Greg Palast: The Golden Dawn Murder Case, Larry Summers and the New Fascism

[marmar]

The Golden Dawn Murder Case, Larry Summers and the New Fascism

Monday, 07 October 2013 09:03
By Greg Palast, Truthout | News Analysis


On September 18, hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas, aka Killah P, was stabbed outside a bar in Keratsini, Greece.
Larry Summers has an airtight alibi. But I don't believe it.

Larry didn't hold the knife: The confessed killer is some twisted little fuckwit member of Golden Dawn, a political party made up of skinhead freaks, anti-immigrant fearmongers, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-Albanian sociopaths and ultra-patriot crazies. Think of it as the Tea Party goes Greek.

Following Fyssas' killing, other groups of dangerous psychopathic misfits, namely the European Union and Greece's governing coalition, moved to ban Golden Dawn.

Over the weekend, Greece's rulers arrested six members of Parliament who belong to Golden Dawn. Apparently, Greece's political leaders prefer democracy as defined by Egypt's General Sisi.

To my friends on the Greek left: It's sickening to watch you cheer the arrest of Golden Dawn parliamentarians. Mark my words: You are next. .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/19213-the-golden-dawn-murder-case-larry-summers-and-the-new-fascism

[Posteritatis]

1. Yeah, that lost me at "the usual European distaste for democracy." (nt)

[Octafish]

2. The Austerity Fairy Tale

From Palast...

My children often ask me, "Daddy, where does 'austerity' come from?" And I tell them:

Once upon a time, there was a good fairy named John Maynard Keynes. He wanted to stop depressions, financial crises and suffering, so he conceived of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He said, 'When a nation's foreign exchange earnings drop (say, if the price of oil rises or Greek tourism falls because its currency is overvalued), the countries taking the poor nations' money, rich countries like Germany and the United State, would lend it back via the IMF.

By this rule, the rich lending to the poor, the world prospered and lived happily ever after . . . until the 1980s, when a wicked witch, known as the Iron Lady, and America's gaga grandpa, Reagan of the Rich, insisted that the IMF and the World Bank beat poor nations with a stick called, "structural adjustment."

Nations facing destitution because of higher oil costs, currency imbalance or predatory interest rate demands were "structurally adjusted." Structural adjustment is a cruel and debilitating potion of mass firings of public employees, cheap sell-offs of national assets and deregulation of corporate profiteering. This ripping the wings off the better angels of government is called, "austerity."

The good fairy Keynes had warned about this evil potion, this snake oil called "austerity." Cutting government spending during a recession, he said, will only make things worse.

And that's what happened: In every single case, the "adjusted" nations' economies were devastated.
Structural adjustment reached its cruel apotheosis in the early 1990s under the guidance of the World Bank's chief economist, one Larry Summers.

CONTINUED...

PS: What Palast is saying: Don't think what the banksters are doing in Greece, Spain, etc. won't happen in the good ol' USA.

[leftstreet]

4. +1

[Octafish]

5. But then, in 1997, Summers' post was taken by Professor Joseph Stiglitz.

From Palast...

In 2001, I met Stiglitz whom I'd heard was quietly expressing grave doubts about austerity and structural adjustment à la Summers. He agreed to go public. Over several hours of discussion, which I recorded for BBC TV, Stiglitz charged that IMF-imposed austerity was " a little like the Middle Ages. When the patient died, they would say, well, we stopped the bloodletting too soon; he still had a little blood in him."

Stiglitz detailed for me the ill effects of the "structural adjustment" demands, including "free" trade, which he likened to the Opium Wars; bank deregulation, which he found ludicrously dangerous; privatization, which Stiglitz called "briberization"; and budget-cutting austerity.

The budget cuts and free-market nostrums, Stiglitz told me, were as cruel as they were stupid. And he said of those who profited off these IMF diktats, "They don't care if people live or die."

Stiglitz went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics for his skepticism of Markets über Alles.

PS: What a coincidence to see all the Goldman people heading European nations' austerity drives.

[PETRUS]

3. K&R

[tomg]

6. Thank you for posting this. Palast, as

usual, is spot on.