Quote:As we said earlier today, following today's dramatic referendum result the Greeks may have burned all symbolic bridges with the Eurozone. However, there still is one key link: the insolvent Greek banks' reliance on the ECB's goodwill via the ELA. While we have explained countless times that even a modest ELA collateral haircut would lead to prompt depositor bail-ins, here is DB's George Saravelos with a simplified version of the potential worst case for Greece in the coming days:
The ECB is scheduled to meet tomorrow morning to decide on ELA policy. An outright suspension would effectively put the banking system into immediate resolution and would be a step closer to Eurozone exit. All outstanding Greek bank ELA liquidity (and hence deposits) would become immediately due and payable to the Bank of Greece. The maintenance of ELA at the existing level is the most likely outcome, at least until the European political reaction has materialized. This will in any case materially increase the pressure on the economy in coming days.
All of which of course, is meant to suggest that there is no formal way to expel Greece from the Euro and only a slow (or not so slow) economic and financial collapse of Greece is what the Troika and ECB have left as a negotiating card.
However, this cuts both ways, because while Greece and the ECB may be on the verge of a terminal fall out, Greece still has something of great value: a Euro printing press.
It may not get to there: according to Telegraph's Ambrose Evans Pritchard who quotes what appears to be a direct quote to him from Yanis Varoufakis, Greece will, "If necessary... issue parallel liquidity and California-style IOU's, in an electronic form. We should have done it a week ago."
California issued temporary coupons to pay bills to contractors when liquidity seized up after the Lehman crisis in 2008. Mr Varoufakis insists that this is not be a prelude to Grexit but a legal action within the inviolable sanctity of monetary union.
In other words: part of the Eurozone... but not really using the Euro.
That's not all, because depending just how aggressively the ECB escalates events with Athens, Greece may take it two even more "nuclear" steps further, first in the form of nationalizing the banks and second, by engaging in the terminal taboo of "irreversibility" printing the currency of which it is no longer a member!
Syriza sources say the Greek ministry of finance is examining options to take direct control of the banking system if need be rather than accept a draconian seizure of depositor savings - reportedly a 'bail-in' above a threshhold of €8,000 - and to prevent any banks being shut down on the orders of the ECB.
Government officials recognize that this would lead to an unprecedented rift with the EU authorities. But Syriza's attitude at this stage is that their only defence against a hegemonic power is to fight guerrilla warfare.
Hardliners within the party - though not Mr Varoufakis - are demanding the head of governor Stournaras, a holdover appointee from the past conservative government.
They want a new team installed, one that is willing to draw on the central bank's secret reserves, and to take the provocative step in extremis of creating euros.
"The first thing we must do is take away the keys to his office. We have to restore stability to the system, with or without the help of the ECB. We have the capacity to print €20 notes," said one.
Such action would require invoking national emergency powers - by decree - and "requisitioning" the Bank of Greece for several months. Officials say these steps would have to be accompanied by an appeal to the European Court: both to assert legality under crisis provisions of the Lisbon Treaty, and to sue the ECB for alleged "dereliction" of its treaty duty to maintain financial stability.
And who "unwittingly" unleashed all of this?
Mr Tsakalotos told the Telegraph that the creditors will find themselves be in a morally indefensible position if they refuse to listen to the voice of the Greek people, especially since the International Monetary Fund last week validated Syriza's core claim that Greece's debt cannot be repaid.
Recall last week we asked "Did The IMF Just Open Pandora's Box?" We just got the answer. Our advice to Mme Lagarde: avoid stays at the Sofitel NYC for the next few weeks.
As for Europe: welcome to your own personal Lehman weekend. We hope you too enjoy making it all up as you go along, because you have officially entered the heart of monetary darkness.
"We'll know our disinformation campaign is complete when everything the American public believes is false." --William J. Casey, D.C.I
"We will lead every revolution against us." --Theodore Herzl
Yanni has resigned.
Not sure how to read this yet. He and Tsipris both said they would resign of there was a 'Yes' vote. The vote was 'No' . I heard some thing about how he had heard that he was unwelcome in the new negotiations. But unwelcome by whom I am not sure yet.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
A bit from RT on his resignation with a link to his statement.
Love his comment that he 'will wear the creditors loathing with pride'.
I expect the Brooking Institute will have him on the speakers circuit getting $50,000 a pop in no time at all.
