Will Syriza take power in Greece?

What's the real difference?

If I have a $1000 loan from the bank, and I tell them I'd like to only repay $500 of it, haven't I just asked them for $500??

They aren't?  Isn't the Eurozone -- which is to say, taxpayers in other Eurozone countries -- Greece's largest creditor?

Don't Let the Ridiculous Smears Fool You: Syriza Is No Party of the Radical 'Far Left'

Whatever the labels, Syriza is prepared to collapse its own banking system, with snowballing effects throughout Europe´s financial institutions.

It sees the high levels of debt due to the banking crisis of 2007/8, illegitimate debt. let the banks pay for their ponzi schemes!

Syriza neither buys into the bs about Russia takeover of Ukraine´s territories, nor supports the sanctions v. Russia

They are challenging the key institutions of power of the global corporate capitalist system......

They also are forging a European Alliance, putting each Nations people first, whatever the consequences to the banks and NATO, including Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia(?), at least one of the baltic countries, with most of the rest of Europe looking on with growing sympathy...whether they are a radical left or whatever, they are a serious threat to the system and will have to be crushed!

Less than 20% is owed to governments and the EU.

http://demonocracy.info/infographics/eu/debt_greek/debt_greek.html

But that would mean they want to cut that 20% to 10% which would cost taxpayers in other countries? Or are they saying they will pay that 20% fully just not the other ones?  And if those banks in other countries ffail because of these massive losses, wont the gov't's bail them out (with those taxpayer monies) or let them fail (losing the taxpayers the monies they hadnt paid to the govt)?

thread drift...

with video.

Spain rally: Podemos holds Madrid mass 'March for Change'

The "March for Change" is one of the party's first outdoor mass rallies, as it looks to build on the recent victory of its close allies Syriza in Greece.

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias told the crowd a "wind of change" was starting to blow through Europe.

Podemos has surged ahead in opinion polls, and has vowed to write off part of Spain's debt if it comes to power.

The BBC's Tom Burridge in Madrid says that there has been an impressive turnout and a carnival atmosphere at the rally.

Several of Madrid's main avenues became a sea of people and purple, the party's colour, he says, after its supporters travelled from all over Spain.

'We dream'

Marching from Madrid city hall to the central Puerta del Sol square, protesters shouted "Si, Podemos!", meaning "Yes, we can".

Broadcaster TVE reported that hundreds of thousands were at the demonstration, but there was no official tally.

"The wind of change is starting to blow in Europe," Mr Iglesias said, addressing supporters in Greek and Spanish at the start of the rally....

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31072139

...end thread drift

Europe Slouches Towards Anxiety and War  -  by Pepe Escobar

http://rt.com/op-edge/228263-europe-anxiety-war/

"The tantalizingly tense face-off between Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem and new Green Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has set up the battlefield; the EU won't accept a 'unilateral' Greece, and Greece won't accept a bailout extension or the diktats of the troika (EU, ECB, IMF)..."

One depressing thing about the article is that it makes Harper look better than Merkel. Germany doesn't have to borrow so much because they are able to collect taxes from people who are wealthy. In Southern Europe, the wealthy avoid taxes which takes money out of circulation. This has a severe deflationary effect. In the old days they would just inflate currency and then revalue it. Under the Euro they can't.

We shall see how long it will take these shockwaves to reach us.

There is no magic. and I think the point is generally overstated, at the least.

Germany has a stonger economy. Its tax collection is comparable to other northern European economies, including France.

Merkel just has an obsession against debt, which so far she has managed to keep broad support on that.

We may realize it a bit sooner if/when it all comes crashing down upon our heads, perhaps rather sooner than later..

Syriza Official Vows to Kill EU-US Trade Deal as 'Gift to All European People'

An official with Greece's newly elected Syriza party may have sounded the death knell for a proposed EU-U.S. trade deal that has faced a mountain of opposition from civil society.

The deal is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), now facing its eighth round of talks between negotiators this week in Brussels.

The TTIP, which would be the biggest trade deal ever, has been criticized as a corporate-friendly deal that threatens food and environmental safety under the guise of "harmonization" of regulations.

Georgios Katrougkalos, now deputy minister for administrative reform, confirmed what he had told EurActiv Greece ahead of his Syriza party's victory last week: that his parliament would not ratify the trade deal.

"I can ensure you that a Parliament where Syriza holds the majority will never ratify the deal. And this will be a big gift not only to the Greek people but to all the European people," EurActiv reported Monday....

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/02/02/syriza-official-vows-kill-eu...

Gotta love democracy.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Former Swedish PM Carl Bildt tweeted:

Quote:

Syriza in Greece has won the election by promising that taxpayers in other Euro counties will pay even more to them. Rather daring.

He was centre-right, not centre-left, but still, he's got a bit of a point.

