This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Yanis Varoufakis: "Merkel's Control Over The Eurogroup Is Absolute, They Are Beyond The Law"
Submitted by Harry Lambert via The New Statesman,
Read the full Q&A Transcript here
Greece has finally reached an agreement with its creditors. The specifics have not yet been published, but it is clear that the deal signed is more punitive and demanding than the one that its government has spent the past five months desperately trying to resist.
The accord follows 48 hours in which Germany demanded control of Greece’s finances or its withdrawal from the euro. Many observers across Europe were stunned by the move. Yanis Varoufakis was not. When I spoke with Greece’s former finance minister last week, I asked him whether any deal struck in the days ahead would be good for his country.
“If anything it will be worse,” he said. “I trust and hope that our government will insist on debt restructuring, but I can’t see how the German finance minister [Wolfgang Schäuble] is ever going to sign up to this. If he does, it will be a miracle.”
It’s a miracle the Greek people are likely to be waiting for a long time for. On Friday night, when Greece’s parliament agreed to an austerity programme that voters had overwhelmingly rejected in a referendum five days earlier, a deal seemed imminent. A partial write-off of its debt owed to the so-called "Troika" – the IMF, the European Central bank and the European Commission – was unlikely but possible. Now, despite its government’s capitulation, Greece has no debt relief and may yet be thrown out of the Eurozone.
Varoufakis, who resigned a week ago, has been criticised for not signing an agreement sooner, but he said the deal that Greece was offered was not made in good faith – or even one that the Troika wanted completed. In an hour-long telephone interview with the New Statesman, he called the creditors’ proposals – those agreed to by the Athens government on Friday night, which now seem somehow generous – “absolutely impossible, totally non-viable and toxic …[they were] the kind of proposals you present to another side when you don’t want an agreement.”
Varoufakis added: “This country must stop extending and pretending, we must stop taking on new loans pretending that we’ve solved the problem, when we haven’t; when we have made our debt even less sustainable on condition of further austerity that even further shrinks the economy; and shifts the burden further onto the have-nots, creating a humanitarian crisis.”
In Varoufakis’s account, the Troika never genuinely negotiated during his five months as finance minister. He argued that Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza government was elected to renegotiate an austerity programme that had clearly failed; over the past five years it has put a quarter of Greeks out of work, and created the worst depression anywhere in the developed world since the 1930s. But he thinks that Greece’s creditors simply led him on.
A short-term deal could, Varoufakis said, have been struck soon after Syriza came to power in late January. “Three or four reforms” could have been agreed, and restrictions on liquidity eased by the ECB in return.
Instead, “The other side insisted on a ‘comprehensive agreement’, which meant they wanted to talk about everything. My interpretation is that when you want to talk about everything, you don’t want to talk about anything.” But a comprehensive agreement was impossible. “There were absolutely no [new] positions put forward on anything by them.”
Varoufakis said that Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister and the architect of the deals Greece signed in 2010 and 2012, was “consistent throughout”. “His view was ‘I’m not discussing the programme – this was accepted by the previous [Greek] government and we can’t possibly allow an election to change anything.
“So at that point I said ‘Well perhaps we should simply not hold elections anymore for indebted countries’, and there was no answer. The only interpretation I can give [of their view] is, ‘Yes, that would be a good idea, but it would be difficult. So you either sign on the dotted line or you are out.’”
It is well known that Varoufakis was taken off Greece’s negotiating team shortly after Syriza took office; he was still in charge of the country’s finances but no longer in the room. It’s long been unclear why. In April, he said vaguely that it was because “I try and talk economics in the Eurogroup” – the club of 19 finance ministers whose countries use the Euro – “which nobody does.” I asked him what happened when he did.
“It’s not that it didn’t go down well – there was point blank refusal to engage in economic arguments. Point blank. You put forward an argument that you’ve really worked on, to make sure it’s logically coherent, and you’re just faced with blank stares. It is as if you haven’t spoken. What you say is independent of what they say. You might as well have sung the Swedish national anthem – you’d have got the same reply.”
