The sky-is-falling crowd pretty much sees a Greek default as being the end of the world as we know it.
Bullshit!
I'm with the American Nobel laureates Krugman and Stiglitz; go ahead and pull the plug. Borrowing more from the EU just gets you in deeper.
Don Pittis and Laura Wright at CBC have postulated that Greece borrowed too much money and spent it stupidly. There is some truth to that.
Greece is one of only four NATO nations that spends two percent of GDP on defence, a charter requirement for members of the NATO gang.
If and when Russia or China offers a bailout package the NATO romance will be over anyway.
For far too long it has been a point of pride among the ruling class in Greece, the oligarchs if you will, to brazenly boast of the fact that they don't pay taxes. That's an attitude that filtered through to the middle classes and even the working class.
We're Greeks. We don't pay tax. Let's borrow a few billion more euros...
Not hard to see where that was going to end.
Another dead end was making tourism a pillar of the economy. The tourism industry is a mugs game, predicated on prostrating yourself before the drunken louts of the Continent looking for a cheap holiday. Mass tourism humiliated Greece long before the "troika" did.
Defaulting on the national debt will not be the end of the world. Greece is revered as the cradle of democratic norms of governance. Stepping away from the toxic trap of troika hegemony is the first step on the road to making Greece whole again.
Showing posts with label ECB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ECB. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Saturday, April 6, 2013
'Shadow state' or New World Order?
I think a lot of the hype about the supposed New World Order is just that; overblown hype.
Elites have always run things. That's why they're called elites. In cases where an extant elite of long standing has been pushed into the dumpster of history, as in Russia circa 1917-18, a new elite rises virtually overnight. To Boris Borscht-breath at the tractor factory things looked pretty much the same the day after the revolution as the day before.
Be that as it may, here's a fascinating look into what's happening in the Eurozone right now. The fact that the article originates in the lair of the Euro-bullies just gives it extra gravitas.
Needless to say, one of the hallmarks of today's global elite is that they hail predominantly from the finance sector of the economy. Perhaps that accounts for their save-the-banks obsession. In days gone by banks were allowed to fail with some regularity. In the US alone some 9,000 banks failed during the depression.
If we view the "New European Order" as a trial run for the "New World Order" there are some heart-warming lessons to be taken away.
In the first place, it doesn't work. This should come as no surprise. While the loudest voices and highest profiles within the global elite may come from the rock-stars of finance capital, the day to day running of the machinery of governance falls to the bureaucratic class of planners, policy analysts, economists, and credential-accumulators of all stripes.
For the most part, these are folks who couldn't organize a two-car train.
As Herr Doktor Friedrich Sell points out, the European Central Bank is not a bank, but a political instrument to be used for political ends by politicians.
And reading between the lines, what both he and Thomas Mayer seem to acknowledge is this; in the event that the austerity being imposed by the stronger onto the weaker within Europe fails, there is always a plan B.
Plan B means everybody gets to loosen their belts because they'll be eating again. But, Oh My God, there will be inflation!
That could be the ruin of the finance capitalists... and the salvation of everyone else!
Let's not lose sight of the fact that well below the radar of the world's headline writers is a world far removed from the too-big-to-fail Rumpelstiltskin economy that is the focus of their obsessions. A world where real people make real things and do real stuff that other folks will pay for.
Let the Eurozone fail.
Let the big banks fail.
Let's jam sticks into the spokes of shadow states and world orders old and new.
Life will go on.
Elites have always run things. That's why they're called elites. In cases where an extant elite of long standing has been pushed into the dumpster of history, as in Russia circa 1917-18, a new elite rises virtually overnight. To Boris Borscht-breath at the tractor factory things looked pretty much the same the day after the revolution as the day before.
Be that as it may, here's a fascinating look into what's happening in the Eurozone right now. The fact that the article originates in the lair of the Euro-bullies just gives it extra gravitas.
Needless to say, one of the hallmarks of today's global elite is that they hail predominantly from the finance sector of the economy. Perhaps that accounts for their save-the-banks obsession. In days gone by banks were allowed to fail with some regularity. In the US alone some 9,000 banks failed during the depression.
If we view the "New European Order" as a trial run for the "New World Order" there are some heart-warming lessons to be taken away.
In the first place, it doesn't work. This should come as no surprise. While the loudest voices and highest profiles within the global elite may come from the rock-stars of finance capital, the day to day running of the machinery of governance falls to the bureaucratic class of planners, policy analysts, economists, and credential-accumulators of all stripes.
For the most part, these are folks who couldn't organize a two-car train.
As Herr Doktor Friedrich Sell points out, the European Central Bank is not a bank, but a political instrument to be used for political ends by politicians.
And reading between the lines, what both he and Thomas Mayer seem to acknowledge is this; in the event that the austerity being imposed by the stronger onto the weaker within Europe fails, there is always a plan B.
Plan B means everybody gets to loosen their belts because they'll be eating again. But, Oh My God, there will be inflation!
That could be the ruin of the finance capitalists... and the salvation of everyone else!
Let's not lose sight of the fact that well below the radar of the world's headline writers is a world far removed from the too-big-to-fail Rumpelstiltskin economy that is the focus of their obsessions. A world where real people make real things and do real stuff that other folks will pay for.
Let the Eurozone fail.
Let the big banks fail.
Let's jam sticks into the spokes of shadow states and world orders old and new.
Life will go on.
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