Weidmann, boss of the Bundesbank, wants the opposite of debt relief for Greece. Really.

Jens Weidmann, boss of the Bundesbank, wants to restrict the power of the Greek central bank to provide Emergency Liquidity Assitance (ELA) to the Greek banks as he is afraid that Greek banks will use these reserves to purchase short-term government debt....

True colors. The black flag of piracy. Restrict liquidity to force insolvency. This is the opposite of what modern central banking is designed for.

Real-World Economics Review Blog
Jens Weidmann, boss of the Bundesbank, wants the opposite of debt relief for Greece. Really.
Merijn Knibbe

Paul Krugman — 'Breaking Greece'

It's political, not economic.

I would say rather, breaking Greek workers and setting an example for the EZ and world. Neoliberal globalization and all that.

Economist’s View
Paul Krugman: 'Breaking Greece'
Mark Thoma | Professor of Economics, University of Oregon

Jason Smith — Nick Rowe shows us the prior

Good one from Jason today.

Information Transfer Economics
Nick Rowe shows us the prior
Jason Smith

Pavlina R. Tcherneva — Greek debt disaster bodes ill for daily life

Pretty clear that this is leading to social unrest, political instability, and the eventual election of the Golden Dawn. If the Left can't handle it, the Right will.

Al Jazeera
Greek debt disaster bodes ill for daily life
Pavlina R. Tcherneva, Assistant Professor of Economics, Bard College, and Research Scholar, Levy Economics Institute.