Quote:
Varoufakis resigns as Greek finance minister 'to aid deal'
Published time: July 06, 2015 05:42
Edited time: July 06, 2015 08:01 Get short URL
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis.(Reuters / Alkis Konstantinidis)
After securing a 'no' vote at Greek referendum on bailout, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis resigned, saying it would help Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras negotiate a better deal with foreign creditors.
"Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted partners', for my… absence' from its meetings; an idea that the prime minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today," he said Monday in an online statement.
He added that he would "wear the creditors' loathing with pride" and pledged his continued support to Tsipras and whoever he chooses as his new finance minister.
Varoufakis's successor as finance minister will likely be the chief negotiator in talks with international creditors, Euclid Tsakalotos, a senior government official told Reuters. The appointment of the new finance minister is expected after the meeting of political leaders on Monday.
On Sunday more than 61 percent of Greek voters said no to a bailout plan proposed by foreign creditors, supporting their government's opposition to the plan. The result was praised by the Greek government but lamented elsewhere in the EU, even as foreign officials said they respected the choice of the Greek people.
German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that the vote had "torn down the last bridges on which Greece and Europe could have moved towards a compromise." Germany risks losing some 14 billion euros in revenue from Greek sovereign bonds held by Germany's central bank.
Italy's foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni, urged the EU to keep looking for middle ground with Greece, despite the referendum.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
It is sad he has resigned, I think......he is very bright and articulate. Even if they choose someone new with the same 'views', I think the fact they loathed him would be GOOD for new talks, not bad for them! I think the powers that be in the EU hate the current Greek government for being against austerity [punishment is good, not bad....suffering is good, not bad.....becoming poor so others can be rich is good, not bad] AND because they are a leftist government in a sea of right-wing ones! Everyone seems also to ignore the history of what Germany and later the USA did to Greece...though few Greeks forget either! I can only hope that he has resigned as a tactical move and then can be re-appointed when the negotiations get deadlocked [as they are SURE to become!]. Here the Euro is fluctuating greatly and is being nervously traded...as some see that other nations could 'opt out' of the Euro if not the EU whenever they like...and not pay what they are asked to pay...much as Iceland gave the finger to their creditors - and is much the better for it!
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
They loathed him because he was to clever for them. He taped meetings and then posted on Twitter about what was said, I understand (from CNN this morning). I've never checked his Tweets but my guess is that he learned very quickly that what was said in the meetings and what was later leaked to the press were miles apart, and so he taped them for accuracy and then Tweeted accurately to put them to shame. If this is an accurate assessment then he has my vote. But the sneaky bastards wouldn't play with him anymore.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
I can't find too much info on the new Finance Minister. An interesting article by AEP but can't trust his judgement as he is so ideologically skewed. Seems he adored Yani. And Yani loves Mario Draghi ! The new guy is a Marxist. Sure.
Quote:
Greece creditors will gain nothing from toppling Europe-lover Yanis Varoufakis
If lenders think Varoufakis's touted successor will be a pushover, they are set to be disappointed. He shares little of his predecessor's European idealism
Varoufakis' parting shot: "I shall wear the creditors' loathing with pride" Photo: AFP/Getty
Yanis Varoufakis was sacrificed to placate the European creditor powers.
Germany let it be known that there could be no possible hope of an accord on bail-out conditions as long as this wild spirit remained finance minister of Greece.
In a moment of condign fury, Mr Varoufakis had accused EMU leaders of "terrorism", responsible for deliberately precipitating the collapse of the banks in one of its own member states. (This is objectively true, of course)
"I shall wear the creditors' loathing with pride," he signed off in his parting shot, 'Minister no More'.
It is an odd end to the 'OXI' landslide in the referendum, a 61pc stunner that seemed at first sight to be a vindication of Syriza's defiant stand over the last six months.
He had looked like the hero of the hour threading through ecstatic crowds in Syntagma Square in the final rally. Fate plays its tricks.
"Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted partners,' for my … absence' from its meetings; an idea that the prime minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today."
His sacking is a paradox. He is the most passionate pro-European in the upper reaches of the Syriza movement, perhaps too much so since he thought it his mission to rescue the whole of southern Europe from 'fiscal waterboarding' and smash the 1930s contractionary regime of Wolfgang Schauble's monetary union for benefit of mankind.
