Will the SYRIZA Victory Spark a Broad Anti-Austerity Struggle in Europe?

[Jefferson23]

Professor William Black says the mainstream media has failed to explain the ordinary Greek's experience of austerity policy -

January 30, 2015

Transcript:


snip*Greece was forced by the austerity demands back into a great depression that has now lasted longer than the Greek Great Depression of the 1930s and has more severe unemployment rates six years after the onset of this Great Depression than they had probably at any time during their Great Depression of the 1930s.

And Greece is not alone in this. Italy and Spain are also at Great Depression levels of unemployment. And collectively, those three nations have roughly 100 million in population, or roughly one-third of the entire Eurozone. And so these are people that have been thrown on the scrap heap by Germany, and it's just a complete waste to force millions of people into unemployment. That is obviously going to harm them, and it's going to harm the recovery, and it's going to harm the nation, and it's going to harm Europe.

So what we've been saying from the beginning is that the German insistence on austerity and on these debt repayments was going to force Greece into a great depression. It did exactly that. Unemployment is still in the 26 percent range overall, and for young workers it's in the 55 percent range. And so the first thing that most Greeks do when they get their new university degree is to emigrate. So that too is an enormous loss.

PERIES: So this war with now the new government of Greece and the troika and the power centers of Europe is getting played out in the media and in the newspapers, as you have pointed out. How are the plight of the Greek people being portrayed in these papers in terms of the levels of unemployment, the levels--as the level of suffering? How is it being covered in terms of what the ordinary people are experiencing?

BLACK: Well, first, over half of the stories don't even mention it. Second, those that do, it's almost always an afterthought, simply a statistic in the next-to-last paragraph. And more to the point, they don't ever tie it to austerity having caused it and that it being was completely gratuitous. So the normal thing that we do in the commercial world, when we're just dealing with businesses in these circumstances, is we don't try to insist that they repay every bit of their debt, because that'll just force them into a collapse. We create a renegotiated debt that is reduced.

And by the way, this was famously done after World War II for this nation called Germany, and it was done for Poland in 1991, where more than half of the debts were written off, many of them owed to Germany. And then, eventually, 100 percent of the debts were written off for a large number of African nations. And debts were written off in the range of 50 percent to nearly 100 percent for a number of Latin American nations. But in the case of the Greeks, the Germans are now insisting that they pay 100 cents on the dollar when--or euro, in this case--when that is not possible and it will cause a catastrophe.

in full: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13093

[Wellstone ruled]

1. What you will see is a bottom up trend in

Europe. Greece is just the start,next is Spain and then onto France. The German Banks are the ones calling the shots,and,the German populace are about fed up with Merkel and her conservative policy's. Looking for a major building or construction program to come soon to Europe,along with big bond buying program to start by April. Appears the real drag on the EU is our Wall Street thieves,appears the US multinationals are tired of loosing money in the Euro Zone and that means things will be turned around soon.

[Jefferson23]

2. I hope you're right...it is an encoraging event...thanks for the reply. n/t

[TooPragmatic]

3. Nothing has changed yet

Can there be some changes to the current austerity measures? Yes and there most likely will be. A Revolution? Not likely.
It all depends how Greece will be able to negotiate and what kind of deal they will get. Other Euro countries have the upper hand and if Syriza will be dumb enough to default, that would be bad for Podemos, since A) A Greek default would cost the Spanish tax payers money and B) Spaniards would see how bad it would be to leave the Euro.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/01/greece-and-euro
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ac3ff94a-a873-11e4-bd17-00144feab7de.html#axzz3QLwGG9fv

And the problem with these protest parties is that the only thing going for them at the moment is that people are frustrated with political status quo and the EU. Otherwise they just offer grand policies that are mostly not possible or they are simply nationalistic, racist, xenophobic, communist, anti-feminist, Putin supporting, conspiracy believing groups of nut jobs that would sooner wreck the entire EU, Europe and the global economy than do anything to make a change for the better. Many of these people have no idea how to run a government or a country and can't do anything before they learn how to compromise. To note, I lumped both right and left wing protest parties together since many of them share some of the attributes I mentioned there above.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/05/27/meet-the-tea-party-european-edition/

And just to note, The political protest movement in France has 2 years before their is an election and it is currently been led by Front National. Have a quick read from the link below. And Angela Merkel is still riding high in Germany, because she is like by many both left and right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_%28France%29
http://www.euronews.com/2014/12/08/germany-angela-merkel-soars-sky-high-over-party-and-country/

[Jefferson23]

4. As in 1942, Germany must show restraint over Greece

Februrary 1, 2015

Here are some quotes from the diaries of Count Ciano (Mussolini’s foreign minister and son-in-law), referring to Greece a year and a half after it was invaded and occupied by Germany.

6 October 1942: “Clodius [the Third Reich’s economics minister] is in Rome to discuss the Greek financial question, which is very bad. If it continues at this rate, sensational and unavoidable inflation will result, with all its consequences…

“All this is absurd, but the German army does not intend to reduce its interest rate.”

8 October 1942 [Ciano tells Mussolini about the Greek situation and quotes his reply]: “If we lose this war it will be because of the political stupidity of the Germans who have not even tried to use common sense, and have made Europe as hot and treacherous as a volcano.”

“He [Mussolini] is thinking of speaking to Himmler about this… but he will not get anywhere.”

In 2015, as in 1942, the Germans tend to overplay a strong hand. They insist that the Greeks abide by austerity agreements that have just been rejected by Greek voters in the general election on 25 January. The reason there was an election at all was that the previous Greek government, drawn from the conservative New Democracy and nominally socialist Pasok parties, could not get enough support in parliament to select a new president because eurozone leaders and the IMF would not relax their terms. The clear message from Greece is that no Greek government can satisfy the demands of the troika (EU Commission, European Central Bank and IMF) and expect to survive.

in full: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/as-in-1942-germany-must-show-restraint-over-greece-10015905.html