This weekend divisions surfaced within the Eurogroup, with countries split between those who seemed to want a “Grexit” and those demanding a deal. But Varoufakis said they were always been united in one respect: their refusal to renegotiate.
“There were people who were sympathetic at a personal level, behind closed doors, especially from the IMF.” He confirmed that he was referring to Christine Lagarde, the IMF director. “But then inside the Eurogroup [there were] a few kind words and that was it: back behind the parapet of the official version. … Very powerful figures look at you in the eye and say ‘You’re right in what you’re saying, but we’re going to crunch you anyway’.”
Varoufakis was reluctant to name individuals, but added that the governments that might have been expected to be the most sympathetic towards Greece were actually their “most energetic enemies”. He said that the “greatest nightmare” of those with large debts – the governments of countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland – “was our success”. “Were we to succeed in negotiating a better deal, that would obliterate them politically: they would have to answer to their own people why they didn’t negotiate like we were doing.”
He suggested that Greece’s creditors had a strategy to keep his government busy and hopeful of a compromise, but in reality they were slowly suffering and eventually desperate.
“They would say we need all your data on the fiscal path on which Greek finds itself, all the data on state-owned enterprises. So we spent a lot of time trying to provide them with it and answering questionnaires and having countless meetings.
“So that would be the first phase. The second phase was they’d ask us what we intended to do on VAT. They would then reject our proposal but wouldn’t come up with a proposal of their own. And then, before we would get a chance to agree on VAT, they would shift to another issue, like privatisation. They would ask what we want to do about privatisation: we put something forward, they would reject it. Then they’d move onto another topic, like pensions, from there to product markets, from there to labour relations. … It was like a cat chasing its own tail.”
His conclusion was succinct. “We were set up.”
And he was adamant about who is responsible. I asked whether German attitudes control the outlook of the Eurogroup. Varoufakis went further. “Oh completely and utterly. Not attitudes – the finance minister of Germany. It is all like a very well-tuned orchestra and he is the director.
“Only the French minister [Michel Sapin] made noises that were different from the German line, and those noises were very subtle. You could sense he had to use very judicious language, to be seen not to oppose. And in the final analysis, when Dr Schäuble responded and effectively determined the official line, the French minister would always fold.”
If Schäuble was the unrelenting enforcer, the German chancellor Angela Merkel presented a different face. While Varoufakis never dealt with her, he said, “From my understanding, she was very different. She tried to placate the Prime Minister [Tsipras] – she said ‘We’ll find a solution, don’t worry about it, I won’t let anything awful happen, just do your homework and work with the institutions, work with the Troika; there can be no dead end here.’”
The divide seems to have been brief, and perhaps even deliberate. Varoufakis thinks that Merkel and Schäuble’s control over the Eurogroup is absolute, and that the group itself is beyond the law.
Days before Varoufakis’s resignation on 6 July, when Tsipras called the referendum on the Eurogroup’s belated and effectively unchanged offer, the Eurogroup issued a communiqué without Greek consent. This was against Eurozone convention. The move was quietly criticised by some in the press before being overshadowed by the build-up to the referendum, but Varoufakis considered it pivotal.
When Donald Tusk, the European Council President, tried to issue the communiqué without him, Varoufakis consulted Eurogroup clerks – could Tusk exclude a member state? The meeting was briefly halted. After a handful of calls, a lawyer turned to him and said, “Well, the Eurogroup does not exist in law, there is no treaty which has convened this group.”
“So,” Varoufakis said, “What we have is a non-existent group that has the greatest power to determine the lives of Europeans. It’s not answerable to anyone, given it doesn’t exist in law; no minutes are kept; and it’s confidential. No citizen ever knows what is said within . . . These are decisions of almost life and death, and no member has to answer to anybody.”
Events this weekend seem to support Varoufakis’ account. On Saturday evening, a memo leaked that showed Germany was suggesting Greece should take a “timeout” from the Eurozone. By the end of the day, Schäuble’s recommendation was the conclusion of the Eurogroup’s statement. It’s unclear how that happened; the body operates in secret. While Greeks hung on reports of their fate this weekend, no minutes were released from any meetings.
