Friday, June 05, 2015

Financial Coup in Greece?


Source: Le Monde Diplomatique



From day to day mainstream and alternative media commentators speculate about when Greece will finally admit is is bankrupt and will have to leave the European Single Currency system, abandon the Euro and return to the Drachma, and the Euronazis of Brussels admit they were wrong to bend the rules in order to get Greece to adopt the Euro, and stop piling more agony on the long suffering Greek people and help organize a painless exit.


From France Le Monde Diplomatique reports that four months after Syriza’s victory in the Greek election, with the traditional parties of government since the fall of the military junta, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) and New Democracy (right wing) have been completely destroyed. The first radical leftist government since the “mountain government” at the time of the German occupation is still very popular despite its struggles to resist EU presure for more austerity.


Although the "troika", (the IMF, ECB and EU commission) hated because of the harsh economic measures imposed as a price for the bailout and thus to blame for the subsequent economic disaster, is no longer mentioned, its three parts — the European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) — continue to squeeze Greece by imposing the same austerity on the government of Alexis Tsipras.


With GDP down by 25% since 2010 and an unemployment rate of 27% (over 50% among the under 25s), Greece has a social and humanitarian crisis on its hands. But despite the results of the January elections, which gave Tsipras a clear mandate to end austerity, the European Union continues to treat Greece as a naughty child who must be punished for its irresponsible behaviour and to discourage voters in Spain and elsewhere who still believe in the possibility of governments opposed to German domination (that point of view does not bode well for an EU future of ever closer union with France and Germany as the main political and economic powers).


This situation is like Chile in the 1970s, when US president Richard Nixon was determined to topple Salvador Allende to prevent leftwing contagion in America’s backyard. “Make the economy scream,” said Nixon, and when it did, General Augusto Pinochet took over.


A similar, externally orchestrated coup is under way in Greece, using more modern economic tools including manipulating bond markets. Two options remain for Tsipras’s government: to be strangled financially if it keeps trying to implement its programme, or to renege on its promises and fall, abandoned by its voters.


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