Greeks will leave Euro, end of world nigh

It's all over the news, except they're still mostly sliding in the modifier "might".

Ain't no "might" about it.

The people have had enough of the austerity enema.

According to the mainstream scare-mongers, once Greece says goodbye to the Euro and welcome back to the drachma, all hell will break loose.

And I'm quite sure the "global capital markets" will do some serious heavy breathing.

Not to worry.

Underneath that Rumpelstiltskin economy that thrives by passing paper around a daisy chain of insiders, there is still a real economy where real people make real stuff and provide services that really matter.

In the short term, global capital markets will indeed have a shudder.

In the long run, the people who can do real stuff and provide meaningful services will be fine.

But a lot of straw-spinners will be out of work.

Global stock markets rise as Greece sinks into despair

The Greek parliament today passed the latest round of so-called austerity measures in an attempt to soothe the international community's concerns about their ability to repay the latest rounds of bail-out loans.

"International community" in this case seems to mean mainly the Germans. There are a number of banks in Germany that are going to have some difficulties in the event Greece defaults on her sovereign debt.

There are of course a large number of opportunistic investment banks and hedge funds in America that have been buying up Greek debt at a steep discount and now clamor for the Greeks to pay up.

That's a pretty sweet deal, when you think about it. You buy Greek government bonds at forty cents on the dollar and within the year blackmail the Greek government into paying back the face value. That's certainly going to top up the bonus pool at Goldman Sachs next year.

And the folks paying those bonuses, the working poor and the pensioners in Greece, will have absolutely no say in the matter beyond the sporadic street protests we've seen so far.

But global markets went up today, so I guess it's all good.

Athens in flames; referendum by Molotov cocktail

Greeks are letting Prime Minister Papademos know what they think of his latest episode of bowing and scraping in front of Frau Merkel.

And so they should.

National sovereignty is a terrible price to pay in order to service the national debt.

The bailout will fail, Greece will default, and life will go on.

But Greece will once again be a sovereign nation.

Greeks say 'nein danke' to latest German debt offer

And what a generous offer those crafty Germans have come up with.

Seventy years after loosing the Vermacht on the hapless Greeks, the Germans want to take the country over again, but this time with an army of smart guys in suits.

According to the Financial Times, this latest bandaid for the never-ending euro-crisis would  involve giving Greece new loans to pay off the old loans, thereby saving the banks who are too big to fail and the careers of the many bankers who are too smart to make mistakes.

The Greek "crisis" did not spring up overnight. Greek debt accumulated over many years as foreign banks routinely approved decisions to continue buying Greek debt. Such decisions are taken by well educated and very well remunerated bankers, who in a sane world would now be held to some measure of accountability for their decisions.

But in the too-big-to-fail world of international banking the smart guys never make mistakes, and the Greeks can continue to poke new holes in their belts as they cut back further and further to ensure that the bankers come out with their profits intact.

The new money will allow the Greeks to save the German banks, at least for the time being, but, as one would expect in a deal offered by the Germans, it comes with rather nasty conditions attached. Most onerously, it would oblige the government to pay it's debt obligations first before any normal government expenditures.

In other words, paying interest to German banks would take priority over domestic spending on frills like education, health care, pensions for the elderly, and whatever is left of the already strained social safety net.

What's in this for the Greeks? The right to borrow even more money down the road, to increase their indebtedness to the same too-big-to-fail banksters who have them in the corner already.

Good for the Greeks for saying no. It's time the smart guys in suits are held accountable for their mistakes.