The referendum of 5 July has also been rapidly forgotten. It was preemptively dismissed by the Eurozone, and many people saw it as a farce – a sideshow that offered a false choice and created false hope, and was only going to ruin Tsipras when he later signed the deal he was campaigning against. As Schäuble supposedly said, elections cannot be allowed to change anything. But Varoufakis believes that it could have changed everything. On the night of the referendum he had a plan, Tsipras just never quite agreed to it.
The Eurozone can dictate terms to Greece because it is no longer fearful of a Grexit. It is convinced that its banks are now protected if Greek banks default. But Varoufakis thought that he still had some leverage: once the ECB forced Greece’s banks to close, he could act unilaterally.
He said he spent the past month warning the Greek cabinet that the ECB would close Greece’s banks to force a deal. When they did, he was prepared to do three things: issue euro-denominated IOUs; apply a “haircut” to the bonds Greek issued to the ECB in 2012, reducing Greece’s debt; and seize control of the Bank of Greece from the ECB.
None of the moves would constitute a Grexit but they would have threatened it. Varoufakis was confident that Greece could not be expelled by the Eurogroup; there is no legal provision for such a move. But only by making Grexit possible could Greece win a better deal. And Varoufakis thought the referendum offered Syriza the mandate they needed to strike with such bold moves – or at least to announce them.
He hinted at this plan on the eve of the referendum, and reports later suggested this was what cost him his job. He offered a clearer explanation.
As the crowds were celebrating on Sunday night in Syntagma Square, Syriza’s six-strong inner cabinet held a critical vote. By four votes to two, Varoufakis failed to win support for his plan, and couldn’t convince Tsipras. He had wanted to enact his “triptych” of measures earlier in the week, when the ECB first forced Greek banks to shut. Sunday night was his final attempt. When he lost his departure was inevitable.
“That very night the government decided that the will of the people, this resounding ‘No’, should not be what energised the energetic approach [his plan]. Instead it should lead to major concessions to the other side: the meeting of the council of political leaders, with our Prime Minister accepting the premise that whatever happens, whatever the other side does, we will never respond in any way that challenges them. And essentially that means folding. … You cease to negotiate.”
Varoufakis’s resignation brought an end to a four-and-a-half year partnership with Tsipras, a man he met for the first time in late 2010. An aide to Tsipras had sought him out after his criticisms of George Papandreou’s government, which accepted the first Troika bailout in 2010.
“He [Tsipras] wasn’t clear back then what his views were, on the drachma versus the euro, on the causes of the crises, and I had very, well shall I say, ‘set views’ on what was going on. A dialogue begun … I believe that I helped shape his views of what should be done.”
And yet Tsipras diverged from him at the last. He understands why. Varoufakis could not guarantee that a Grexit would work. After Syriza took power in January, a small team had, “in theory, on paper,” been thinking through how it might. But he said that, “I’m not sure we would manage it, because managing the collapse of a monetary union takes a great deal of expertise, and I’m not sure we have it here in Greece without the help of outsiders.” More years of austerity lie ahead, but he knows Tsipras has an obligation to “not let this country become a failed state”.
Their relationship remains “extremely amicable”, he said, although when we spoke on Thursday, they hadn’t talked all week.
Despite failing to strike a new deal, Varoufakis does not seem disappointed. He told me he is “on top of the world.”
“I no longer have to live through this hectic timetable,” he said, “which was absolutely inhuman, just unbelievable. I was on two hours sleep every day for five months. … I’m also relieved I don’t have to sustain any longer this incredible pressure to negotiate for a position I find difficult to defend.”
His relief is unsurprising. Varoufakis was appointed to negotiate with a Europe that didn’t want to talk, no longer feared a “Grexit” and effectively controlled the Greek treasury’s bank accounts. Many commentators think he was foolish, and the local and foreign journalists I met last week in Athens spoke of him as if he was a criminal. Some people will never forgive him for strangling a nascent recovery by reopening negotiations. And others will blame him for whichever harsh fate awaits Greece this week.
