Crunch Time for Greece

The new Syriza government of Greece has failed to get its eurozone “partners” (as Syriza has taken to calling Germany and the rest) to agree to ease the financial strangulation of Greece. Talks have broken down. Germany et al have presented a brick wall of refusal to budge. The plight of the Greek people doesn't move them a single millimeter.

It took the Greek people a long time to snap out of their political coma. But many still haven't. Syriza, the “radical left” (as the capitalist media has it) coalition that won the election, only got 36% of the vote. However that put it far out in first place in the recent parliamentary elections.

For many years, the Greeks have gone along with the rule of corrupt elites (who paid minimal taxes thanks to rampant cheating). The corrupt political parties bought off the public with make-work government jobs and social welfare paid for by unsustainable borrowing- borrowing only possible because Greece abandoned its currency, the drachma, and adopted the euro. Stupid “investors” treated all eurozone countries as equally credit-worthy, just because their government bonds were denominated in the same currency!

Now Greece is in the position of many a third world nation. The corrupt elites put the country deep into debt for their own selfish reasons. The bill comes due, and the international collection agencies like the IMF and World Bank (and now the European Central Bank) come calling to twist arms into hammerlocks and extort repayment. “Austerity” is imposed- namely savage class warfare against the hapless inhabitants of the country.

In five years, real Greek wages have fallen 25%. The Greek economy has contracted by about the same amount, meaning it is only three-quarters the size it was five years ago. 300,000 families can't afford electricity.

Yet the masters of Europe insist on more suffering for the Greek people. Their sinister accomplices, the traitors of Pasok and “New Democracy,” have been pouring lies into the ears of the Greek public the whole time, telling them that prosperity was just around the corner, that this terrible poisonous “medicine” would restore health to the economy. An absurdity on its face.

Greece “owes” 320 billion euros in debt. That is 175% of GDP. (Gross domestic product, the annual output or in other words the size of the entire economy.) Just to service this huge debt, Greece would have to run an annual government surplus of 4% of GDP.
Greece is bankrupt. But the finance capitalist czars and their politicians, who rule Europe, insist on bleeding the Greek people white to get the money. Money they don't need. Writing it off would be a paper loss for the plutocrats. But they have decided that Greeks don't need medical care, don't need jobs, don't need electricity, don't need food.

Greeks have been schizophrenic. On the one hand, they have been forced by the economic depredations imposed on them to finally stop backing the “traditional” parties, namely the criminal political elite cliques that created the crisis, first through years of economic irresponsibility (enabled by financial shenanigans sold to them by the likes of Goldman Sachs), and then by enforcing “austerity” on the Greek population. “Austerity” is code for attacking the human needs of the population through mass firings and defunding health care, education, and more. As part of the “conditions” for the “bailout” (of the debt holders, NOT “of Greece”), the corrupt political cliques (organized in the “traditional” parties, Pasok, who are fake “socialists,” and “New Democracy,” right-wingers) So the Greek people want the torture to stop, the destruction of Greek society to be halted.

Yet they also cling to the euro as Greece's currency. But they can't have it both ways. Greece has to ditch the euro and bring back a Greek currency. There is no way around that. Especially since the financial rulers of Europe won't stop bleeding Greece, and as long as they control Greece's currency, they have Greece by the throat. The Greeks apparently have a deep inferiority complex. They see being in the eurozone as some kind of status symbol. In fact it is what has helped destroy their economy.

If Greek bank deposits are converted overnight from euros into some Greek currency, that new currency will be “worth” radically less than euros. So unsurprisingly, there is currently a run on the Greek banks, with people withdrawing their savings at a fast clip.

Ultimately the taxpayers of Germany and the other eurozone nations are on the hook for a large part of the debt, as the European Central Bank “loaned” the Greek (mis)government money to pay off their bonds and fund their government. But Germany for one can afford to take a loss. Especially considering that morally they owe Greece billions for the awful crimes (including thousands of murders) they inflicted on Greece in World War II, for which they've never paid a red cent. (If Syriza were really “radical,” they would loudly insist on reparations.) And Germany got its own debt wiped out in 1953 by saying Hey, you want us to help you fight the Soviet Union, right? (They used the same extortion to get a pass on all their Nazi war criminals, who were allowed right back into the German government- forget about hanging them, as should have happened!)

[By the way, it is this anti-fascist attitude on my part which is one reason the U.S. government has persecuted me for decades.]

A typical example of the propaganda campaign that is accompanying this Mafia-style loan sharking collection of debt by the masters was on the UK propaganda arm BBC, which for several days running broadcast to the world over its radio network some German comparing Greece to a crazy man threatening to jump off a ledge, how “stupid” and “self-destructive” for Syriza to insist on debt relief.

And Britain isn't even in the eurozone! But Britain of course is a hotbed of reactionary ideology serving finance capital. London is a hub of parasitic finance capital, and not coincidentally London real estate is used to park flight capital from abroad. The actual citizens of London are being priced out of their own city.