"I wish we had the drachma, and we'd never entered monetary union. But once you are in, you don't get out without a catastrophe,"
Yanis Varoufakis
But then he was starting to harbour 'dangerous' thoughts. When I asked him before the vote whether he was prepared to contemplate seizing direct control of the Greek banking system, a restoration of sovereign monetary instruments, Grexit, and a return to the drachma -- if the ECB maintains its liquidity blockade, forcing the country to its knees - he thought for a while and finally answered yes.
"I am sick of these bigots," he said.
His fear was that Greece did not have the technical competence to carry out an orderly exit from EMU, and truth be told, Syriza has already raided every possible source of funds within the reach of the Greek state - bar a secret stash still at the central bank, controlled by Syriza's political foes - and therefore has no emergency reserves to prevent the crisis spinning out of control in the first traumatic weeks.
He was putting out feelers for technical experts in London, targeting veterans of Britain's ERM exit in 1992, though he was under no illusions that Grexit could ever be anything other than gruesome.
"I wish we had the drachma, and we'd never entered monetary union. But once you are in, you don't get out without a catastrophe," he said in May.
He was already looking ahead in our final interview, at his office on the 6th floor of the finance ministry. "Would the devaluation be big enough, that's the concern?" he asked, wearing his hat as a currency economist, almost as if he were talking about another country.
But separating his multiple characters as a Keynesian professor, Game Theory tactician, street fighter, rap star, and finance minister, was never easy. Deep down - despite his furious outbursts - he was never really willing to confront the European Central Bank head-on.
The hardline wing of the Syriza movement has been pushing for a temporary take-over of the Bank of Greece under emergency powers in order to issue liquidity - accompanied by a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice to throw the whole EU ruling system off balance - but Mr Varoufakis recoiled, deeming it too incendiary even for him. At heart, he is an admirer of Mario Draghi.
It appears that Euclid Tsakalotos will take over as finance minister. Another brilliant economist - educated at St Paul's and Oxford, with a Celtic wife - he has earned a reputation as safe pair of hands since becoming chief negotiator in the debt talks.
He is a man who keeps his outward emotions in check. Mr Tsakalotos will not be calling anybody a terrorist.
But be careful what you wish for. If the creditors think that he will be a push-over - more willing to accept terms that fall short of genuine debt relief - they are likely to be disappointed. He is comes from the radical Marxist wing of Syriza, and shares little of Mr Varoufakis's European idealism.
For Mr Tsakalotos, EMU membership is a cost-benefit calculus.
Scratch a little and you start to discover a eurosceptic who never wanted Greece to join the euro, indeed who already foresaw with remarkable prescience in this paper in 1998 that EMU would not bring about the convergence of the core and peripheral countries. He was miles ahead of the amateurs religiously touting the benefits of EMU.
For Mr Tsakalotos, EMU membership is a cost-benefit calculus. His own academic work has explored the issue of "first-mover advantage" after the rupture of currency pegs.
When we spoke at his office in the foreign ministry just before the referendum, he said that Grexit would be a very bad idea, but also gave me the strong impression that it is a matter of trade-offs. All depends on the exact terms that the eurozone is willing to offer his country, or whether it instead keeps Greece in a permanent "Nietzschean" cycle of control, as he puts it.
He also maintained the line - genuinely in my judgement - that Grexit would set off a political chain reaction and is therefore just as much a threat to the EMU Project as it is to Greece itself.
"I do believe if Greece was to leave, the eurozone would break up because it changes a monetary union into a hard-peg."
The crucial point is that EMU is an "irrevocable promise" that no country will ever devalue again. Once that is breached, financial markets will not lightly believe in the pledge again.
"People are wrong to say there's not much contagion now but that's not how it is going to work, maybe months later, in the following country in crisis. I fear that if it all breaks up we could then move to the kind of 1930s nationalist reactionary politics and the hegemony of the nasty Right," he said.
The difference is that Mr Varoufakis once loved 'Europe', and still cannot stop loving it. Mr Tsakalotos was never a believer in the first place. Latest news on the Greece crisis Yanis Varoufakis: His finest and most controversial moments More on Euclid Tsakalotos, the likely new finance minister Follow the Telegraph on LinkedIn. Share this article with your network.
Magda Hassan Wrote:I can't find too much info on the new Finance Minister. An interesting article by AEP but can't trust his judgement as he is so ideologically skewed. Seems he adored Yani. And Yani loves Mario Draghi ! The new guy is a Marxist. Sure.