But Varoufakis seemed unconcerned. Throughout our conversation he never raised his voice. He came across as imperturbably calm, and often chuckled. His conservation wasn’t tinged with regret; he appears to be treating the loss of power as ambivalently as he treated its acquisition.
Now he will return to a half-finished book on the crisis, mull the new offers publishers have already begun to send him, and likely return to the University of Athens after two years teaching in Texas.
By resigning and not signing a deal he abhorred, he has kept both his conscience free and his reputation intact. His country remains locked in a trap he spent years opposing and months fighting, but he has escaped.
* * *
»
- 67219 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
it is useless for a slave to talk to his master
the only language understood is of revolt
excellent article
excellent article
Goldman Sachs Drahgi lied Greece into the project, when all and sundry new Greece was not qualified with a poor economy, that would do even worse with a srtonger currency, euro.
These bailouts are to pay to the banks that 'printed' the shit from thin air to start with.
The whole thing was a con with Troika installed leaders in Greece & GS for the very purpose of getting Greece in, no matter what.
And then the job was to destruct Greece. The bailouts are a circle jerk. And now they get to strip mine Greek assets.
Where is Muddy Waters when you need them?
That FUCKER SIGNED an agreement on the 23rd of February accepting then everything on the table.
He will hang alongside the rest of them, mark my words. Another Traitor.
Lol varoufakis how about blaming tsipras for being a traitor?!
I don't know, but the people lecturing others on how to manage their economies should look a little more at their own countries. Let's see: Japan debt 250% of GDP, Italy 135%, Portugal..... and finally the USA total debt probably more than 200%. Of course in absolute value zillions more than Greece.
Indeed bankers are a destructive, hurtful,baleful, wicked, malgn, malignant, noxioius, corrupting,cancerous, pestilential, malevolent, vicious filthy evil.
Which indicates severe failures in the public's institutions of both law and trade.
didn't Varoufakis lose rights to the peanut gallery, once he resigned from Syriza?
SCREW Varoufakis.
He's the drunk blaming the liquor store for his problems.
SCREW Greece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWRmNDrAFbk
Greece is a small microcosm of why bankers and financial tyrants want to own the money.
It also makes it explicitly clear that those chosen by the oligarchs for you to elect represent the oligarchs.
Keep that in mind Amerika when the political party's owned by the international corporations choose the candidates placed on the ballots for your approval.....
Fuck you varofuckass. If you would have led your people out of eu bondage you could have saved greece. Fuck you weakass socialist cunt
Varoufakis escapes with his reputation intact? He has stoked fears of a Grexit all along, has led the country to the state it's in now, has seen nothing coming and keeps idolizing the euro despite the catastrophe it has brought upon his country... What more do you need?
So you like him why, because he doesn't wear a necktie?
He is no cool leftist "rock n' roll" finmin, he is an appalling exercise in incompetence, a BIG GIGANTIC FRAUD.
You're still paying attention to this 'erratic marxist' piece of shit. Time to realize he's a douche and move on already.
NOBODY GIVES A FUCK WHAT HE BABBLES ABOUT.
"You might as well have sung the Swedish national anthem – you’d have got the same reply."
You decide -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LiN57nfjFw
I think if he had nailed it, they may have paid attention.
Mr. game theory - its GAME OVER.
You can always flip the board and knock the pieces all over the floor.
Mob derelicts usually dead at end of rope with burial cash and rope receipt in pocket.
Which is exactly what they will do. They will agree to terms, pass laws -- then do EXACTLY NOTHING tangible about it. And in the meantime they are not paying the interest.
So it's definitely not game over.
Lets assume the deal goes through.... Greece institutes all the changes Germany wants.
All that will happen
1) Tax Revenue going to the Greek govt will collapse.
2) Spending will collapse
3) Bank runs will continue
4) Businesses will close
5) Youth unemployement will continue to rise way past 50%
6) Pensions shrinking will squeeze the elderly who support their families (grandchildren you know the unemployed ones) supplementally with their social security.
