After all, this is his party going back to when he wrote The Communist Manifesto. Today Karl Marx's party tried to bully Greece with talk of burned bridges:
If nothing else yesterday seems to be a defeat for electoral polling at least the polls that told us yesterday's vote would be close. The mainstream press in Greece is apparently just as biased in favor of the Eurocrats as the press is elsewhere:
"Despite the shamelessly dishonest press barrage from the conservative owners of the highly concentrated Greek media (the ‘oligarchs’) to vote YES; despite many articles popping up in world newspapers about how the Greeks are to blame for their own problems because they overspend and undertaxed; despite the lies coming from other European leaders about what the vote was about (it was not about leaving the Euro but rather about whether the Greek people wanted further failed austerity); despite the ridiculous claims of the German SDP about “bridges being burned” (that party should change its name because it is a disgrace to the social democratic tradition) – despite all of that and heaps more, the Greek people voted overwhelmingly NO to reject austerity as a viable policy model for their country. This is a case of democracy coming head to head with the dominant political-economic ideology within which the Greek nation is situated – the Eurozone. It also demonstrates the flaws of the democratic process – the people have voted for an end to austerity but also consistently tell opinion polls they want to remain in the Eurozone, a monetary system that is built on austerity. They voted yesterday to reject the very basis of the monetary system they want to stay in – which tells us they don’t really understand the nature of the system and therefore how informed is the NO vote."
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=31294
No doubt you can argue that the Greek people want contardictory things in the end of austerity while staying in the euro. As I noted earlier Krugman and Lars Christensen both have argued in favor of Grexit as well.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/lars-christensen-grexit-will-restart.html
As my old buddy Sumner-LOL- points out the euro was an idea that everyone from Krugman to Friedman warned against.
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=29858
As Mitchell argues, this was a loss for the EU whether or not Grexit follows as their script of bullying and blackmail failed. Fortune magazine also pointed this out today.
http://fortune.com/2015/07/06/what-greeks-are-saying-to-europe-we-wont-be-bullied/
Back to Mitchell:
"The call for the referendum blew the idea that the bullies could just threaten these nations with bankruptcy – which was an idle threat anyway given that they blow up their own system if enforced, out of the water."
Right. What's forgotten is that Greece's 2012 'bailout' was really just a bailout of EU banks in German, France, etc.
He's right that a large part of breaking the script here was to actually allow the Greek people to vote at all. While the Eurocrats continues to throw out the red herring last week that their problem with the vote was the timing 'Now?!'-this is just the usual conservative attempt to sidestep an issue by arguing over process-ie, rather than debate the merits of having a vote either way one just argues that it was somehow wrong to do it now or the way that Tsipras went about calling it.
A big part of the Neoliberal consensus was against democracy itself-the people being allowed to vote on what happens. Democracy for the NLers in the EU means what Germany's finance minister agrees with.
At the end of the day though-if not now, when? Greece is at 1994 levels of GDP, Saying things could be worse has kind of lost its resonance.
If nothing else yesterday seems to be a defeat for electoral polling at least the polls that told us yesterday's vote would be close. The mainstream press in Greece is apparently just as biased in favor of the Eurocrats as the press is elsewhere:
"Despite the shamelessly dishonest press barrage from the conservative owners of the highly concentrated Greek media (the ‘oligarchs’) to vote YES; despite many articles popping up in world newspapers about how the Greeks are to blame for their own problems because they overspend and undertaxed; despite the lies coming from other European leaders about what the vote was about (it was not about leaving the Euro but rather about whether the Greek people wanted further failed austerity); despite the ridiculous claims of the German SDP about “bridges being burned” (that party should change its name because it is a disgrace to the social democratic tradition) – despite all of that and heaps more, the Greek people voted overwhelmingly NO to reject austerity as a viable policy model for their country. This is a case of democracy coming head to head with the dominant political-economic ideology within which the Greek nation is situated – the Eurozone. It also demonstrates the flaws of the democratic process – the people have voted for an end to austerity but also consistently tell opinion polls they want to remain in the Eurozone, a monetary system that is built on austerity. They voted yesterday to reject the very basis of the monetary system they want to stay in – which tells us they don’t really understand the nature of the system and therefore how informed is the NO vote."
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=31294
No doubt you can argue that the Greek people want contardictory things in the end of austerity while staying in the euro. As I noted earlier Krugman and Lars Christensen both have argued in favor of Grexit as well.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/lars-christensen-grexit-will-restart.html
As my old buddy Sumner-LOL- points out the euro was an idea that everyone from Krugman to Friedman warned against.
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=29858
As Mitchell argues, this was a loss for the EU whether or not Grexit follows as their script of bullying and blackmail failed. Fortune magazine also pointed this out today.
http://fortune.com/2015/07/06/what-greeks-are-saying-to-europe-we-wont-be-bullied/
Back to Mitchell:
"The call for the referendum blew the idea that the bullies could just threaten these nations with bankruptcy – which was an idle threat anyway given that they blow up their own system if enforced, out of the water."
Right. What's forgotten is that Greece's 2012 'bailout' was really just a bailout of EU banks in German, France, etc.
He's right that a large part of breaking the script here was to actually allow the Greek people to vote at all. While the Eurocrats continues to throw out the red herring last week that their problem with the vote was the timing 'Now?!'-this is just the usual conservative attempt to sidestep an issue by arguing over process-ie, rather than debate the merits of having a vote either way one just argues that it was somehow wrong to do it now or the way that Tsipras went about calling it.
A big part of the Neoliberal consensus was against democracy itself-the people being allowed to vote on what happens. Democracy for the NLers in the EU means what Germany's finance minister agrees with.
At the end of the day though-if not now, when? Greece is at 1994 levels of GDP, Saying things could be worse has kind of lost its resonance.
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