Quote:
Greece creditors will gain nothing from toppling Europe-lover Yanis Varoufakis
If lenders think Varoufakis's touted successor will be a pushover, they are set to be disappointed. He shares little of his predecessor's European idealism
Varoufakis' parting shot: "I shall wear the creditors' loathing with pride" Photo: AFP/Getty
Yanis Varoufakis was sacrificed to placate the European creditor powers.
Germany let it be known that there could be no possible hope of an accord on bail-out conditions as long as this wild spirit remained finance minister of Greece.
In a moment of condign fury, Mr Varoufakis had accused EMU leaders of "terrorism", responsible for deliberately precipitating the collapse of the banks in one of its own member states. (This is objectively true, of course)
"I shall wear the creditors' loathing with pride," he signed off in his parting shot, 'Minister no More'.
It is an odd end to the 'OXI' landslide in the referendum, a 61pc stunner that seemed at first sight to be a vindication of Syriza's defiant stand over the last six months.
He had looked like the hero of the hour threading through ecstatic crowds in Syntagma Square in the final rally. Fate plays its tricks.
"Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted partners,' for my … absence' from its meetings; an idea that the prime minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today."
His sacking is a paradox. He is the most passionate pro-European in the upper reaches of the Syriza movement, perhaps too much so since he thought it his mission to rescue the whole of southern Europe from 'fiscal waterboarding' and smash the 1930s contractionary regime of Wolfgang Schauble's monetary union for benefit of mankind.
"I wish we had the drachma, and we'd never entered monetary union. But once you are in, you don't get out without a catastrophe,"
Yanis Varoufakis
But then he was starting to harbour 'dangerous' thoughts. When I asked him before the vote whether he was prepared to contemplate seizing direct control of the Greek banking system, a restoration of sovereign monetary instruments, Grexit, and a return to the drachma -- if the ECB maintains its liquidity blockade, forcing the country to its knees - he thought for a while and finally answered yes.
"I am sick of these bigots," he said.
His fear was that Greece did not have the technical competence to carry out an orderly exit from EMU, and truth be told, Syriza has already raided every possible source of funds within the reach of the Greek state - bar a secret stash still at the central bank, controlled by Syriza's political foes - and therefore has no emergency reserves to prevent the crisis spinning out of control in the first traumatic weeks.
He was putting out feelers for technical experts in London, targeting veterans of Britain's ERM exit in 1992, though he was under no illusions that Grexit could ever be anything other than gruesome.
"I wish we had the drachma, and we'd never entered monetary union. But once you are in, you don't get out without a catastrophe," he said in May.
He was already looking ahead in our final interview, at his office on the 6th floor of the finance ministry. "Would the devaluation be big enough, that's the concern?" he asked, wearing his hat as a currency economist, almost as if he were talking about another country.
But separating his multiple characters as a Keynesian professor, Game Theory tactician, street fighter, rap star, and finance minister, was never easy. Deep down - despite his furious outbursts - he was never really willing to confront the European Central Bank head-on.
The hardline wing of the Syriza movement has been pushing for a temporary take-over of the Bank of Greece under emergency powers in order to issue liquidity - accompanied by a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice to throw the whole EU ruling system off balance - but Mr Varoufakis recoiled, deeming it too incendiary even for him. At heart, he is an admirer of Mario Draghi.
It appears that Euclid Tsakalotos will take over as finance minister. Another brilliant economist - educated at St Paul's and Oxford, with a Celtic wife - he has earned a reputation as safe pair of hands since becoming chief negotiator in the debt talks.
He is a man who keeps his outward emotions in check. Mr Tsakalotos will not be calling anybody a terrorist.
But be careful what you wish for. If the creditors think that he will be a push-over - more willing to accept terms that fall short of genuine debt relief - they are likely to be disappointed. He is comes from the radical Marxist wing of Syriza, and shares little of Mr Varoufakis's European idealism.
For Mr Tsakalotos, EMU membership is a cost-benefit calculus.
Scratch a little and you start to discover a eurosceptic who never wanted Greece to join the euro, indeed who already foresaw with remarkable prescience in this paper in 1998 that EMU would not bring about the convergence of the core and peripheral countries. He was miles ahead of the amateurs religiously touting the benefits of EMU.
For Mr Tsakalotos, EMU membership is a cost-benefit calculus. His own academic work has explored the issue of "first-mover advantage" after the rupture of currency pegs.