7) Vat hikes will squelch spending/GDP
8) GDP will go negative for decades or until the country is forced out of the Euro.
Greece has two choices
Leave the Euro NOW and retain some dignity.
Leave the Euro later, and get kicked out of your own country while German tourists buy everything up and build vacation homes and the only job a Greek will be able to find is wiping the ass of Germans living in their grandparents homes.
Actually, if the demands are REALLY all implemented, then nothing of this sort will happen.
I suspect if he doesn't shut his piehole, he too will have multiple nailgun holes or maybe he'll leap off a short building! Good Luck!
What this Varoufakis guy has achieved (measurable) regarding improvment of Greece financial situation - NOTHING!
No-one is ruling over Greece! They can leave EURO zone if they want. But they doesn't want to do that - they want to receive more money without any conditions or that their debt is written off without any conditions.
Why people in Estonia should write of Greeks debt of IF people in Estonia have TWICE as less pension as people in Greece? And Greeks doesn't want to lower their pensions. Well, of course they don't want to do that. But it's also Estonians rights not to write of Greek debt! They must return money they took from them.
How many of you supporting bailout after bailout actually work and pay tax in Europe?
Great gaming strategist? You are kidding me.
Yea it was setup Syriza electoral win was a Setup.
First you set up your negotiating positions . invite and arrest troika book and release, nationalize banks, pass all the laws in your manifesto.
Trigger their implementation every two weeks. Get MOA for loans from China and Russia, sign gas/silk road deal, reconcile with Turkey about Cyprus, cut military spending to 1% from 2.4% and police spending, trigger their implementation every two weeks.
Arrest bankers oligarchs, introduce capital control.., dual currency with drachma peg for 5 years to euro so you do not have to change accounting.
Start clock on Euro exit, declare default on all debts.
Invite separate EU countries for negotiations to Athens separately.
That what I call gaming. With all this and EU markets in turmoil because of it you would have gotten what you wanted. Mr. Varoufakis.
but all of it was just a charade for Greek peasants As I repeated numerous times.
PODEMOS if you are not fake as Syriza hear me out.
Greece never had a chance with this fag hairdresser with bad teeth.
If the Greek oligarchs want Euros, that's what you'll get.
No George Washingtons in Greece today.
Yanis Varoufakis: "Merkel's Control Over The Eurogroup Is Absolute, They Are Beyond The Law"
If this was really true wouldn't Yanis Varoufakis be dead by now?
Once the war reparations card was played he would have just disappeared.
S L A V E S
Debt Slaves, This was all planned when the EU banks began loaning massive billions at the EU standard low interest rate, Greece as a nation should have had much higher borrowing costs due to systemic RISK. But, due to the EU set interest rate, all of a sudden Greece could borrow at German interest rates, low due to lack of risk. Bankers lined up to give loans, now they cry because the fear Greece can't pay!
Greece must now leave the EU, and request immediate emergency aid from BRICS nations. In order to survive the coming months, Greece should default to the EU bankers, become independent, and seek immidiate membership in BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
Emergency energy aid from Russia, and a joint Chinese Greek investment firm to remake Greeces tourism industry to modern standards. Also reqest extension of the Silk Road to Greece, with high speed rail. Soon Greece would tap the Russian and Chinese markets. Fuck the EU.
Lives were threatened.
World War 1 was fought with guns, World War 2 was fought with tanks, World War three is fought with banks.
Actually, this is true, in every sense. Financial war, financial terrorism is enshrined in how Washington and Brussels seek to expand their power and empire.
Who is going to do the fights for the global preys ? Greeks (not expected to be champions of light) have capitulated.
Predators know their terrains. They have already showed their middle finger at "Oxis" from democratic process. They know that preys are disorganized and worse so many are still deluded masochists.
Greece is ordered by Brussels to put 50 billion Euros worth of Public Assets up for sale to pay the banks. So, we have a stutation in which the Banks will buy Greek Public property and bargain prices in order to turn around and take that money to pay themselves! If, as Maz Keiser says, that is not "Financial Terrorism" then you tell me what is! This is theft and terror, threats and repression. All the while the EU has forced Greeks to buy German and American tanks, submarines and planes for their NATO forces. Greece is one of only 3-4 NATO nations who spend the full 2% of GDP on weapons, as mandated by NATO.
