dagblog - Comments for "Greek deal in sight as Germany bows to huge global pressure for debt relief"

I think in the U.S. the

Oxy Mora — Sun, 12 Jul 2015 02:06:51 +0000

In reply to Who could trust Syriza and

I think in the U.S. the mechanism is the small business or "farm account" and of course who doesn't need a $60K Ford 250 dually?

Who could trust Syriza and

NCD — Sun, 12 Jul 2015 00:24:56 +0000

In reply to NCD, it seems that the

Who could trust Syriza and Tsipras? With another XX billion Euros? Who knows how this will end, or if it will end....

Tsipris and the Syriza bigs are all former communists, and that kind of ideology does not modernize a nation or create jobs.

Tsipris has wasted 5 months and tens of billions BSing with these negotiations when he should have been barnstorming the nation to end tax evasion and promote private investment/jobs.

He has achieved one thing, he has made Greece look like a bunch of reality challenged deadbeats, crooks or tax evaders, not good for PR when your country depends on tourists.

A commenter who visits Greece frequently says the area in northern Greece he visits is chock full of luxury cars, and the local inside joke is they are 'farm tractors'......which can be bought for no or low sales/registration tax.

The 'good' offer was rejected

NCD — Sun, 12 Jul 2015 00:15:21 +0000

In reply to http://www.pappaspost.com

The 'good' offer was rejected in the referendum last week, and it 'passed' the legislature with 2 0f the big 3 Syriza leaders against it, including the head of the parliament.

A NYT commenter said:

Tsipras is a genius!!!!

He fooled most readers of the NYT into thinking Greece is an innocent victim of "Greedy lenders".Then he fooled the citizens of Greece into thinking he'd fight for no austerity!

Then he fooled the EU members into giving him another $59b to use to pay their next loan payment (borrow money to pay off other borrowed money!)

Now he fooled the EU members that he's raise the "Tax rate" on the taxes he doesn't collect! Make the rate 10,000% - no matter - you don't collect it anyway! Pure genius!!

And - wait, here it comes - he'll sputter along for 18-24 months and then - my sides ache now --- then he'll stand up and say the EU are greedy thieves who should never have given him this money that they can't possibly pay back.

NCD, it seems that the

Oxy Mora — Sun, 12 Jul 2015 00:13:17 +0000

In reply to The 'good' offer was rejected

NCD, it seems that the Finance Ministers aren't buying, the Saturday meeting ended in apparent acrimony and a memo (Schauble) circulated:

Option A. More reforms needed.

Option B. Five year time-out, Grexit without the edge, with humanitarian aid.

Forgot to mention, the bailout request is now up to 75 B Euro's.

By my calculations, 75 B would provide 30,000 Euros to 2.5 million Greek citizens ( a comparison only for scale, they'd be lucky to get a fraction of that.) Then how do you get it directly to the people without it being siphoned off. Maybe American Express cards.

In any case, I don't see how the parties get over the trust issue per proposed reforms, let alone the acrimony and sovereignty issues of even more reforms.

Edit to add: Forgot part of Option A---transfer Greek assets worth 50 B Euros.

Thanks.

trkingmomoe — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 11:33:00 +0000

In reply to I can't agree with that

Thanks.

"They are being run by

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 11:01:54 +0000

In reply to It still has to be approved

"They are being run by Eurocrats that want to social engineer Europe away from pensions and social programs." - huh? the EU has a huge slate of social programs - Google Horizon2020 as one big cashable for social grants, or Council of Europe for social initiatives. Socialized medicine is alive and almost well, as countries do struggle to balance the books with rising health costs and aging populations. The EU wouldn't even be involved with Greek pensions if a) Greece could come close to balancing it's books and b) ridiculously high pensions and cushy got jobs wasn't a mainstay of Greece's system of buying elections. France certainly is not doing away with its pension system anytime soon - is it not part of what you call "Eurocrats"? Headline today in my piece of Europe? "Greeks get more in pensions than we do, but costs are higher". This ain't Germany speaking - other countries are wondering why Greece gets free money and all the attention - should Spain, Portugal and Ireland do a shittier job of handling their crises to get more Troika (especially the French part) love? Should the small new & poorer EU states offer social benefits they can't afford because someone will bail them out? But the Eu already has tons of structural funds to redistribute cash to needed states - all they have to do is apply and follow the rules. Maybe Greece should follow that recipe - simpler than making baklava or spanika pita.