When we spoke at his office in the foreign ministry just before the referendum, he said that Grexit would be a very bad idea, but also gave me the strong impression that it is a matter of trade-offs. All depends on the exact terms that the eurozone is willing to offer his country, or whether it instead keeps Greece in a permanent "Nietzschean" cycle of control, as he puts it.
He also maintained the line - genuinely in my judgement - that Grexit would set off a political chain reaction and is therefore just as much a threat to the EMU Project as it is to Greece itself.
"I do believe if Greece was to leave, the eurozone would break up because it changes a monetary union into a hard-peg."
The crucial point is that EMU is an "irrevocable promise" that no country will ever devalue again. Once that is breached, financial markets will not lightly believe in the pledge again.
"People are wrong to say there's not much contagion now but that's not how it is going to work, maybe months later, in the following country in crisis. I fear that if it all breaks up we could then move to the kind of 1930s nationalist reactionary politics and the hegemony of the nasty Right," he said.
The difference is that Mr Varoufakis once loved 'Europe', and still cannot stop loving it. Mr Tsakalotos was never a believer in the first place. Latest news on the Greece crisis Yanis Varoufakis: His finest and most controversial moments More on Euclid Tsakalotos, the likely new finance minister Follow the Telegraph on LinkedIn. Share this article with your network.
Quote:Before discussing Yaroufakis's resignation I want to clarify a widespread misunderstanding about him which has heavily distorted the media commentary about him outside Greece.
Though Yaroufakis may have appeared to many people over the last few months as the public face of Syriza, that is simply wrong.
Yaroufakis is by all accounts a brilliant academic economist. However until a short time ago he was not a member of Syriza and I am not sure that he is even a member now.
Though the media repeatedly calls Yaroufakis a "Marxist" (on the basis of one ill-judged remark) he is no such thing.
Yaroufakis is a British and US trained Keynesian economist closely aligned with the US Keynesians such as Stiglitz, Krugman, Reich and especially James Galbraith, who is a personal friend. He is also very close to Stuart Holland, a former leading voice within the British Labour Party.
So far from being a Marxist Yaroufakis is a supporter of more privatisation. He holds Australian citizenship, has strong family connections to the oligarchy (we were classmates in the same school) and his traditional social and political alignments are with the Anglophone world - the Democrats in the US and the Labour Party in Britain.
Yaroufakis is most definitely not a Syriza insider, he is not personally close to Tsipras and he is not one of the hardliners within Syriza - some of whom actually are Marxists in the classic sense - who regard Yaroufakis with deep mistrust and in some cases even dislike.
The reality is that behind his abrasive personality Yaroufakis has actually always been a moderate who has wanted to keep Greece within the euro.
It seems Tsipras trusted him to deliver on Syriza's election promise of an end to austerity within the euro by explaining to the eurozone leaders as only an economist can why that made economic sense. That is in fact the improbable feat Yaroufakis has tried to pull off as minister ever since he was appointed.
When it became clear 10 days ago that Yaroufakis could not deliver on this impossible objective, his days as a minister and as a senior member of Tsipras's team became obviously numbered. The fact that Yaroufakis is also deeply unpopular with the eurozone leadership would for Tsipras simply have been a further plus when the moment came to part with him.
The key hardliners within Syriza are Panayiotis Lafazanis, a former Communist who is now Greece's Energy Minister and who is the leader of Syriza's Left Platform, and Zoe Konstantopoulou, a fiery French trained human rights lawyer who is now Speaker of the Parliament.
Yaroufakis's problem is that he is one of those individuals who does not suffer fools gladly and this has made him a host of enemies both within the Eurogroup and within Syriza itself.
In my opinion he was never a good choice for Finance Minister. He is the sort of person who is best placed as a ministerial adviser - a post he previously held in George Papandreou's PASOK government. In the event he fell out badly with George Papandreou and I would not be surprised if unwisely he made it a condition of joining Tsipras's team that he be appointed Finance Minister so as not to repeat that experience again.
The real hardliners within Syriza - people like Lafazanis and Konstantopoulou - have been greatly strengthened by yesterday's referendum result. Their position is unaffected by Yaroufakis's departure and may even have been further strengthened by it.
None of this unfortunately means that Yaroufakis's departure is going to harden Syriza's position.
Tsipras still appears to think that he can trade his referendum victory for more concessions from the eurozone.
