Joseph Stiglitz: Europe’s war on Greek democracy

[marmar]

by Joseph Stiglitz


NEW YORK (Project Syndicate) — The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors.

In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.

Of course, the economics behind the program that the “troika” (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) foisted on Greece five years ago has been abysmal, resulting in a 25% decline in the country’s gross domestic product.

I can think of no depression, ever, that has been so deliberate and had such catastrophic consequences: Greece’s rate of youth unemployment, for example, now exceeds 60%. ..................(more)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/europes-war-on-greek-democracy-2015-06-29?dist=beforebell

[dembotoz]

1. See tons of sticks with no carrots

This is going stupid

[KingCharlemagne]

2. I think Stiglitz' neo-Keynsianism is out of favor with the Democratic Party

poo-bahs. So I expect your thread to come in for the requisite amount of trashing from the surrogates. The Troika deliberately engineered a Depression in Greece in the name of bailing out French and German banks. Enough said. Actually, one more word: Oxi!

[abelenkpe]

5. + 1000 nt

[fasttense]

6. I read that when a nation signs onto to be part of the EU they agree to penalties if they withdraw

Have you heard anything like that? If the Greeks exit they face penalties?

I've not heard anyone talk about those penalties and wonder what they are.

[GermanWatcher]

9. No plan, no penalties

There are no penalties for leaving the Eurozone. In fact, in the treaties of the European Union there are no provisions for member states to leave or to be expelled from the Eurozone. There simply is no plan for that.
Thus, all the talk of expelling Greece or of Greece leaving the Eurozone voluntarily or involuntarily is just that - talk. Up to now, nobody knows how that would come about.

[fasttense]

20. Thanks for the info

I'm not sure where I read there were penalties, maybe they meant systemic penalties and not finite defined in a treaty penalties.

Thanks.

[ananda]

3. Hear hear!

Globalization sucks!

[FlatBaroque]

15. Globalization does indeed suck

One should disintermediate the personal supply chain. Local and regional supply systems are the long term answer. The Greeks have started doing this. They are organizing at a local level for providing basic services like medicine.

[Jerry442]

4. No worries, really.

It's not like anything really bad ever happened because of an economic depression in Europe, right?

[HereSince1628]

7. Yet another demonstration that governments cannot be run like family budgets.

We expect governments to survive as something other than buyouts existing only to sell off assets.

[The2ndWheel]

10. It's also another demonstration that the increasingly abstract nature

of our financial system, when meeting physical reality, isn't pretty. A finite planet, but an unlimited human imagination. One of those two things isn't going to win.

[FlatBaroque]

16. It is the hollowing out of nations. Its happening here as well.

That's what TPP is about.

[Enthusiast]

18. I fear that is what TPP is about.

[hifiguy]

25. That and the race to the bottom

Are the ONLY things it is about.

[daleanime]

26. The more people are shoved down....

the higher the few can rise.

[hifiguy]

27. The objective is world conquest

Without actual war by the 1%ers. Nothing less than a modernized feudalism.

[sulphurdunn]

8. The attitude of bankers

has always been that governments and their people are too stupid to control their own money without banks. I tend to agree with this sentiment. Which is why banks should be public entities controlled by governments and their people through legislative bodies and national treasuries and not the other way around.

[FlatBaroque]

14. You are not alone in thinking that way

If you have read a history of money in the USA, you know that great men have tried to prevent private central banks since the beginning of this country. Heck, the war of independence was largely because the colonies no longer wanted to use the Bank of England's money. Men throughout our hstory have warned that private central banks like the FED will eat away at the economy of a country, hollowing it out, until all the people are impoverished.

[randome]

11. And if the referendum (dumb idea by a dumb leader) puts the Greeks in favor of payment, what then?

Is that another sign of a 'war' on Democracy?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
Leonard Cohen, Anthem (1992)[/center][/font][hr]

[malaise]

12. Neo-liberalism is the death of democracy

It is rule by multi-lateral agencies and corporations.

Go Greece!!!

[closeupready]

22. Yes, it really is. Enslavement, or liberty? Gee, difficult choice.

[FlatBaroque]

13. It should be clear to all watching that

this is essentially an economic war, fought with only one side warring, while the other tries to figure out what hit it. THERE NEED TO BE CRIMMINAL PROSECUTIONS OF THE "TROIKA" AS A RESULT OF THEIR BAILOUT PLANS. But no, just as criminal prosecutions in the US were waved off, nothing will be done to these mafioso who run the central banks.

[geek tragedy]

21. So, in which court would the European Union be put

on criminal trial?

[WillyT]

17. K & R !!!

[blackspade]

19. K&R

Thanks for posting!

[First Speaker]

23. Greece has had a civil war and military coup within living memory...

...are the masterminds in the EU so certain this can't happen again? And how about Spain, with its Great Depression-style unemployment seemingly lasting forever? Anyone recall the Spanish Civil War and Franco? If the Greek people, pushed to the wall and under open blackmail, pass the "referendum", this might keep the crisis under control--for awhile. But it will also mean continued economic depression there. How long before they simply decide that "democracy" is a sham, and kick over the traces, like Europeans did in the 1930s? I think the EU, and especially the Euro, is in its death-throes. What comes after it isn't pleasant to contemplate.

[Jefferson23]

24. The predominant theme: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.

K&R