There is much more to the Greek NO VOTE.
I’ts not known what the outcome of the Greek debt debacle is going to be. One however must be very proud of the Greek people. The masses stood up against an immoral blackmail by bankers and banker states of the European Union. Paul Krugman said it best.
Europe dodged a bullet on Sunday. Confounding many predictions, Greek voters strongly supported their government’s rejection of creditor demands. And even the most ardent supporters of European union should be breathing a sigh of relief.
Of course, that’s not the way the creditors would have you see it. Their story, echoed by many in the business press, is that the failure of their attempt to bully Greece into acquiescence was a triumph of irrationality and irresponsibility over sound technocratic advice.
But the campaign of bullying — the attempt to terrify Greeks by cutting off bank financing and threatening general chaos, all with the almost open goal of pushing the current leftist government out of office — was a shameful moment in a Europe that claims to believe in democratic principles. It would have set a terrible precedent if that campaign had succeeded, even if the creditors were making sense. What’s more, they weren’t.
Bankers lend money. They charge interest for profit and to mitigate individual debts within a set that may default. Ultimately, the creditors, the private bankers must be held responsible for the bad investment. Private bankers loan uncontrollably to Greece for high returns. They made a bad bet and now they want to enslave all Greek citizens with a crippling austerity program. They want to impoverish the Greeks as they extract payments for the bad debts they made.
But that is not the end of the story. When the Troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) bailed out the Greeks a few years ago, it was not the Greeks getting bailed out. It was the private European bankers that were made whole. In other words it was a transfer of European public money from the European taxpayers to a private few. Now the Troika wants to collect the money it stole from the European population back from the Greeks.
The reality is that absent interest payments, Greece has been running a primary budget surplus or close to it. What Greece needs is what many private companies get, bankruptcy to restructure. Yes there will be creditors (in this case deservedly the Troika) left holding the bag. But think of the excess profits and pilfering bankers have been effecting continuously over time. Think about how often bankers have been bailed out out as the masses suffer. Think about all the people with passbook savings account making less than 1% as their monies are loaned out at 12%, 15%, 26%, and higher. If the Troika wants to recover the monies it transferred to private bankers, then tax the private banks going forward.
Austerity is a proven failure not only in Greece but everywhere. The practice has been debunked. A 28 year old university student discovered the economic fraud that was effected by two of its proponents whose papers were used as the Austerity Bible of the Right.
Make no mistake. The extortion attempted by the Troika and all of those pushing austerity measures is to depress people. It is the attempt to overthrow democratically elected left leaning governments.Their goal is to dismantle the social safety net throughout the industrialized world to further enrich the few. It’s about the complete obliteration of a welfare state and the growth of an Ayn Randian society.
A no vote to ‘austerity’ by the Greeks is a powerful statement. They know attempts will be made to have them suffer more. However capitulation to the Troika and indirectly to the US and the International banking system would have set a precedent. It would have set the precedent of the masses enslaved by the few.