As to that I am sure Tsipras is wrong. The big question is what he will do when he finally realises it. Will he go with the hardliners and quit the euro or will he back down and split with the hardliners despite the fact that it is now clear that their stance commands majority support? Time is short, the clock is ticking and we should know soon enough.
"There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,"
And Now for a Putsch in Athens? Yes, If Nuland's Hubby Has His Way
US has a long history of meddling in Greek politics. And if you ask Robert Kaplan - the influential neo con ideologue - time has come for another intervention
Quote:A putsch in Athens to save allied Greece from enemy Russia is in preparation by the US and Germany, with backing from the non-taxpayers of Greece the Greek oligarchs, Anglo-Greek shipowners, and the Greek Church. At the highest and lowest level of Greek government, and from Thessaloniki to Milvorni, all Greeks understand what is happening. Yesterday they voted overwhelmingly to resist. According to a high political figure in Athens, a 40-year veteran, "what is actually happening is a slow process of regime change."
Until Sunday afternoon it was a close-run thing. The Yes and No votes were equally balanced, and the margin between them razor thin. At the start of the morning, Rupert Murdoch's London Times claimed "Greek security forces have drawn up a secret plan to deploy the army alongside special riot police to contain possible civil unrest after today's referendum on the country's future in Europe. Codenamed Nemesis, it makes provision for troops to patrol large cities if there is widespread and prolonged public disorder. Details of the plan emerged as polls showed the yes' and no' camps neck and neck." Greek officers don't speak to the Murdoch press; British and US government agents do.
"It was neck to neck until 3 pm," reports the political veteran in Athens, "then the young started voting. "
Can the outcome the 61% to 39% referendum vote, with a 22% margin for Οχι (No) which the New York Times calls "shocking" and a "victory [that] settled little" defeat Operation Nemesis? Will the new Axis the Americans and the Germans attack again, as the Germans did after the first Greek Οχι of October 28, 1940, defeated the Italian invasion?
The Kremlin understands too. So when the State Department's Victoria Nuland (nee Nudelman; lead image, right) visited Athens to issue an ultimatum against breaking the anti-Russian sanctions regime, and the Anglo-American think-tanks followed with warnings the Russian Navy is about to sail into Piraeus, the object of the game has been clear. The line for Operation Nemesis has been that Greece must be saved, not from itself or from its creditors, but from the enemy in Moscow. The Russian line has been to do nothing to give credence to that propaganda; to wait and to watch.
As the head of State's Bureau of European and Eurasian affairs, Nuland is the official in charge of warmaking in Europe. Her record in the Ukraine has been documentedhere. Almost unnoticed, she was in Athens on March 17 to deliver two ultimatums. The communique released by the US Embassy in Athens was headlined, "we want to see prosperity and growth in Greece."
What Nuland (above, left) was doing with her hands is in the small print of the release. She told Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (right) not to break ranks with the NATO allies against Russia. "Because of the increasing rounds of aggression in eastern Ukraine" she reportedly said the US is "very gratified that we've had solidarity between the EU and the U.S., and that Greece has played its role in helping to build consensus."
Nuland also warned Tsipras not to default on its debts to Germany, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Tsipras was told "to make a good deal with the institutions". The referendum Tsipras called on June 27 was a surprise for Nuland. The nemesis in Operation Nemesis is the retribution planned for that display of Greek hubris.
Having thundered for a year on the illegitimacy of the March 2014 referendum in Crimea, saying yes to accession to Russia, the State Department ignored the Greek referendum for forty-eight hours.
On June 29, asked what the US government was thinking of doing if the outcome "is a no vote", Nuland's spokesman, Mark Toner,said the US would ignore it. "We're focused on, frankly, the opposite, which is finding a path forward that allows Greece to continue to make reforms, return to growth, and remain in the Eurozone."
The only other official Washington reference to the Greek referendum came on June 30 when the question at the State Department daily briefing was: "what are you doing within the International Monetary Fund, of which the U.S. is the largest shareholder, to try to also press from that side for more leniency with the Greeks?" The official reply:
"We're carefully monitoring the situation…we continue to believe that it's important that all sides work together to get back to a path that's going to allow Greece to resume reforms and to return to growth within the Eurozone. But again, we're monitoring this very closely."
The last concerted attempt the US government made to overthrow an elected Greek government was against Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou between 1987 and 1989.
With his son and successor George Papandreou, there was no such necessity George and his mother Margarita Papandreou were already under Washington's control. But against Andreas serious counter-measures were required.
