Check it out:
Berlin cabdriver Jens Mueller says he’s had it with the Greek government and he doesn’t want Germany to send any more of his tax money to be squandered in Athens.
“They’ve got a lot of hubris and arrogance, being in the situation they’re in and making all these demands,” said Mueller, 49, waiting for fares near the Brandenburg Gate.
"Maybe it’s better for Greece to just leave the euro.”
Mueller’s sentiment is shared
Read rest of the story here.
There are three problems (at least) that I see with this.
First, Tsipras and Varoufakis have no balls. They're all talk and they will never pull out of euro. They've ideologically bought into it and will go down trying to make it work.
Second, the common German working man and woman doesn't understand that their comfortable situation is partially due to Germany being able to run surpluses with countries like Greece. In other words, being able to suck everyone else dry. Greece leaves, who knows? Italy next? Then Spain? Then Portugal? You see what I mean? That German cab driver starts to look like a Greek cab driver.
Finally, the bankers and financial predators who set Greece up to fail and who want their 100 cents on the dollar back and then some, will never let Greece go and if Greece does decide to go Washington or Brussels or both will probably send military to collect on those debts.
That's the problem.
23 comments:
"Dont send my tax money to those welfare cheats." Same shit, different continent. Neoliberalism's grasp is truly global.
Not even neoliberalism. It's neocolonialism. And it is hardly limited to Greece. The aim of neoliberal globalization is neo-imperialism and neocolonialism, making the ROW the vassals of the West, and the rest of the West the minions of the US oligarchs that have captured the state by capturing both political parties.
Recall this?
John Carney, Goldman Sachs Shorted Greek Debt After It Arranged Those Shady Swaps, Business Insider, Feb 15, 2010.
What I dont understand from YV, is while the whole "problem" is being perceived thru the analytic framework of NIA... iow they are obsessing over Greece's "G-T" as a % ... why isnt he explaining the "problem" from Greece's perspective via that SAME analytic framework of the NIA...
Why doesnt he just explain to them that they cannot enjoy those surpluses (Mike's point) without Greece's deficits and then you illustrate the illogical nature of the current arrangements and then can get them modified/adjusted...
Threaten them with an immediate stoppage of German imports or something as an emergency measure...
This makes me think that YV is ignorant of the sectoral balances approach to macro analysis using the NIA framework... ie YV is simply not qualified to be the Greek finance minister... he is not exhibiting (to me) an actual understanding of macro in the same terms as are being used by the institutions...
Until he proves otherwise, to me he is just another lefty with all heart and no brains....
It's not their balls that are the problem, really. The problem is with their heads, not their hearts (or balls). Varoufakis scares himself with zero-probability bugbears like hyperinflation after Grexit; wrongly convincing himself he has rational arguments why Grexit must be a catastrophe. As Mosler says "EU austerity has been an epic crime against humanity, and, unfortunately Greece may not have the understandings needed to reverse it."
But one shouldn't bring up other zero-probability occurrences like "Washington or Brussels or both will probably send military to collect on those debts."
One of the diplomatic acts the USA has to be proud of after WWII was that it played a leading role in making this kind of gunboat "diplomacy" to collect on debts illegal under the UN charter. The USA (& others) have committed crimes and coups galore since then, but no military to collect debts in the prewar, pre-Charter way.
Michael Hudson sees the actions of Varoufakis and Tsipras as a good-cop-bad-cop tactic against the troiks (institutions?) The "good cops" are V and T, and the "bad cops" are the Greek Parliament and the far left of SYRIZA.
"Quantitative Easing for Whom?" By MICHAEL HUDSON and SHARMINI PERIES
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/13/quantitative-easing-for-whom/
Hudson could be right, I hope he is. Last year, Varoufakis predicted a few months of negotiations, which would probably fail and be followed by Grexit. Which as I said above he has sincere but wrongheaded fears of. So I still think it is too soon to tell - though by June we should see if they have their hearts and balls win over their heads. I don't think the problem is what YV doesn't know, but what he knows that ain't so.
Been trying to get Hudson on my podcast. Sent him an email and he never responded. If anyone knows him (and I do; we've met, so it's weird he doesn't reply) please tell him I want him on my podcast. Thanks.
Judging by the link, the problem with the "good cop, bad cop" theory is that the Germans may no longer fear the bad cop: they may actually be willing to accept the Grexit.
I suspect that YV thinks that Grexit is in the cards, but he wants it to look like he and Syriza were the grownups in the room and the outcome was a result of eurocrat intransigence rather than a bunch of crazy leftist radicals.
Putin is playing it similarly with Ukraine, Syria, and his policy toward global multipolarity wrt to the Atlanticists versus the ROW, and the US and UK versus Germany in particular and also the other countries of Europe.
These things take time, patience and skillful maneuvering to bring off successfully.
So I would not write either YV or Putin off on this yet. There are reasons to think that they are pulling ahead.
"I suspect that YV thinks that Grexit is in the cards, but he wants it to look like he and Syriza were the grownups in the room and the outcome was a result of eurocrat intransigence rather than a bunch of crazy leftist radicals."
That's possible. They will still have to explain the Greek voters why, in spite of their promises, they are out.
Will the Greeks be happy with that? It will depend on how badly they want to remain in the eurozone and how badly they want austerity to end.
If I were working for Syriza. I'd try to come up with some good explanations...
That is the art of the dance.
Much of skillful politics, governing and statecraft is preparing the people for outcomes they might neither understand nor choose.
People don't get on board with developments overnight. It's a lot simpler, of course, if TPTB also control the propaganda machine. That's often on the case, or at least completely (as it is in the US).
