Eurozone finance ministers arriving for emergency talks in Brussels made it clear they were waiting on Athens to sign up to further reforms and were in no hurry to discuss debt relief.The unemployment rate in Greece is 25.6%. The youth unemployment rate is 49.7%. How much more austerity to the Eurobanksters expect the Greeks to put up with?
There is a precedent for all of this. A long time ago, roughly 84 years back, Germany owed other nations a lot of money. When Germany couldn't pay, there were demands for more and more austerity. What happened in Germany (and in other countries) was the rise of political parties that were hostile to the financial system. And we all know, or should know, how that worked out.
Greece has been heading down a similar road. For all of the Eurobanksters' hyperventilation, the Syriza party is at least willing to talk. The ECB can either deal with them or deal with what comes next.
There is much evil spread about. The Eurobanksters, like the American mortgage lenders, raked in huge fees by making loans that they had reason to know had a high risk of failure. The Germans have been hyper-fixated on controlling inflation, but in the current situation, the German remedy is like ordering a person who is starving to go on a diet. The Greeks borrowed money that they couldn't repay, but as so many people, including the ECB, willingly ignore, making a loan to an unsound borrower also requires a lender who will turn a blind eye to that condition.
The Eurozone looks more and more like a collection agency for German banksters. The ECB doesn't seem to give a rat's ass about anything else, other than collecting on bad debts. Whether or not the Eurozone economy functions, whether or not the Euro-members' economies are sound, is, apparently, not their concern.
I suspect that much of this is dawning on the Grecians. Which may be why they voted for Syriza, why they voted "no" on the referendum, and why they may be gearing up to tell the ECB to bugger off.
4 comments:
Well, Greece is harmless, no potential military powerhouse.
The whole debate isn't nearly as much about austerity as it is painted in anglophone media. The conditions for more aid were mostly about reforms of dysfunctional pieces of the Greek state and its legislation. The only substantial cuts in the conditions list were about retirement pay, and the Greeks have some overly generous (unaffordable) elements in their retirement system.
It makes little sense to cut spending, but on the other side it makes little sense for the not-so bankrupt countries of Europe to sink even more money into the Greek delayed bankruptcy (1/3 of the money went to non-Greek debtor, 2/3 to Greece - the other countries could protect their financial economy from Greek fallout with a much smaller effort if they simply ignored Greece!).
The "Eurobanksters" you're taking about are actually the citizens of Europe. The average German - retiree, worker, student - is about to lose 1,000 € wealth from this Greek bullshit.
The Greeks want to pile on this sum and keep refuse to accept that they are actually piss-poor. Other European countries accept that they're piss-poor and live accordingly.
Look up the Greek industry structure; they're essentially a developing country, with soft drink and concrete producers being their biggest industries!
Dunno how accurate this is, but a financial commentator recently said that China makes a new Greece every six weeks...
SO, the ECB isn't going to present Gustav Lederhozen in Bavaria with a bill for a thousand Euros.
If the Greeks really want to play hardball, they have things that they could do to raise a shitload of cash. One would be to lease some coastline for a seaport. The Russians might be interested in an alternative to their base in Tartus, besides their new arrangement with the Cypriots. And then there is China, which is interested in a port in Greece.
If they don't get euros flowing again soon, they'll have to start paying pensions and such in scrip, effectively bringing back the drachma, which they can begin to devalue to soften the effects of their debt, like any country that borrows in its own currency. Either way, it's going to be ugly for them for a while, but at least with their own currency, there is a foreseeable end to the ugliness.
Their exit from the Euro might also finish the precedent set by Iceland of telling the banksters to fuck themselves and fixing their economy. At least in the old days, when Germany didn't like your government, they actually had to do something about it to make them go away...
-Doug in Oakland
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