This was part of the plan all along.
Because debt grows faster than the currency available to pay it... to the extent there is no 'jubilee' you gotta sell something.
And of course the already-wealthy get to by assets for pennies on the dollar.
Ah "privatization" - people hate 'socialism' so much they'll let themselves get fucked in the ass with a longer dick if it goes by a different name.
Now then - consider how much land .gov owes. All that land, our land, is tacit, if not explicit collateral for the deficit spending fuckery that I do not expect to end until after the War goes hot.
The Enclave Clause apparently doesn't mean what it says because as a "living document" all that matters is who's in a position to appoint, bribe and/or threaten a judge or five.
Jack,
Brussels is behaving as a pawnshop. Hock your shit, don't repay us. We now own the property. Think about a gambler in Las Vegas who thinks his next play will help him out of the hole. This is madness for Greece.
Easy to see why Varoufakis got out. Tspiras is a sell-out fuckhead chickenshit and handed the entire fucking country over to the EU, there's no one alive that will ever see things get better there on that path. Who would want to go down in history being responsible for sucking off bankers cocks at the expense of the starving and record suicides of the general population? I hope the Greeks go Ferguson 10x on those bastards and gives the Troika some royal ISIS treatement.
" why Varoufakis got out "
Yep! He was on the inside, he knew what was about to come down, and he chose to escape. Smart move!
In his red mini Cooper. Headed out of dodge.
Welcome to our Obamaland amusement park world Greece. This Negro should of been impeached long ago. Government Laws don't count in Obama's mind, unless they see fit to loot you based on opposing ideals against socialist undertones.
I've enjoyed years of comedy relief here at ZH. Thanks, you guys are the best!
Back to the fainting couches!
The most important thing this exercise points out is the difference between the Country of Greece and Wall Street.
Greece has three vowels and Street only two.
Lowest vowel counts wins the bailout contest.
The lament of Varoufakis is Leftism distilled: "I'm the victim! It's all THEIR fault!"
What childishness.
Greece has its part of responsibility.
It took the loans (EU Es).
It hired a crooked bank (GoSax) to develop crooked qualifying papers to apply for the loans.
Sure, the EU (as one astute critic of mine in another thread aptly pointed out) shouldn't have let Greece in the EZone or offered the loans in the first place. (One could compare that with the US banks which loaned to too many slobs who they knew could never pay back - under penalty of the Community Reinvestment Act provisions which Carter and Clinton set up - yet, there was no "Damocletian" pressure in this case)
Maybe the emotional/historical "need" to include Greece in the EU was a stronger force than some would admit.
In any case, I see too many Leftists and anarchists here and on other sites taking advantage of the crisis to attack "capitalism" (a la "let no crisis go to waste"), whether just to attack the West, or perhaps to aid totalitarian/Marxist ends.
So, to those who feel the need to cry out, "fuck the EU! fuck capitalism! fuck Germany!"
All you've earned is the contempt of the civilized world.
Enjoy your barbarism on your way down.
Relax man, you do not know shit what capitalism or socialism is since they were never implemented as theoretically described. It is all is in your head.
These are all bunch of gangsters/banksters, no matter what passport they hold, who took over governments and now they are robing us blind. Drop these meaningless labels, they serve only those who are trying to fuck us up. That's all they are good for.
My favorite part...
“It’s not that it didn’t go down well – there was point blank refusal to engage in economic arguments. Point blank. You put forward an argument that you’ve really worked on, to make sure it’s logically coherent, and you’re just faced with blank stares. It is as if you haven’t spoken. What you say is independent of what they say. You might as well have sung the Swedish national anthem – you’d have got the same reply.”
How will Russia get Naval Ships out of the Black Sea to the Mediterranean?
They spill into the Aegean Sea at Hellespont.
this was never about loans...
Borrowing IMF Verbiage, "containing further systematic fallout."
