Trojan Hearse: Greek Elections and the Euro Leper Colony

Written on January 24th, 2015 in politics Comments Off

Published on Dissident Voice (first on Greg Palast’s web site for το χωνί), by Greg Palast, Jan 20, 2015.

Europe is stunned, and bankers aghast, that polls show the new party of the Left, Syriza, will win Greece’s parliamentary elections to be held this coming Sunday, January 25.

Syriza promises that, if elected, it will cure Greece of leprosy. Oddly, Syriza also promises that it will remain in the leper colony. That is, Syriza wants to rid Greece of the cruelty of austerity imposed by the European Central Bank but insists on staying in the euro zone.

The problem is austerity run wild is merely a symptom of an illness. The underlying disease is the euro itself.

For the last five years, Greeks have been told that, if you cure your disease—that is, if you dump the euro—the sky will fall. I guess you haven’t noticed, the sky has fallen already. With unemployment at 25%, with Greek doctors and teachers eating out of garbage cans, there is no further to fall … //

… There’s Life after Euro:

  • Many nations do quite well without the euro. Sweden, Denmark and India do just fine without the euro—and so does Turkey, which had the luck to be excluded from the euro-zone. As long as Turks stick to the lira, even Turkey’s brain-damaged Islamo-fascist President Tayyip Erdogan cannot destroy their economy.
  • Can Greece just dump the euro? They have happy precedents to follow. Argentina was once pegged to the US dollar much as Greece is tied to the euro today. In 2000, Argentines, hungry and angry, revolted. Argentina ultimately overthrew the dollar dictatorship, the IMF diktats and the threats of creditors, and defaulted on its dollar bonds. Free at last! In the decade since, the Argentine economy soared. Yes, today, Argentina is under attack by financial vultures, but that is only because the nation became so temptingly wealthy.
  • I was in Brazil when its President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told the IMF to go to hell—and rejected privatization of the state banks and the state oil company, rejected cutting pensions and thumbed his nose at the rest of the austerity nonsense. Instead, Lula created the bolsa familia, a massive pay-out to the nation’s poor. The result: Brazil not only survived but thrived during the 2008-10 world financial crisis. Despite pressure, Brazil never ceded control of its currency. (It is a sad irony that Brazil is only now faltering. That’s the fault entirely of Lula’s successor, President Dilma Rousseff, who is beginning to dance the austerity samba.)

Austerity: Religion, Not Economics: … //

… The Euro’s Father Describes his Little Bastard: … //

… Greece: Goldman Sacked:

  • Greece’s ruin began with secret, fraudulent currency swaps, designed a decade ago by Goldman Sachs, to conceal Greek deficits that exceeded the euro zone’s 3%-of-GDP limit. In 2009, when the truth came out, Greek debt holders realized they had been cheated. These debt buyers then demanded usurious levels of interest (or, if you prefer, a high “spread”) to insure themselves against future fraud. The compounding of this interest premium brought the Greek nation to its knees. In other words, the crimes committed to join and stay in the euro, not Greek profligacy, caused the crisis.
  • The USA, Brazil and China escaped from depression by controlling their money supply, government spending and currency exchange rates—crucial tools Greece gave up in return for the euro.
  • Worse, once the Trojan hearse of the euro entered Athens, tourism, Greece’s main industry, drained to Turkey where hotels and souvenirs are priced in cheap lira. This allowed Dr. Mundell’s remorseless wage-lowering machine, the euro, to do its work, to force Greece to strip all its workers of pensions and power.
  • Greece fell to its knees, with no choice but to beg Germany for mercy.
  • But there is no mercy. As Germany’s Schäuble insists, democracy, this week’s vote, means nothing. “New elections change nothing in the accords struck with the Greek government,” he says. “[Greeks] have no alternative.”
  • Ah, but they do, Mr. Schäuble. They can tell you to take your euro and shove it up your Merkel.

(full text).

(Greg Palast studied healthcare economics at the Center for Hospital Administration Studies at the University of Chicago. His investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television’s Newsnight. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg’s website).

Greece and Euro related Links:

Other Links:

Top Google executive predicts end of the internet, on Russia Today RT, Jan 23, 2015;

Mystery goo kills over 200 San Francisco Bay birds, officials stumped, on Russia Today RT, Jan 23, 2015;

We didn’t even really know who we were firing at – former US drone operator, on Russia Today RT, Jan 22, 2015;

Journalist Barrett Brown sentenced to 63 months in prison for Anonymous link, on Russia Today RT, Jan 22, 2015 (the evil empire strikes back – Heidi);

Canada’s Flourishing Arms Trade with Middle East Dictatorships, on Dissident Voice, by Yves Engler, Jan 22, 2015;

Kenya police teargas children in playground, on Russia Today RT, Jan 20, 2015;

IRS Warns Of Delayed Refunds, Long Waits For Taxpayers & Possible Shutdown, on Forbes, by Kelly Phillips Erb, Jan 13, 2015;

Video: The World in 2015, Global population and the changing shape of world demographics, 4.15 min, uploaded by The Economist, Nov 13, 2014; .

… und noch dies:

FILM: Der Schwarze Freitag, von monkeybird77 im Oktober 2008 auf YouTube hochgeladen:

Zu den schicksalsschwersten Daten der Geschichte gehört der 25. Oktober 1929, der Schwarze Freitag. Die Weltwirtschaftskrise, die Verzweiflung und Selbstmord, Arbeitslosigkeit, Massenverelendung und politische Radikalisierung im Gefolge hatte, nahm mit dem New Yorker Börsenkrach an diesem Tage ihren Anfang. Im Mittelpunkt der Handlung steht der amtierende Präsident der New Yorker Börse im Herbst 1929, Richard Whitney. Im Auftrag der Großbanken unternahm er am Vortag des Zusammenbruchs noch einmal eine Stützungsaktion, die den Gang der Ereignisse nur für wenig mehr als eine Stunde aufzuhalten vermochte. In der Hauptrolle ist Curd Jürgens als Richard Whitney zu sehen. Ihm zur Seite stehen so profilierte Darsteller wie Dieter Borsche, Hans Christian Blech und Erik Ode.

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