Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Costas Lapavitsas — The Syriza strategy has come to an end

In a joint interview with German daily Der Tagesspiegel and ThePressProject International, Syriza MP and economist Costas Lapavitsas says that the time has come for Greece and its partners to understand that “they are flogging a dead horse”. Instead, they should work together on “an exit that will be negotiated and consensual”. The first step? “After 5 years of scaremongering and misinformation, there has to be at last a genuine public debate”.
The Press Project
Costas Lapavitsas: The Syriza strategy has come to an end

4 comments:

NeilW said...

I think the time for debate is over.

We need action before anybody else dies.

Jose Guilherme said...

Right.

Tsipras should have taken the German alternative proposal of Grexit with debt restructuring.

If Greece stays inside the euro under the present circumstances it risks death at short notice.

John said...

Over at Naked Capitalism a discussion of the intricacies of reverting to the drachma:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/07/convert-to-the-drachma-piece-of-cake-right.html

Calgacus said...

The people at NC seem to think that human beings subsist on electronic currency trades. No, they don't. Food, clothing, shelter, water, air, gravity etc. are necessities. Not electronic currency trades. From that thread:

Nathan Tankus:a currency is internationally useful because it lines up with the standards of that society. An IT system transported back 100 years wouldn’t be all that useful for a currency in international terms because all these IT systems are designed to interact with IT systems around the world.

Without electronic trading of the currency (which requires an IT transition) no one will transact in Drachmas internationally because the FX risk is literally incalculable. It would of course be used domestically and there would be a cash exchange rate with the Euro but not much beyond that. if you’re a Greek who consumes food to survive, uses electricity and/or has some basic medical needs you may question your ability to survive in that case.


"Cash exchange rate" is what is necessary for exports to pay for imports. As Neil et al have pointed out - "no electronic trading" is a good thing, not a bad one.

no one will transact in Drachmas internationally because the FX risk is literally incalculable. is another piece of nonsense. Incalculable for robots. But there are these billions of non-robots called people out there, who could calculate very well. As has happened dozens of times before, the smart money would descend en masse on Greece to take a nice vig of mutually beneficial trading.

Make up some stuff about Greece being unable to feed itself - news to Greek farmers, the UN FAO etc. - or about how Grexit will turn of Greek electicity .. and the fearmongering goes on. What problems there are are in lots of teensy little fx transactions, like tourism. Thinking that there is a problem in big transactions, big things, food or fuel importing is a joke.