I can't agree with that

ocean-kat — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 06:29:44 +0000

In reply to http://www.pappaspost.com

I can't agree with that article. Someone is mistaken imo, either Varoufakis or Schauble. It may be that Schauble wants to push Greece out of the EU but if he thinks he can put the fear of god into France he's wrong. French citizens riot, they have a long history of rioting. For example taxi drivers just rioted a couple of weeks ago over Uber. Blocked roads, smashed car windows. It's not like I pay close attention to French politics but with just my general reading violent protests in France while not frequent are not unusual. It seems to be the way French people get the attention of their government and it seems to get results.

Either Varoufakis is wrong about Schauble or Schauble is wrong about the French.

http://www.pappaspost.com

trkingmomoe — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 03:39:17 +0000

In reply to Greek deal in sight as Germany bows to huge global pressure for debt relief

http://www.pappaspost.com/varoufakis-germans-want-to-break-us/

The former Finance Minister of Greece until last week has an interesting take since he has been on the forefront of this.

And there’s the rub. After the crisis of 2008/9, Europe didn’t know how to respond. Should it prepare the ground for at least one expulsion (that is, Grexit) to strengthen discipline? Or move to a federation? So far it has done neither, its existentialist angst forever rising. Schäuble is convinced that as things stand, he needs a Grexit to clear the air, one way or another. Suddenly, a permanently unsustainable Greek public debt, without which the risk of Grexit would fade, has acquired a new usefulness for Schauble.

What do I mean by that? Based on months of negotiation, my conviction is that the German finance minister wants Greece to be pushed out of the single currency to put the fear of God into the French and have them accept his model of a disciplinarian eurozone.

This might be why they gave in to see if they will get pushed out after making a good offer.

OXI GREECE!

NCD — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 22:33:44 +0000

In reply to Greek deal in sight as Germany bows to huge global pressure for debt relief

OXI GREECE!

Uncompromising OP-ED article published April 2015 in Greek CRASH magazine by former Communist Party member Panagiotis Lafazanis, the current Syriza Greek Minister of Reconstruction of Production, Environment & Energy. Bear in mind that Lafazanis is one of the most hardcore members of Syriza’s Leftist platform. He is also one of the most influential.

Greece, through time, in all of the difficult times that it underwent, managed to find the strength to stand upright and cope with storms.

The critical historical juncture faced today by our people is not unprecedented.

We have passed in our history equally bad, perhaps even worse periods of time. Periods during which the isolation of the country seemed depressing and insuperable. We managed, however, to pull through.

And we pulled through, mainly thanks to self-sacrifice, unparalleled morale, fighting spirit and determination of a people, who put above everything else its survival, its dignity, and justice.

This is the great historical challenge that we face today.

Today, the rescue of the country is closely linked to the rejection of insubordination, to our desire of enduring in difficulties and to our decision of connecting our great “NO”s with our unwavering effort for a new and progressive path of reconstruction, recovery, and prospective rebirth of the country.

If only an agreement could be found that would represent an “honest compromise” – although this term is inappropriate, fluid, and fits everything and nothing.

Nevertheless, the so-called partners and the IMF do not ask from the government for an agreement that respects fundamentally the survival of the Greek people and the recent radical popular verdict.

What the cruelest and most ruthless vested centers in Berlin, Brussels, and the IMF want from the country is “earth and water.” They are asking for subordination and surrender. They are asking for new measures of pension and wage cuts, sellout of the country, new taxes, and further deregulations.

Our government will not bow down, neither will it surrender.

SYRIZA will never co-sign new measures at the expense of the working classes. SYRIZA will not accept an agreement that would be incompatible to its radical commitments.

If Berlin, Brussels, and the IMF believe that they will either drag the country and the government into submission, or they will push us towards collapsing, they are making a double mistake. Neither the one, nor the other will happen.

If our “partners” and the IMF believe that they will blackmail us using the refusal of financing as a weapon, and that they will terrorize the Greek people forever using the “boogeyman” of default and of a national currency, they are woefully deluded.

Greece has many other alternative paths [it can choose from] and it can have potential without financing from the EU and the IMF, and without the ECB liquidity provided by the drop to the banks.

Greece can cope against the “water torture” applied by the EU and the IMF, and which chokes the economy and leads to the suffocation of households.

While Greece can have alternative solutions, something similar is not true for the EU, but also the IMF, and their predatory policies.

The problems that the EU – which is reeling – will have to face from an alternative progressive Greece will be enormous, and might prove to be non-manageable and insurmountable.

Socks can be unpicked even by one point.

Greece, together with Cyprus, comprise of the South-eastern side of Europe, at the boundary of three continents.

The political and geostrategic weight of the country is critical, if not essential.

Our economic dimension, also, is not negligible in qualitative possibilities.

