This Greek Tragedy Could End In Utter Ruin

[Purveyor]

Victory for the Left and a chaotic exit from the eurozone would lead to turmoil across Europe

By Jeremy Warner
7:40PM GMT 29 Dec 2014

Like a bad penny, Greece keeps coming back to remind us of the folly of Europe’s grand experiment in monetary union and the havoc it has created for a once thriving continent. Make no mistake; Greece, and a number of other peripheral eurozone nations too, do indeed need to leave the euro if ever they are to find a plausible path back to growth and debt sustainability.

Devaluation via the reinstatement of the drachma would provide a natural, market-based mechanism for haircutting foreign creditors appropriately, as well as an immediate solution to the problem of lost competitiveness, now being so painfully addressed through economic shrinkage.

Yet it is one thing to quit the euro in a controlled, negotiated and orderly manner – behind the protection of capital controls, with help from the International Monetary Fund to get the country back on its feet – and quite another to be forced out amid political crisis, social upheaval, and the idiocies of an extreme Left-wing policy agenda.

It is this latter prospect that suddenly became very real this week, with the failure of the Greek parliament to agree on a new president. So desperate has their position become that Greeks may be about to vote for economic and political suicide rather than tolerate any more of the medicine prescribed to them by Berlin and Brussels.

Failure to elect a president triggers an automatic election, which on present polling could result in a government led by the radical Left-wing Syriza party, which is intent on rejecting the austerity and structural reform of the EU and the IMF, as well as seeking another write-down of Greece’s national debt.

more...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/11316567/This-Greek-tragedy-could-end-in-utter-ruin.html

[FiveGoodMen]

1. With that much hatred for the left this might as well be Fox News.

[2naSalit]

2. Sounds like this was written for and by

IMF and World Bank proponents who really want Greece to fail as a country so that assets and resources can be sold off to the monied.

The EU may be a mistake and perhaps this is just the catalyst to reverse direction. I think that if these events take place during volatile times, it could work out best for the vast majority of people and other living organisms on the planet. It has to start somewhere...

[Odin2005]

3. Torygraph bullshit.

[lark]

4. Suicide would be continuing the austerity policies

that hurt the workers and enrich the wealthy, just what the IMF is proposing.

[LongTomH]

5. Even cleaning ladies are fighting back against Greek austerity

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014976493

With her red rubber glove raised in defiance, Despoina Kostopoulou has become a figurehead for a nation fed up with austerity.

Since the 53-year-old became one of almost 600 cleaning ladies sacked by the Greek Finance ministry on a cost-cutting drive in 2013, she has terrorised not only her own government, but also the bureaucrats from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union with their draconian rules on Greek public spending.

“They came after cleaners with very small salaries and families, forgetting we are women, we are mothers, and if you mess with us we can become like the harpies in the ancient Greek legends,” she said, standing on a picket line outside the Finance ministry with her daughter Maria. “I never thought that a rubber cleaning glove could become such a symbol of struggle but it has.”

The angry cleaning ladies have become a symbol for millions of Greeks ahead of a snap general election next month that could bring Syriza, a far-Left party that has pledged to dump the austerity plans, to power. On posters around Athens, they are seen with brooms in hand, sweeping away penny-pinching officials.