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Monday, July 13, 2015

The Power of the 'European Idea'

   Continues to seduce Greece. As Fortune says, the choice given Greece this weekend was to 'Be an outcast or be a vassal'and Tripas has chosen to be a vassal.

   http://fortune.com/2015/07/12/the-eurozone-offered-greece-a-choice-be-a-vassal-or-an-outcast/

  It's as if Greece is afraid that if they leave the euro they don't get to be a 'European nation' anymore though their geography makes them such.

 I'm glad to see that Bill Mitchell and I agree-this deal is so bad that whatever Grexit entails it can't be worse than this.

 http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/greeces-choice-hyperinflation-or.html

 So what is Germany's goal?

 "The sentiment is that Germany is not going for an exit for Greece but “total … submission and probably a new government by … end of the week”.

 "Well that document was then overtaken by the public release (via leak) of the “four-page document that … [proposed] … Greece leaving the euro temporarily by taking a “time-out” from the currency bloc” and sequestering more than “€50bn worth of assets as collateral for new loans and for eventual privatisation.”

 "But the ‘climax’ of the public ‘caning’ (torture, whatever you want to call it), came late yesterday, when the German Chancellor proposed that Greece:

  "… surrender of fiscal sovereignty as the price of avoiding financial collapse and being ejected from the single currency bloc. (Source)

"The process yesterday whereby Tsipras and his Finance Minister were subject to threats, moral lectures and ultimate humiliation was described by a “senior EU official” as an “exercise in extensive mental waterboarding”.

 "The same senior EU official said the increased harshness of the measures was “payback for the emphatic no to the creditors’ terms delivered by the snap referendum that Tsipras staged a week ago.”

  http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=31357#more-31357

  The irony is that in acceding to all Germany's arrogant demands Tsipras gives them what they want-his termination.

  Punishment for daring to resist Merkel and the EU.

 Lars Christensen yesterday turned me on to a really good book to understand what's going on in the EU-a book by Bernard Connolly called The Rotten Heart of Europe.

 http://marketmonetarist.com/2015/07/12/the-euro-a-fatal-conceit/

How about a book called The Rotten Heart of Germany?

"So finally, the Troika will “occupy” Greece, the first time that a foreign power has occupied an advanced European nation since you know when."

"The Troika’s creepy, mindless, neo-liberal Groupthink-besotted economists and officials will parade around Athens in their expensive suits lording it over a suffering nation as part of the occupation and take-over."

From Vichy in France to the EU in Athens. Truly the Germans haven't changed.

Ok, I know, I'm sort of veering off into a kind of pointless anti-Kraut jaunt. But it's amazing how every terribly bad thing that has befallen Europe in the last 100 years that didn't involve the Soviet Union has involved Germany.

Conoolly's point though is that this is the inevitable outcome of the euro system, the idea of a monetary union with no other union. I can't imagine trying to defend the system now.
     
     

     

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