Military ones, of the type which ruled Greece between 1967 and 1974, had been unpopular domestically and internationally. They were demonstrably costly; they also discredited the US and NATO military which stood behind the Athens junta.
So, the Reagan Administration decided Papandreou had to be overthrown by his own people, if possible at an election. The strategy was "to give Papandreou enough rope to hang himself", said Robert Keeley the US Ambassador to Athens at the time.
That too was an Operation Nemesis of sorts the plan was for Papandreou's hubris to be defeated in front of the Greek electorate, first in a military showdown in the Aegean with Turkey, then in an allegation of bribery of the prime minister by a Greek banker and football club owner.
Both were neutralized in surprise Greek moves US officials had not anticipated. The Turks retreated after a display of combined Greek and Bulgarian force, and the Turkish Prime Minister was medivaced to a Houston, Texas, cardiology clinic. George Koskotas, Papandreou's accuser, was arrested in Boston and returned to a Greek jail. Hubris reversed, you might say. For more, read this.
On Sunday, had Greek voters divided evenly down the old Civil War lines, right versus left, blue versus red, the security forces would have been mobilized to confront demonstrators on Maidan, er Syntagma Square, and sharpshooters deployed from the roof of the Grande Bretagne Hotel to kick off Operation Nemesis. To prepare hearts and minds for that, however, the think-tank army has failed almost totally, firing blanks in every direction but Greece.
In London the US-funded Legatum Institute skipped the poll evidence and panel discussions, attacking Venezuela, China, Syria and Russia instead for using "phenomena previously associated with democracyelections, the Internet, the press, the marketto undermine freedoms", along with "the self-organising potential of society." Legatum left Anne Applebaum by herself to announce the Greek government can be overthrown because it was "elected on a completely false premise".
The Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the thunderer against Russian info-warfare last month, has since roared on Tunisian and Nigerian democracy; this week it is preparing for a panel discussion on "the progress that Kyiv has made in increasing transparency and reforming key government institutions". Chatham House has stayed silent on Greek democracy and the referendum.
In Washington, the International Republican Institute (IRI) motto, "helps democracy become more effective where it is in danger" has been issuing its State Department-funded democracy polls for months, but for Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe; not for Greece. At the same time, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) has been preoccupied with its democracy schemes in Georgia, Iraq, and Kosovo.
The Pew Research Centre in Washington tried anticipating the Greek referendum by surveying 2.5 million Twitter messages in Greece, and publishing the results on July 3. In the Greek language the tweets were 40% to 33% in favour of voting Yes. In the English language the Greek tweets ran 32% to 7% in favour of Yes. In the event, the social media results were contrived. If Pew hadn't invented them, the large numbers of "neutral" tweets all turned into No votes on the day.
The Brookings Institution and the Peterson Institute both funded by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk to beat the anti-Russian drum in Ukraine stopped short of forecasting the Greek referendum result, but condemned the government in Athens for offering it.
On July 1, Carlo Bastasin, an Italian journalist on the Brookings stipend, claimed to have eyewitness evidence for "Greek leaders' conduct as unscrupulous", and for the Greek government's "plans [as] more recessionary and austerity-driven than the European ones." The reporter's sources lacked names.
On the Peterson Institute's executive committee Greek strategy is directed by Andreas Dracopoulos. He is a member of the family of the Greek shipowner Stavros Niarchos, whose foundation money Dracopoulos is in charge of awarding. When Dracopoulos has been asked what the Niarchos money is doing for the domestic crisis, he has mentioned food vouchers for the poor and beds for the homeless. He didn't mention paying tax.
Dracopoulos has been knighted by a previous Greek government as Grand Commander of the Order of the Phoenix; that was for the Niarchos Foundation's philanthropy. Dracopoulos is pictured above with Archbishop Demetrios, primate of the American Diocese of the Greek Church, a traditional foe of governments in Athens the diocese considers left wing, or worse.
The Greek-American community has avoided a public statement on the referendum. Instead on July 1, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), as the national lobby group is known, announced: "We also call on the Obama Administration to step-up its engagement to ensure the parties achieve a proper solution." If the Greek-Americans, Dracopoulos, and the Church meant Operation Nemesis, they weren't saying no on July 5.