[url=http://commondreams.org/views/2015/02/03/europes-sake-greece-needs-new-d... are historical precedents, both good and bad:[/url]

Quote:

One wonders if the Germans have learned anything from their own history. After World War I, they were forced to pay unaffordable reparations. The result was hyperinflation followed by deep depression and the rise of Adolf Hitler. After World War II, the allies had enough good sense to forgive German debt — racked up by the most heinous of all governments — and put the country on the road to growth. Greece, of course, has neither the weight nor the threat posed by Germany. But the threat to Europe extends across the frayed community.

And what of the debt?

Quote:

The Greek debt cannot be repaid. When the bottom dropped out of the global economy, Greece, plagued by a corrupt and indebted government, was the most vulnerable of the European Union nations. The so-called “troika” — the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF — stepped in to bail out reckless banks, assume most of the debt, and inflict harsh terms on the Greeks to repay it. The Greeks have sold off their assets, crushed workers, trampled labor laws and slashed vital public services to ensure that the private bankers be paid.

...

But debt that cannot be repaid will not be repaid. So Syriza calls for writing off half of the debt (almost all of it now owed to governments and the “troika”) and restructuring the rest so that it is repaid as Greek grows, not as it sinks. It will rebuild public services, raise the minimum wage, and put people to work. It seeks a European-wide reconstruction program to get Europe going. It is far more committed to reform than the previous parties that negotiated with the “troika.” It offers the best hope of cracking down on the oligarchs who have corrupted Greek politics, and looted the public till while evading taxes.

..very interesting

Syriza Needs Alliance Against German "Beggar Thy Neighbor" Policies

video

Economist Heiner Flassbeck tells Paul Jay that Germany has violated EU agreements and Syriza should focus on creating an alliance with Italy, Spain and France to oppose policies that are driving Europe into a deeper recession

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&I...

ECB Pulls The Trigger: Blocks Funding To Greece Via Debt Collateral - Full StatementSubmitted by Tyler Durden on 02/04/2015 - 16:25 

Just what the market had hoped would not happen...

*ECB SAYS IT LIFTS WAIVER ON GREEK GOVERNMENT DEBT AS COLLATERAL
*ECB SAYS IT CAN'T ASSUME SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION OF GREECE REVIEW

What this means simply is that since Greek banks are now unable to pledge Greek bonds as collateral and fund themselves, and liquidity is about to evaporate, the ECB has effectively just given a green light for Greek bank runs, as suddenly it has removed, both mathematically but worse politically, a key support pillar from underneath the already bailed out Greek banking system, (or merely a negotiating move to let Greece see just what kind of chaos this will create ahead of the big D-Day on Feb 25th when ELA could be withdrawn).

Is that really how it works, internationally?

Because if my sketchy friend Bob owes me a thousand dollars, I can't just pay my mortgage by giving my bank his sketchy IOU, written on a Pizza Pizza napkin, and say "here, you go collect".  As I understand it, you can sell a debt to a willing buyer, but you can't just pretend a debt is some kind of currency.

But can you pay your own debt with that, like you were paying with $1000 in cash?  If so then your choice to take me on as a debtor just gets passed to someone else who may not have chosen to, yes?

There is no guarantee that Greece will be as successful with a return to the drachma, but there are reasons for optimism. First and foremost, the country now has both a primary budget surplus and a trade surplus. The primary budget refers to the national budget without counting interest payments. Greece is now running a primary budget surplus of more than 3 percent of GDP (the equivalent of $500 billion a year in U.S. GDP). This means that if it didn’t have to pay interest on its debt, it would not need to borrow to make ends meet.

Since Greece has a trade surplus, it already doesn’t need to borrow to finance essential imports. (The recent plunge in oil prices could save Greece $9 billion a year, or close to 4 percent of GDP.) The drop in the drachma relative to the euro will further improve its trade position, leading to a boost in net exports and a sharp upturn in employment. It is certainly plausible that Greece’s economy will in very short order make up the ground lost to an initial period of instability and then continue on a path of robust growth.

This is where the EU has inadvertently done Greece a favor. It has damaged Greece’s economy and society so severely that the disruptions caused by leaving the euro are likely to seem minor by comparison.

https://rwer.wordpress.com/2015/02/05/greece-needs-an-exit-option/

We know austerity policies are designed to transfer wealth to the rich from everyone else.  It is a "radical" solution to benefit the so-called 1%, whatever small percentage it actually is.

Greece has every right to reject a path that will leave many Greeks jobless and poor for decades.  If Europe and the west won't agree to re-negotiate, then why not approach the BRICS countries for a better deal?

Russia, for example, would likely be happy to help Greece poke a hole in the EU, despite its own economic troubles.  The world is order in need of a "re-balance", and if Greece can assist in that re-balance, good for Greece and tough luck for the "austerity pornographers".

[url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/joe-oliver-urges-eu-to-compromise-on-gre... help me, I (sort of) agree with Joe Oliver:[/url]

Quote:

"What we have to do is to arrive at a solution which will require a compromise. Greece is in financial difficulty,” said Oliver in an interview with CBC at the G20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers in Istanbul.

Oliver reproached Greece for decades of mismanagement, which has led to a heavy debt burden, equivalent to 175 per cent of the country’s GDP.

