Mainstream media, in presenting Greece as without hand, appears to be laboring under two very big misconceptions.
The first is a mistaken view that grexit would be disastrous for Greece. If issuing your own currency was disastrous, the rest of the world would be the economic basket case, rather than the eurozone. It is not without good reason that successive UK governments have given the euro a wide berth all these years. Under present arrangements, the euro is economically and politically unsustainable. Reintroducing the drachma would facilitate a prompt restoration of economic stability and growth in Greece.
The second mistake is to imagine that debt relief and an end to austerity in Europe is “unaffordable” and would destroy the euro. The ECB has unlimited capacity to issue euros, just as currency sovereign national governments have unlimited capacity to issue their own currencies, and such issuance is needed right now to restore demand (employment, growth) and price stability (avoid deflation).heteconomist
Either the Troika Has No Hand, Or I’m No Game Theorist
Peter Cooper
Here's my take which I just shared with Clonal:
I
agree that the eurocrats have backed themselves into a corner. They
cannot give Greece a beneficial deal or the other peripheral countries
will want similar treatment.
So the alternatives are that either Syriza
caves, is replaced by a compliant government, or Grexit.
I think the
many in the German elite are looking at Grexit and just being done with
Greece once and for all as more trouble than it is worth.
The
US looks at it differently. European integration for the US means NATO
under US control and the US has no overriding interest in the EZ or a
united Europe.
In fact, a United States of Europe would be fearsome
competitor for the US and would likely threaten NATO. A Europe allied
with Eurasia would end US global hegemony.
Above all, the US doesn't want Greece moving closer to Russia and China, potentially threatening NATO domination in Europe.
So
while Germany is the key player in the EZ, the US is the elephant in
the room. The US strategists are certainly focusing on this today.
5 comments:
Agreed. I think US is working behind the scenes to engineer some kind of deal with a relatively graceful EU-Germany climb-down. The key thing for Tsipras is that he gets actual debt forgiveness in the hand up front in exchange for whatever restructuring he does.
One thing holding up the deal now are the small and vulnerable EU countries who don't have the guts to admit to their constituents that they were snookered by the stupid German austerity agenda into handing their countries lousy, sluggish recoveries.
As Bill Mitchell has explained many times: haircuts on debt are not going to solve anything.
The Maastricht treaty needs to be gone and deficits have to be allowed to raise. If Tsipras is going to extend and pretend and then run surplus this will be for nothing except having the same problems in a few months if China keeps cooling down and/or the euro goes up.
The Euro policies that are causing the crisis:
-- 3% deficit limit
-- monetary policy bias
-- export led growth bias
Ergo, big unemployment number!
(Warren Mosler)
I usually agree with Peter but not this time. If Greece is forced off the Euro (they don't have the balls to leave voluntarily) they will be treated as a pariah state. They will be sanctioned, they will be blacklisted from the payments system, and the CIA & friends will be angling for regime change.
Greece's best bet would be to re-align with the BRICS. That is do-able, but will take time, perhaps a year. In the meantime Greece's economy will tank and there will be US-backed protests in the streets, attempting a Maiden-type coup.
A strong, competent leader could survive all that, but Greece has no strong competent leaders.
The Greeks voting 'OXI' led me to mapping out one perspective of the human dimension: [The Principle of Conflict and the Principle of Sharing -3 pages]
https://www.drivehq.com/folder/p12578879.aspx
"Everyone knows that basic changes in human attitudes - towards themselves, their environment and society - must be brought about if humanity and the planet are to survive. I for one, believe in humanity, and believe it is up to the task. I am not as confident as to how quickly we will realise that task".
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