Alpe d'Huez said:
A little surprised there's been no talk here about the recent landslide election in Greece, with the far left, anti-austerity, anti-bailout Syriza party coming into power.
This could be both very interesting on it's own to see first how well the country recovers after a near decade of harsh economic clampdown, and how Alexis Tsipras can wiggle through the straightjacket that's been placed on the country. It's also going to be interesting to see how long he can keep people interested, hopeful. Also how well the coalition he hopes to build with the centrist independents plays out.
This could very well be a barometer for many other countries in Europe, though I don't see the closed minded US taking much notice at all, even if there were a huge economic turnaround and boom in Greece.
For the US to take interest, other than the pundits becoming livid over the good-for-nothing socialists taking power, a threat to its own economic growth would have to result, though at least it should recognize its own ponderous role in the Troika.
While Tsipras has said he is not going to even talk with the Troika, the EU yes, but the Troika no. The EU, though, only in terms of each member, including Germany, being considered of the exact same democratic weight as everyone else. One understands why Germany doesn't want to loose profit on loan interest repayments, however, it would do well to remember that in 1953 it had its debt cut from like 150% of GNP to 30% overnight, lest the post-War austerity measures, exactly like Greece today, kill the German country and its society. At the same time the Teutonic state has profited enormously through its export industry by the EU, including Greece.
Under the austerity regime imposed by the Troika, Greece has seen its unemployment skyrocket and its debt/GNP ratio go through the roof. The country is repeatedly giving its pound of flesh to the IMF (under US power) and Wall Street, the EU central bank and EU Commission (the infamous Troika), while its economy continues its downward slump; so that rather than its debt diminishing, it is actually increasing without abate and without much prospect of a reduction. Such a condition is obviously untenable in the long run, while it has inevitably paved the way for social crisis and reactionaries, including the increasing popularity of the neo-Nazi Alba Dorata party.
The rise of Syriza potentially brings the EU to a crossroads, for which other anti-Troika political movements like Spain's Podemos could follow suit. It will be interesting to see whether or not the central left in Italy and France will realize the mistakes it has made in 2012, when the terms of Greece's debt were re-negotiated always in favor of the banks.
For their part the banks are, of course, both terrified and scornful of the prospect of Greece getting what it needs to avoid further economic hardship, if not social meltdown: an immediate reduction of its sovereign debt and a cut in the interest rates of its repayment. This is naturally because of a domino effect by other countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy demanding the same treatment. At the same time, this is exactly the treatment Germany got in 1953.
There exists, I imagine, publicity in favor of the Troika, but after an internet search all I came up with was an implacable zero "likes" and hundreds of "don't likes." For as much as it is approximative and summary, the results struck me. I at least imagined a debate, but instead got a chorus of hostility, a noisy crowd of multiple facets before an authority apparently without voice and thus without a manifest ideology. I asked myself, what sort of power doesn't have a voice, at least not one that clearly states its agenda and argues its positions? Is it too sure of itself? Is it so arrogant as to not even feel the need to have to speak up, or does it rather know that if it did open its mouth and in no uncertain terms revealed its progect wouldn't be capable of articulating a discourse in favor of itself? It's difficult to say, other than a power that is so little communicative, at the limits of a mystery, can't but fuel the fire (often incoherent and noxious) of conspiracy theories.
Whatever the outcome at least the Troika will at last be forced to speak up and the EU face the demons of an economic union without social principle, which is the larger narrative of which Retro has spoken.
Lastly while much of the burden has been self-inflicted through rampant political corruption and tax evasion, it should also be recalled that that political corruption was born of neoliberal policy by banks like Goldman Sachs pursuing its one-thought ideology in helping Greece cover-up its debt that furthered the same corruption that has ruined the Greek state. At the same time tax evasion doesn't come from the public job sector, which is the same apparatus that the Troika is demanding to be cut in the name of "structural reforms."
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