There is a German saying which means the same as the Anglo Saxon “Coals to Newcastle”. It is “Carrying owls to Athens” – where, just as Newcastle had an excess of coal so Athens had an excess of wisdom! Not today. The Greeks, bullied and buffeted by years of Euro induced economic, financial, and social collapse are now, like their banks and businesses, zombies – intimidated into what Germany hopes will be further surrender to those who have destroyed them. They are fearful of all choices but slavish to the “Europe” which they were mesmerised into believing was their salvation.
Greece is an Orthodox Christian country – indeed Mount Athos in Northern Greece is a centre of the historic and living world of Orthodoxy with Serb, Greek and Russian monasteries. Greeks will know Romans 1; 21-28:
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man…”
Nothing is more remote from the people and their Christian morality and more corruptible than the bureaucratic State – unless it is the even more corrupt supranational Euro-State with its graven images of imperial glory, its corrupt corridors of power where no democracy rules but big corporations can make a killing.
Where free men and free nations trade and responsible banks take financing decisions on measurable real world risks there are self correcting balances, early punishment for excess lending and borrowing – and rewards for the responsible. But where the State intervenes to subsidise banks’ irresponsibility (by printing money to rescue its own finances) or “for political reasons” (as the EU said to justify the economically impossible Euro) then the fundamentally bad is preserved, impossible debt is built up and the inevitable failure is postponed so long that when the reckoning comes it is an earthquake.
When the State has failed economically and financially the personal and private sector banks and corporations withdraw (they must survive the downfall) and “for political reasons” the State and Superstate (the EU and in this case the EU-corrupted IMF) step in. The extent of that flight from Greece can be seen in this graph:
Ironically it is the two non Euro countries in the above list, the UK and the USA who have reduced their (admittedly small) exposures the least! The private sectors of the Eurozone countries, better and more directly representing their own peoples, have shown their confidence in Greece and the Euro by fleeing, leaving their Governments and taxpayers to carry the can. So free responsible investors are saying “OK you say the Euro is a political matter – now you politicians sort it out!”
The European Central Bank’s total Greek bank exposure at €125.8bn far exceeds its Capital & Reserves of €98.5bn. The rest will be paid for by Eurozone taxpayers!
So now, faced with the democratic challenge of a Greek referendum (a previous referendum on EU bail out terms under the Socialist George Papandreou was strictly forbidden by the Germans!) we have the desperate panic and lies of the Euro-fanatical establishment as they try to rescue not Greece but their bankrupt “political” constructs – the economically illiterate Euro and the democratically destructive EU itself.
“Greece would be committing suicide by voting No” says Jean Claude Juncker
“I know Greek people don’t want to let down the European Union”. Note the appeal to rescue the EU! Juncker went on to lie about the measures demanded by the EU and IMF: “There are no wage cuts, no pension cuts in this package”
Greek officials accused him of lying because the demands would cut welfare payments for Greece’s poorest pensioners earning under Euro 300 per month. 85% of pensioner (who have already seen cuts of 44%) would have pensions cut again. There would be no further rises until 2021.
In 2012 Juncker had said “When it becomes serious you have to lie” – never a truer Euro-word spoken!
The German Chancellor, Merkel has brought Greece to the level of destruction previously only experienced under German and Italian occupation during world war two. Ironically the conflict between right and left playing out on Athens streets today is also reminiscent of the civil war which broke out after European Fascism had destroyed Greece in 1945! Merkel, conscious of the edifice of debt and lies outlined above, says today:
“We could say let’s just give in for peace but I say this would damage us in that we would cease to be relevant in the world”
The “We” is of course not the Greeks but the corporatist anti democratic German Europe which has brought Greece (and Spain and Portugal and Italy and Ireland) to its knees and created the communist Syriza Government – and the impossible choices which habitually face continental Europe – between some form of communism and some form of corporatist fascism!
Recently 49 Greek MPs called for the nation’s debt to be written off as (illegal) and Syriza MPs tabled a motion demanding an Icelandic style default and the re-introduction of the Drachma.
There is scarcely an economist or informed commentator in the world who does not recognise Greece’s debt as un-repayable and think that debt write offs are necessary. Indeed leading IMF economists said 5 years ago that it was unforgivable for Greece to take on further massive debts – just to save the break up of the hideous Euro.
Although the EU is shamelessly bullying Greek electors by claiming that if the country left the Euro it would mean leaving the EU, that is a lie. There are 10 EU members, including Poland, the UK and Sweden which are not in the Euro so why should not Greece join them? No reason – except that Merkel and Co lie in order to intimidate.
Equally nonsensical are those Greeks who claim they want to stay in the Euro when they are themselves abandoning the Greek institutions which represent the Euro. Capital flight has reached 60% of GDP, the Government’s revenues collapsed 24% in May 2015 and billions have been taken out of the banks and “stuffed under mattresses”.
In fact it is precisely the fact that massive sums have left the country that means a return to the Drachma would mean tens of billions of Euros flooding back into Drachmas and reviving the Greek economy.
The only thing that Greeks need to fear is (EU induced) fear itself. And the thing that the EU fears is not that Greece outside the Euro will fail but that it will succeed! – and may encourage others to leave!