"There are some countries that have engrained in them policies that are dysfunctional for growth. And we see in Greece what happens when a country over a period of time  spends more than it earns. One can't sustain that. An individual family can't sustain it. A nation can't sustain it," he said.

...

“It has made some assertions but they're going to have to live with the fiscal reality they're in. On the other hand, I think Europe and other countries have to take into account the difficulties and be a bit accommodating," Oliver said.

Poll: 25% of Athens School Children Going Hungry

http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2015/02/12/poll-25-of-athens-school-chi...

Thousands of Greek school children face one of the toughest aspects of the economic crisis: starvation and hunger. Last week, teachers complained one more time about pupils who faint in the classroom due to starvation.."

From Minsk To Brussels, It's All About Germany  -  by Pepe Escobar

http://rt.com/op-edge/232087-merkel-germany-eu-greece-ukraine

"Germany holds the key to where Europe goes next. A fragile deal may have been reached on Ukraine, but there's still no deal with Greece. In both cases, there's much more than meets the eye. Sooner or later European politicians will have to wake up and small the coffee; the notion of a German-French-Russian pan European peace/trade partnership is way more popular than reflected in the failed corporate media.

Now it's up to Germany to clean up its act on Greece. The choice is stark. The EU may embark on a quadruple-dip recession as the ECB further destroys what is left of the European middle class. Or Germany, reflecting the thinking among its captains of industry, may tell the EU  -  Troika included - that the way to go is to shift the strategic, trade and political focus from West to the East.

That would start by stuffing the corporate US-devised TTIP treaty - that's NATO on trade. After all, this is going to be the Eurasian century - and this train has already left the station."

Rallies in Greece, around world ahead of eurozone ministers' bailout talks

Tens of thousands of people gathered in central Athens on Sunday to support the newly elected government's push for a better deal on Greece's debt. Similar rallies were held in several other Greek cities, and about 40 other anti-austerity demonstrations were planned to show solidarity across Europe and in Australia, Brazil and the United States.

The rallies came on the eve of a meeting of eurozone finance ministers that will address Greece’s unpopular bailout.

In Lisbon about 300 people took to the streets with banners reading "Greece, Spain, Portugal, our battle is international."

In Athens, between 15,000 and 18,000 protesters carried banners denouncing economic austerity and Greece's creditors.

"We want justice here and now ... for all the suffering Greece has gone through the past five years," 58-year-old Theodora, who has been unemployed for the last three years, told Agence France-Presse.

A protester wearing a mask of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and wielding a large plastic needle with "austerity" daubed on it jousted with a fake Greek Premier Alexis Tsipras, armed with a huge pair of red scissors....

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/15/rallies-in-greece-around...

Syriza will have to choose between Scylla and Charybdis

quote:

After Monday’s emergency talks collapsed in acrimony, Eurogroup Chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem added an ultimatum to make Syriza’s options even more explicit: either the government accepts an extension of the existing bailout program by Wednesday evening, or Greece will simply be cut off from further credit by February 28.

Since Greece remains dependent on foreign financing to service its outstanding obligations and fight the deep humanitarian crisis at home, this would put the leftists in the awkward position of having to choose between honoring their obligations to foreign creditors, who expect the debt to be repaid in full and who continue to insist on strict fiscal discipline, or honoring their obligations to Greek pensioners and civil servants, who have collectively pinned their hopes on Syriza’s pledges to defy the creditors and put an end to austerity. In a word, repaying one will require defaulting on the other.

This Homeric dilemma is in turn forcing Syriza to confront a long-standing internal rift among party cadres over the merits of continued eurozone membership. Syriza’s moderate leadership, which according to central committee member Stathis Kouvelakis has steadily distanced itself from the party base in recent years, remains committed to the euro and aims to reform its fiscal and monetary architecture. Inspired by Keynesian visions of demand management and public investment, Tsipras and Varoufakis hope to wield the failure of austerity in Greece as a wedge to transform Europe as a whole.

But not everyone inside Syriza shares this “good euro” vision. The party’s rank-and-file, and especially its radical internal opposition — the so-called Left Platform — holds a very different view, insisting that Greece should keep all its weapons on the table, including the threat of unilateral default and a “progressive exit” from the eurozone. The Left Platform, in other words, would like to see Syriza face down Scylla to avoid Charybdis, defying the Eurogroup to save the ship and evade a lethal debt-deflationary spiral inside the monetary union — even if this comes at a high cost.

Inspired in part by the analyses of SOAS economist Costas Lapavitsas, who is now a Syriza MP, the Left Platform has a more pessimistic analysis of power relations within the monetary union. Unlike the party leadership and Finance Minister Varoufakis, Lapavitsas believes that continued eurozone membership will sink Syriza’s radical project before the leftists even get a chance to hoist their sails or raise their weapons. The internal opposition therefore intends to wield what they consider to be the inevitable failure of the debt negotiations as a wedge to progressively pull Greece out of the euro....