Time to hang a few bankers.
I still can't figure out what that referendum was all about.
I think fractional reserve banking and socialism have a timeline, and they've both reached that timeline where math always wins.
We are WAY past the level of "tolerable BS" with this issue.
GREECE has a simple choice .... Let their currency get screwed (and their economy), OR let their peope get screwed. Its boils down to this set of options.
A GREXIT will cause their currency and economy to have a meltdown. But they might be able to make the pain tolerable for their own people. Or at least, equitable migraine headaches for everyone.
There is no Middle Road.
Someone in Greece needs to grow some Cahones ... and pull the plug NOW!!
They have other choices. They could nationlize their banks for starters and repudiate much of their debt and begin issuing debt free money.
Hey Yanis!
Why don't you SHUT THE FUCK UP?
"Varoufakis" is that the Greek word for "venal faker? Tsipras I think translates as" Obama like".
LOL Blaming Merkel for Greece's problems is fucking laughable. She doesn't want to keep subsidizing socialism. Can you blame her?
Can't blame her for not wanting to subsidize Greece (and most of Europe) but she also refuses to let Greece get out of the EZ, so imposes total destruction on the Greek economy and society instead. In 12 months time the Greek economic situation will be far worse than at present (and it is already in depression) and most of Europe will be absolutely disgusted with what Merkel has done to Greece.
So Tsipras holds a referendum, the Greek voters resounding reject the Troika's proposed deal. Then, a week later he turns around and agrees to a much worse deal. What a doofus! And Greeks are idiots if they let him or his party stay in office one second longer.
The Problem of Greece Is Not Only a Tragedy. It Is a Lie
By John Pilger
Global Research, July 13, 2015
An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week’s landslide “No” vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a “bailout” that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has pushed through parliament a proposal to cut at least 13 billion euros from the public purse – 4 billion euros more than the “austerity” figure rejected overwhelmingly by the majority of the Greek population in a referendum on 5 July.
These reportedly include a 50 per cent increase in the cost of healthcare for pensioners, almost 40 per cent of whom live in poverty; deep cuts in public sector wages; the complete privatization of public facilities such as airports and ports; a rise in value added tax to 23 per cent, now applied to the Greek islands where people struggle to eke out a living. There is more to come. …
Syriza’s luminaries are well-groomed; they lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, as the Greek electorate has so bravely demonstrated, but “better terms” of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor. When merged with “identity politics” and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience. “Mainstream” political life in Britain exemplifies this.
This is not inevitable, a done deal, if we wake up from the long, postmodern coma and reject the myths and deceptions of those who claim to represent us, and fight.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-problem-of-greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy-it-is-a-lie/5462175
Yanis Varoufakis - you will be the only person comming out the other side of this debacle a winner.
Consistently, Germany is credited with the punishment of the Greeks when most everyone is aware that it is the bankers who are the power behind the assault. It is true, however, that the German government completely supports the banker position and for that it deserves severe criticism.
The strategy of the Bolsheviks is all over the strategy of the Troika and it should be remembered that Merkel hails from East Germany with questionable western values. As the journalists Ralf Georg Reuth and Günther Lachmann claim in their book, The First Life of Angela M., she was "Responsible for Brainwashing in the Favour of Marxism."
MEP’s Nigel Farage, a true hero of liberty, warned in 2010 of the communistic, authoritarian nature of the current 27-member national European Union. The EU Commission, the executive body of the EU, is reported to have no less than 11 out of 27 commissioners either current or former communists. Amid loud snickering, heckling laugher and mocking applause from the EP, Farage issues this warning in the video - An Iron Fist has come down on Europe - Nigel Farage (rough transcript of excerpt):
“Sadly, the politicians in charge became very greedy and they wanted money for themselves and power and so they resorted to lies and deceit and they staged the most spectacular bureaucratic coup d’etat that the world had ever seen. But they didn’t need to use any bullets to do it; they were much more clever, much more scheming than that. But what they did was to put in place a new treaty - it was called the Lisbon Treaty - and then they gave 27 people total unlimited power. These would be the people that made all the laws. They went about building a new state, but they ignored the people. And what they did…they recreated the very evil system that the people of Eastern Europe had lived under before. But the incredible thing was that many of the new bosses had also worked for that same evil system before.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdoMssKv38o&feature=related
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/05/german-chancellor-merkel-responds-to.html
And who are the hidden money powers?