I agree the tanks will roll if the Greeks repudiate their debt or even is significantly delinquent. But if they do go, will they need to have foreign exchange to import or will they have a surplus in their current account. What do the Greeks offer to the ROW that makes the drachma worth something?
If they could somehow get Russia to help them, they may be able to make it. I don't see that happening. So it appears they are between a rock and hard place.
Also, what are they doing, if anything, to stop capital flight and what happens to financial investments? More rock and hard place. I'm not seeing an exit unless Germany boots them out. And that could be the plan.
More going on than just Greece, Germany, the EZ and the eurocrats.
There are foreign policy, geopolitics and geostrategic implications, too, which is a reason that the US is publicly pressuring the Europeans to loosen.
There is a battle going on right now, and Putin is playing his hand quite well in the great game of prying Europe away from the Anglo-Americans, weakening Atlanticism, and strengthening Euroasianism.
None of the leaders are blind to what is going on but it's not be being talked about publicly. It's prominent in the strategic world though, where the Great Game is everything and is always going on. Now hybird warfare is largely economic and propagandistic.
http://aussiemagpie.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/caracas-february-27-1989.html
In 1989 those people promised to end austerity (just like Syriza). In two months there was a 180 degree about face.
Syriza promised they would end austerity, inside the eurozone.
Hopefully, the Greeks will understand that to get one out of two promises is not too bad a record. Otherwise, Syriza may not like the music they will have to dance to.
" But if they do go, will they need to have foreign exchange to import or will they have a surplus in their current account."
You never need foreign exchange to import. The imports simply don't happen unless the real *and* financial side are lined up. And since banks make money doing that it happens remarkably easily.
The 'needing FX' line is a fixed exchange rate idea. Once you go to floating exchange rates that concept disappears. Then it becomes an real export/import matching problem via the medium of FX with one of the exports being forced saving in FX so you can make a sale.
All you have to do is manage the transition properly, which is primarily about making sure liquidity in foreign currency dries up and running a lot of pre-pack administrations to clear out the foreign debt asap.
That was the mistake the Russians made because their mates owned the companies that had borrowed heavily in USD, which meant that a load of called in USD loans caused a damaging FX flow.
Force the losses onto the foreign lenders and you don't get that flow - or at least you can slow it down by queuing the administration process.
almost all of the greek public debt is owned as official reserves by foreign governments/IMF anyway who cares if you stick them its not like they "need the money" anyway.... IF you really understand what is going on... which I dont think they do...
The only thing the greek payments on public debt are doing is providing operating funds to the institutions...
"..the common German working man and woman doesn't understand that their comfortable situation is partially due to Germany being able to run surpluses with countries like Greece....being able to suck everyone else dry"
German workers aren't the pampered creatures that many believe them to be. There's much more poverty in Germany than there used to be. They are highly taxed. That suppresses domestic demand and enables the surplus to be exported.
Germans may well run a surplus in euros but they have a deficit in real goods and services which of course impacts on living standards.
The problem is the euro system itself. It pits country against country, worker against worker. The EU is not the progressive force its perceived to be in Europe.
The EU is a corporatist dystopia.
Corporate power must chuckle every night about how easy it was to fool left liberals into batting for their side.
The highest risk for Greece does not come from the outside, the risk is internal military coup or an eventual ascension to power from a fascist party, and even a civil war.
I believe the left in Greece is more scared about that than any other thing really, even if they do not say.
The problem is what would the impact of a Grexit be internally, and for how long they could endure it. No one really knows, it could be nothing, or it could be long enough for those type of problems to rise.
And believe me TPTB in Europe will do all they can before a radicalization (real this time) to the left in Greece, including support for fascists like in Ukraine. Europe can cause all sort of trouble in Greece in the short term.
I don't think a lot of people here or anywhere realises how fragile are our civilisations, which are literally 10 days away from collapse top, because there is a terrible lack of knowledge of physics and science in general. Complexity has a heavy cost that needs to be paid to be maintained, and the dependence on external inputs in most developed nations is quite heavy.
A shortage of those inputs would imply a collapse in very few days, and with that comes institutional collapse and political turmoil. I'm sure any old enough east Europe resident knows what I'm talking about, but you can multiply that several times as most of east Europe didn't have actual resource shortages like western Europe does.
So it all depends on how determined are external forces to destroy the country if it exists. If there is no determination, businessmen will always seek opportunity (from outside or from inside) and supply will be just enough until the system gets rolling again (which could be immediate). But if there is political will from other countries Greece could be made to collapse faster than Ukraine is collapsing.
Or TLDR: You don't need tanks nowadays to bleed a nation or destroy it if you want.
Well, in reality that was never necessary, but now that's more true than ever.
Ignacio: Or TLDR: You don't need tanks nowadays to bleed a nation or destroy it if you want.
Well, in reality that was never necessary, but now that's more true than ever.
I disagree. Tanks are more necessary than ever if you want to bleed or destroy a nation. And as I said above, the tanks are NOT going to be on the move.
The problem is what would the impact of a Grexit be internally, and for how long they could endure it. Endure it? Enjoy it!, rather. The only problems with Grexit are short-term.
For the question "What do the Greeks offer to the ROW that makes the drachma worth something?" is easy to answer. See:
The 10% of GDP Greek *surplus* on its services trade balance As Mark Weisbrot, who imho has the most realistic - and optimistic - analyses of Grexit - notes, the differences between Greece now & Argentina 10+ years ago are in Greece's favor.
The Greek so-called surplus has been caused by import suppression already.
So the import collapse has already happened internally. How much more collapse are people realistically expecting?
From all the import collapses that have happened - including Russia which is directly political, how much society breakdown has there been.
There's barely been a change of step amongst the leaders - other than doubling down on the rhetoric that the people are under attack. And that makes people even more patriotic and harder working.
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