Greece 2#

Greece has unlocked access to nearly €7 billion in European aid by sacking 25,000 public sector workers, in a move which has sparked a new surge of anti-austerity protests outside parliament.

 . . . .

Thousands of teachers and policemen have now been told they have eight months to find a new job before they get laid off, meaning being thrown into a job market where there is 27 per cent unemployment.

It is nonetheless being seen as a success story for the brittle coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, which has just a five-seat majority in Greece’s parliament of 300 and lost many allies over the decision to shut down the state broadcaster last month.

Ahead of the vote Mr Samaras addressed the public in a gaffe-laden broadcast. Swearing and fluffing his lines, he announced a cut to VAT, down from 23 to 13 per cent.It is a move that seemed calculated to sugar the pill of further austerity, as well as being an attempt to curb tax evasion.

And while it seems to have worked in getting the new bill through, angry public workers took to the streets of Athens in protest, blowing whistles, honking horns and blaring sirens.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greece-approves-austerity-measures-to-fire-25000-public-workers-and-secure-bailout-8716305.html

If any country's conditions are ripe for revolution it's Greece.  Palast calls the Greeks "gutless."  Maybe that explains why it hasn't taken place. 

Short of that, he's right about getting out of the Euro.  Which they shouldn't have gotten into in the first place.  However, he's wrong about PASOK being one of the two major parties.  They're running a weak fourth now.

Syrisa is leading in polls.

from Zerohedge......

Will The ECB Finally Use The Greek "Nuclear Option" This Wednesdsay?Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/15/2015 09:05 -0400

The option of course is collapse the Greek financial system forcing the people to rise up against SYRIZA...

..a testbook example of what is in store for any people trying to offer an independent autonomous politic!
Which I am sure the people of Spain, Italy, Scotland, Ireland, Hungary et al are watching very carefully! 

Did you notice that the much-hyped June 5 deadline for Greece's payment to the IMF came and went; Greece didn't pay and nobody fell off a cliff? Trust me, this is not a cliff-hanger."

...this has got to be the height of complacency....sure the Greeks sailed through that hurdle on a technicality of bundling their payments to the end of the month...sure the jockeying at the political levels will continue.....

but it is the markets that rule, the confidence of the investment class, the Greek depositers in their banks that are the ultimate arbitrator...and if the stalemate continues...the bank runs will continue, the Greek financials will collapse......the euro will continue losing value as a dead currency...the derivatives currency trade will continue decline into collapse...yes this is a cliff hanger...and if the European negotiators don´t give this Sunday´s emergency meeting...Monday will open to a new era!

...still no plan b from the syriza leadership....Haven`t they already printed out their new drachma notes?

Are they not negotiating with the Russians and BRICS?
But yes it`s at the grass roots communities where real change, productive economic development plans must take place!

Zerohedge is not considered to be a credible source.

Nonetheless, one thing is for certain, there is a lot of lying going on about Greece and the extent of the 'crisis'. One lie that is making the rounds is that British pensions will go down by 10% if there is a Greek default. I have one list of British investment funds which are sitting on £90 trillion. Whatever there is in Britain, there is 5 x as much in the USA. In addition there is a $20 trillion + US government bond market, and all the other trillions lying around there. Considering the total Greek national debt is less than £300 billion, a complete default would not even be a blip on the international financial markets.

And you can throw Italy, Spain, and Portugal's debt down that hole and it still would not make much difference.

iyraste1313 wrote:

...still no plan b from the syriza leadership....Haven`t they already printed out their new drachma notes?

Are they not negotiating with the Russians and BRICS?
But yes it`s at the grass roots communities where real change, productive economic development plans must take place!

..it's important to raise the drachma and the negotiations but that is still part of plan a. along side negotiations with the euro /capital. and that is where the uncertainty is. syriza is divided and this is playing out in all of greece according to the real news video i posted above. there is no clear path that i can see. but i agree with you on where the change needs to come from. i believe without that syriza can have only limited success.

eta:

..i assumed you saw the video i posted but but maybe you didn't. if the drachma is to be used it takes " a herculean task" to implement and needs the full attention of the gov. both panitch and lascaris say there is no sign of this happening and that it would be difficult if not impossible to keep such a thing under wraps. hence no plan b. 

And you can throw Italy, Spain, and Portugal's debt down that hole and it still would not make much difference......

think again...the global financial system is built on highly leveraged debt and insured by credit and currency derivatives to the 100s of trillions...the euro will take a hit, which will effect the currency derivatives, the european bond market which already is fragile and has seen serious rises in rates will take another hit, which will again hit the inflation numbers, the mortgage and real estate markets, already highly leveraged and financialized into the stock market...

no, the global financial system already is teetering...and with the Greeks forced to withdraw, followed by Italy Spain and Portugal, not to mention Ireland, and with their bank runs?