“What we have is a non-existent group that has the greatest power to determine the lives of Europeans. It’s not answerable to anyone, given it doesn’t exist in law; no minutes are kept; and it’s confidential. No citizen ever knows what is said within . . . These are decisions of almost life and death, and no member has to answer to anybody.”
Even these people answer to somebody above them.
Greek people will wake up in homeless in the islands of their ancient ancestors:
"If the American people ever allow private banks
to control the issue of their money,
first by inflation and then by deflation,
the banks and corporations that will
grow up around them (around the banks),
will deprive the people of their property
until their children will wake up homeless
on the continent their fathers conquered."
Attributed to Thomas Jefferson
________
A few men, the hidden hands, are at the top of the pyramid. These hidden powers derive their rentier wealth from usury which vectors out of the "private" credit money system. This system has now metastasized and is trying to consolidate the world.
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence
(Of course, Wilson couldn't say that the Federal Reserve act, and by extension International Credit - was a Jewish money power operation.)
All countries and all peoples are sovereigns, and should not be enslaved by a "few dominant men."
www.sovereignmoney.eu
you mean the Kazarian Jewish (zionist) conspiracy
Ashkenazi?
varuFAKEis
I think the best performance ever from Yanis Varoufakis:
Was this... { http://bit.ly/1CayDcZ }.
Too many PSICOPATHAS are there on the site of the original writing…
we must stop taking on new loans pretending that we’ve solved the problem, when we haven’t
That says it all! This concept requires default. The EU can not extend real debt relief because of the bigger boys waiting in the wings. Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and in the East. These nations hammered their people and economies to Brussels banker bubbies, if they see Greece getting real debt write downs, then a stampede to the default doors begins. Merkel, the German puppet ruler for Washington, is going to hammer down the Greeks, bring them under the debt slavery agenda, this agenda is Washingtons, both at home and abroad, Washington seeks to INDEBT American people at home and entire nations abroad. As each nation falls under indebtedness to Washington's Bankers, the US gains political control over that state, or individual.
Example, you get out of college, your debt is 45K payable over a couple decades. Will you join political groups contrary to Washington's agenda, or be a nice quiet boy, kissing the powerful asses to try and gain access to higher paying work? Nations who are indebted ar no different, they seek to kiss Washington's ass to get favorable repyment terms. Look at Estonia as a perfet model. They follow all orders, and even go out on their own trying to please their owners in Washington. Just one example of how finance equals political power and control.
<--- Fly in chardonnay
<--- Turd in punchbowl.
"Nuland also warned Tsipras not to default on its debts to Germany, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Tsipras was told “to make a good deal with the institutions”. The referendum Tsipras called on June 27 was a surprise for Nuland. The nemesis in Operation Nemesis is the retribution planned for that display of Greek hubris."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/07/nulands-nemesis-will-greece-be-de...
Paul Craig Roberts wrote about the same thing and mentioned something draconian as a consequence to Tsipras - and that disappeared.
I do not like Nuland. She and the CIA robbed US Taxpayers to finance Kiev Nazis.
Of course Merkel dictates to Europe because of "Deutschland Uber Alles". The Euro Group is the Fourth Reich.
Really? I'm impressed, and well I can not see any relatiosn to reality. So who pays? Ah yes the stupid Germans and who gains? Ah yes the defrauders from Greek, yes that looks like a sound victory for Germany.
Suggested Reading:
"The Eurogroup: How a Secretive Circle of Finance Ministers Shape European Economic Governance."
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eurogroup-Secretive-Ministers-European-Governanc...
Another reminder (maybe hopeless)
Before the "agreement" the money what was talked about were 12 billions now after the agreement, the Greeks to get 90 billions or just 8 - time their request before. So who haw won?