It is difficult to conceive of a European Union, even in appearance, without Greece. The geopolitical vacuum will be tragic. As it is also out of time and place for some to think that the economic repercussions of a Greek moratorium, or even more of a Grexit, will be politically and economically insignificant for the future of the European Union.

Greece will be able to cope, and slowly-slowly come back to its feet, after a rupture with the European Union that will be imposed by its dominant cycles. The EU, however, will possibly – however paradoxical this seems – be subjected to a grave, and even mortal wound, in such a case.

Europe has every interest to truly support Greece, and not to remain attached to intransigent, religious-type neoliberal orthodoxies and neocolonial hegemonies.

?esides, the harsh neoliberal path blindly followed by the EZ and the EU will cause a deep economic paralysis and decline in the euro-united front.

On the other hand, the dominance of Germany in the Union has provided the latter with the appearance of an uncompromising Germanic Europe, which sees next to the German monetary and economic domination the American politico-military umbrella prevailing.

In any case, however, Greece must play a pioneering role through its path and its contribution for a progressive subversion in Europe. The neoliberal monetarist Germanic Europe and a Eurozone that has dogmatic architecture, constructed for the “lobby” of the North, have no future. This Europe will be drowning in its economic stagnation, its growing oppositions and controversies, while it will be multiplying the number of social divisions and poverty.

The progressive subversion in Greece can be the first step of a larger reversal in Europe. An overturn in our country does not imply only a new progressive path with socialist horizons, but also the discharge of our country from the shackles of servitude and dependence, and the implementation of a new, genuine, independent, and multidimensional foreign and economic policy.

The position of the government to encourage the construction of a pipeline on Greek soil – which will begin from the Greek-Turkish borders and go all the way to our borders with FYROM, and which will transport Russian natural gas via an underwater pipeline through the Black Sea – is included in this logic.

Such a large construction project, as long as it materialized, would have extremely important energy- and fiscal-related benefits for the country, while it would open a qualitatively new chapter in the development of Greek-Russian relations, which could provide a new form to the region and Europe.

Greece, having Syriza as its trunk, with TAP that brings Azeri gas and with the new pipeline that brings Russian gas, but also through a series of other efforts and initiatives, wants to become a pluralistic energy node of cooperation, peace, and stability in the region and in Europe. For a Europe without new Cold War-like walls, without the logic of isolating countries, without hegemonic dominations, without neocolonial attitudes, in which new values of equal cooperation and co-development of the people, the countries (in between them) and the neighboring regions will exist.

Greece can and must open multidimensional horizons of economic and political relations that will form new footholds, not only in Russia, but also in China, Brazil, Latin America, India, the Arab world, the African zone, and of course, the area of the Mediterranean bowl.

Syriza’s Greece will stop being an American-Atlantic plot [of sea], German fief, or satellite state of the American-Israeli Middle East axis and is not a country that will be offered for sale, privatizing its strategic sectors of economy, its strategic operations, its strategic infrastructures, and its strategic networks.

Under the framework of the new foreign and economic policy, Greece rejects the dichotomous and vassal co-pooling of the Aegean sea, either with the US, or with Turkey, or with both of them together, while it seeks to exploit its mineral wealth and potential hydrocarbon reserves based on international law and its national interest.

Exactly following international law, and especially the Law of the Seas, we want the problems in the Aegean Sea to be solved, so as for the latter to become a sea of peace, a bridge of friendship and cooperation for the benefit of the countries and the people who border this beautiful sea.

Greece, in this very difficult time, in one of the most difficult times in its history, is facing a historic challenge: to turn the crisis and the tragedy into opportunity and possibility.

We can win this bet if we isolate the “fifth column” that was always the curse of this place. The “fifth column” of the incumbent foreign centers, of the oligarchs, of the dominant media, and of the domestic political servitude towards them. We can succeed, if we showcase unity as a people, fighting spirit and tenacity, a will for large demonstrations, resistance and strength against the temporary adversities, thinking of the progressive rectifier future that we must build for the generations to come.

It still has to be approved

trkingmomoe — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 20:49:55 +0000

In reply to Good thoughts, Peracles.

It still has to be approved by the Greek parliament. That may not happen with out debt reduction. The Eurogroup still has to vote on it Monday. This is far from over. You know until the fat lady sings.

This whole bullying act by the ECB has been political. They are being run by Eurocrats that want to social engineer Europe away from pensions and social programs. They are autocrats that want it all. A left political party came out of no where in Greece and a left political party is gaining a lot a ground in Spain who is also under the same pressure to reduce and eliminate social safety nets. This is got Junker worried and his cabal.

There will be demonstrations all weekend in Greece.

No matter how all this turns out, Greece will continue to move to the left politically. Also other European countries that are under this type of monitory blackmail will find the left gaining politically.