(Greek vote) "is a threat for ... the political elites. They have a serious problem with democracy." [View all]

[marmar]

via Naked Capitalism:



By Mathew D. Rose, a freelance journalist in Berlin


The austerity policy dictated to the Eurozone by Germany has failed to generate a recovery. The news goes from bad to worse – and even worse. Nowhere is that more tangible than in Greece. Just to repeat the otherwise well known facts for the German readers of Naked Capitalism, who are withheld such facts in their own media: 1 million people have lost their jobs (approximately 25 percent of the working population); youth unemployment is well over 50 percent despite massive immigration; a third of business have closed, salaries have sunk almost 40 percent; pensions have been reduced almost by half; the economy has contracted by a quarter; there has been a 43 percent increase in child mortality and the health system has broken down; the Greek economy is in deflation; and, since the imposition of the austerity programme in 2010 the public debt has increased from 130 percent of GDP to 175 percent.

All these figures hide the most important fact: What is occurring in Greece is not so much an economic crisis as a humanitarian disaster. That the Greeks have raised the question of the appropriateness of austerity by precipitating elections is proof that democracy has survived these pernicious times and deserves our greatest respect. I sincerely do not believe that German democracy would have survived under similar conditions.

The democratic process in Greece is a threat for Germany and its allies, the political elites in Europe. They have a serious problem with democracy. When in 2011 the then prime minister of Greece, George Papandreou, announced a referendum to determine if the Greek people wished to adopt the imposed austerity programme, he was forced from office by the Germans and EU and replaced by a hand selected EU bureaucrat, a former vice-president of the European Central Bank. With the balance sheets of German and French banks in danger due to their extensive exposure to Greek bonds, that was no time to be consulting the Greek people.

Helping the Greek people in their time of need has never been an issue for the Germans and the EU. We know from Timothy Geitner’s book “Stress Test” that at the inception of the Greek crisis “EU leaders were obsessed with crushing terrible Greeks” and Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble was just as obsessed with throwing Greece out of the Eurozone (which he still is). ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/mathew-d-rose-not-eurozone-crisis-european-union-crisis.html