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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJoseph Stiglitz: Europe’s war on Greek democracy
by Joseph Stiglitz
NEW YORK (Project Syndicate) The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors.
In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.
Of course, the economics behind the program that the troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) foisted on Greece five years ago has been abysmal, resulting in a 25% decline in the countrys gross domestic product.
I can think of no depression, ever, that has been so deliberate and had such catastrophic consequences: Greeces rate of youth unemployment, for example, now exceeds 60%. ..................(more)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/europes-war-on-greek-democracy-2015-06-29?dist=beforebell
dembotoz
(16,864 posts)This is going stupid
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)poo-bahs. So I expect your thread to come in for the requisite amount of trashing from the surrogates. The Troika deliberately engineered a Depression in Greece in the name of bailing out French and German banks. Enough said. Actually, one more word: Oxi!
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)fasttense
(17,301 posts)Have you heard anything like that? If the Greeks exit they face penalties?
I've not heard anyone talk about those penalties and wonder what they are.
GermanWatcher
(61 posts)There are no penalties for leaving the Eurozone. In fact, in the treaties of the European Union there are no provisions for member states to leave or to be expelled from the Eurozone. There simply is no plan for that.
Thus, all the talk of expelling Greece or of Greece leaving the Eurozone voluntarily or involuntarily is just that - talk. Up to now, nobody knows how that would come about.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)I'm not sure where I read there were penalties, maybe they meant systemic penalties and not finite defined in a treaty penalties.
Thanks.
ananda
(28,885 posts)Globalization sucks!
FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)One should disintermediate the personal supply chain. Local and regional supply systems are the long term answer. The Greeks have started doing this. They are organizing at a local level for providing basic services like medicine.
Jerry442
(1,265 posts)It's not like anything really bad ever happened because of an economic depression in Europe, right?
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)We expect governments to survive as something other than buyouts existing only to sell off assets.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)of our financial system, when meeting physical reality, isn't pretty. A finite planet, but an unlimited human imagination. One of those two things isn't going to win.
FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)That's what TPP is about.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Are the ONLY things it is about.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)the higher the few can rise.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Without actual war by the 1%ers. Nothing less than a modernized feudalism.
sulphurdunn
(6,891 posts)has always been that governments and their people are too stupid to control their own money without banks. I tend to agree with this sentiment. Which is why banks should be public entities controlled by governments and their people through legislative bodies and national treasuries and not the other way around.
FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)If you have read a history of money in the USA, you know that great men have tried to prevent private central banks since the beginning of this country. Heck, the war of independence was largely because the colonies no longer wanted to use the Bank of England's money. Men throughout our hstory have warned that private central banks like the FED will eat away at the economy of a country, hollowing it out, until all the people are impoverished.
randome
(34,845 posts)Is that another sign of a 'war' on Democracy?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
Leonard Cohen, Anthem (1992)[/center][/font][hr]
malaise
(269,219 posts)It is rule by multi-lateral agencies and corporations.
Go Greece!!!
closeupready
(29,503 posts)FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)this is essentially an economic war, fought with only one side warring, while the other tries to figure out what hit it. THERE NEED TO BE CRIMMINAL PROSECUTIONS OF THE "TROIKA" AS A RESULT OF THEIR BAILOUT PLANS. But no, just as criminal prosecutions in the US were waved off, nothing will be done to these mafioso who run the central banks.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)on criminal trial?
WillyT
(72,631 posts)blackspade
(10,056 posts)Thanks for posting!
First Speaker
(4,858 posts)...are the masterminds in the EU so certain this can't happen again? And how about Spain, with its Great Depression-style unemployment seemingly lasting forever? Anyone recall the Spanish Civil War and Franco? If the Greek people, pushed to the wall and under open blackmail, pass the "referendum", this might keep the crisis under control--for awhile. But it will also mean continued economic depression there. How long before they simply decide that "democracy" is a sham, and kick over the traces, like Europeans did in the 1930s? I think the EU, and especially the Euro, is in its death-throes. What comes after it isn't pleasant to contemplate.
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)K&R