I wouldn´t be so confident...something soon is going to trigger the global ponzi scheme collapse...this may be it....

Durand, Keucheyan and Trouvé: The rupture comes now

In the following article originally published for Mediapart (12 June), Cédric Durand, Razmig Keucheyan and Aurélie Trouvé call on the social and trade union movements to show solidarity with the Greek people at the 20 June demonstrations. If Greece does break with austerity, they argue, France will be faced with the decision of whether or not to join the project for the "democratic refoundation of Europe". Translated by David Broder.

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2040-durand-keucheyan-and-trouve-the-rup...

more on plan B....

Greece Eyes ‘Involvement’ in BRICS Bank 

Sputnik News
June 17, 2015

ST. PETERSBURG (Sputnik) – The Greek government is considering whether it could get involved in the BRICS New Development Bank, Greece’s Minister of Economy, Infrastructure, Shipping and Tourism Giorgos Stathakis told Sputnik Wednesday.

“We are fully supporting the BRICS initiative, and we are investigating ways for Greece to get involved in this initiative that could be beneficial for both sides,” the minister said.

A source in the Greek government told Sputnik in May that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was likely to discuss his country’s membership of the NDB, with BRICS leaders in St. Petersburg during a June 18-20 economic forum.

The five major developing economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – bill their venture as an alternative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one of Greece’s three main creditors, to which Athens owes a $1.7-billion repayment by the end of June.

The Operational Issues of a Grexit Part Two: Organizational Capacity, Capital Controls and Bootstrapping a New Monetary System

quote:

The conventional analyses generally ignore or wave off the element of a Grexit that Nathan Tankus focuses on here: the operational implications of a Grexit. Launching a new currency would be every bit as demanding as launching the Euro was in 1999, and arguably more so, since the Greek government will also have to contend with a large market of Euros circulating as currency and may come to find it necessary, at the outset or later, to offer dual currency payment processing services. We’ve attached a paper at the end that gives an idea of the amount of planning and lead times that were required for this to go smoothly. Now admittedly the Euro launch had an added factor of complexity, which was a large number of existing currencies involved. However, the Eurozone was also able to force citizens off the legacy currencies in 2002, three years after the launch of the Euro. By contrast, with the Euro the currency of Greece’s major trade partners and Greek bank customers already hoarded large amounts of Euros as cash, the Greek government will have a currency it does not control playing a significant role in its economy.

quote:

Before we begin one point needs to be hammered home. Economics, law and politics are all crucial to the story of Greece, but in the moment of default or Grexit they take a back seat to something far more important: organizational capacity. To exploit every opportunity, to get a new monetary system up and running, to devise a way of continuing imports and exports, to decide what to do with the Bank of Greece and generally to decide how to deal with growing mass of consequences hurtling towards them, the government needs large amounts of organizational capacity.

Further, the longer they take getting the “new” system up and running, the more issues will pop up and the more organizational capacity they will need at a future date.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/06/the-operational-issues-of-a-grexi...

As Pressure Mounts, Europeans Rally in Streets for Greek Dignity

As an emergency summit concluded in Brussels on Monday with no clear resolution for the spiraling Greek debt crisis, a call throughout the streets of Europe for lenders to ease their punishing "reforms" in Greece is reverberating.

On Sunday, more than 5,000 protested in Brussels, Belgium—the site of the ongoing negotiations between the Greek government and officials with the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission—while hundreds more marched in Amsterdam.

According to reports, protesters carried banners that read slogans such as, "Our lives do not belong to creditors," and "If Greece were a bank it would have been saved."

Expressing a sentiment that has spread throughout Europe, Sebastien Franco, the organizer of the Brussels demonstration, told Belgian media, "Austerity is not working, it reduces the income of poor people in the name of reimbursement to creditors...who continue to enrich themselves."

Echoing that idea, another protester told Euronews, "All the things they are doing now to the Greeks they will do it also to us. So that’s why we are here. Not only because of Greece but also because of ourselves."

And Saturday, at migrant solidarity marches in Paris, Berlin, and Rome, demonstrators also expressed support for their Greek brethren and against the EU's adherence to austerity at all costs.

"We are here to save our Europe, which includes immigrants, refugees and Greece," said Luciano Colletta, who demonstrated outside the Roman Colosseum. "Europe must belong to everyone, not just to the Germans and the banks."....

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/06/22/pressure-mounts-europeans-ra...

And what were his choices realistically? 

It's always the same bullshit, the left can't wait to eat their own.

No wonder the right usually win.

They should get out of the Euro and bring back the drachma. But Syriza did not promise to do that during the campaign. They may be playing for time now.