Ahead of the vote, AHEPA issued its second announcement: "Regardless of the outcome of the referendum held in Greece on July 5, 2015, what is crucial to the Greek American community is that U.S.-Greece relations remain strong and certain and Greece's geostrategic importance and contributions to the security interests of the U.S. and NATO is valued and appreciated."
Political sources in Athens acknowledge that after taking power in January, Tsipras and his Syriza colleagues quietly took precautions against a putsch by the security forces. "The leadership [of the military and intelligence services] was changed," the sources say, "but not radically. The defence minister [Panos Kammenos] is rightist so there are no radicals' in command."
In Moscow there has been scepticism from the start that Tsipras could or would withstand the American and German pressure. For more, read this. In April, and then again in June, Kammenos sidestepped the issue of what fresh military cooperation with Russia is contemplated by the Greek side. Discussion of the details has been postponed until the two governments hold a joint ministerial commission meeting later this month.
Greek and Russian defense ministers meet Moscow, April 2015
Russian military analysts expect Cyprus to arrange increased military cooperation, including the Russian Navy and naval support aircraft. They do not expect Greece will ask for, nor the Kremlin agree to comparable Greek cooperation. That story can be read here.
So where did Robert Kaplan (lead image, rear) get the idea that the US and the European Union (EU) should act "to keep Russian warships away from Greek ports"? Kaplan, from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington, reported to Wall Street Journal readers on June 30 that the Kremlin plot is to use Syriza as its stalking horse to drive Greece out of the EU, and dismantle US alliance positions along the Mediterranean shore and in the Balkans.
Russia, according to Kaplan, "may [sic] be helping to inflame Syriza's internal divisions in the hope that Greece's ruling party cannot make the difficult concessions necessary to stay in the eurozone." Combined "with the dismemberment and weakening of Ukraine, [Greece's no vote] will seriously weaken Europe's geopolitical position vis-Ã -vis Russia."
Kaplan's think-tank in Washington reports that its funding comes from well-known military equipment suppliers, US oil companies, the governments of Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore; NATO; the US Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force; plus George Soros's Open Society Foundations.
Chief executive of CNAS is Michele Flournoy, a founder of the think-tank which is serving as her platform to run for the next Secretary of Defense, if Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election next year. Flournoy is one of the drafters of a recent plan for the US to escalate arms and troop reinforcements in Ukraine and along the Russian frontier with the Baltic states. Here's her plan for "What the United States and NATO Must Do" . For more on Flournoy, read this.
Until Kaplan's report last week, the only notice CNAS has taken of Greece was are port last January explaining "Why Putin Is the Big Winner in Greece's Election". The think-tank expert for that one was an ex-US Treasury official with a training in Arabic and no record on Europe, let alone Greece. Kaplan, an Israeli soldier as well as a Pentagon employee and lecturer to US intelligence agencies, explains his expertise on Greece comes "from living in Athens during that decade [1980s]." If he wasn't on an extended holiday, Kaplan may mean he was under cover.
For warfighting in Greece now, all you need to know is who the Greeks must be saved from. If the Greeks have voted more demonstratively than the Ukrainians against sacrificing themselves to this idea, the experts are confident that's not democracy, as the Axis understands it, but hubris, for which there's Operation Nemesis. Natch!
"There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,"
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Quote:Six key points about Greek debt and the
forthcoming election
January 2015
For further information contact:
Tim Jones, Senior Policy and Campaigns Officer tim@jubileedebt.org.uk
Phone: +44 7855 939998
1) European banks were bailed out, not the people of Greece
It is not the people of Greece who have benefitted from bailout loans from the IMF, EU and
European Central Bank, but the European and Greek banks which recklessly lent money to the
Greek State in the first place.
When the IMF, European and ECB bailouts began in 2010, €310 billion had been lent to the Greek
government by reckless banks and the wider European financial sector.i
Since then, the Troika' of
the IMF, EU and European Central Bank have lent €252 billion to the Greek government.ii Of this,
€34.5 billion of the bailout money was used to pay for various sweeteners' to get the private sector
to accept the 2012 debt restructuring. €48.2 billion was used to bailout Greek banks following the
restructuring, which did not discriminate between Greek and foreign private lenders.iii€149.2 billion
has been spent on paying the original debts and interest from reckless lenders. This means less
than 10% of the money has reached the people of Greece.
Today the Greek government debt is still €317 billion.iv However, now €247.8 billion 78% of the
debt is owed to the Troika' of the IMF, European Union and European Central Bank, ie, public
institutions primarily in the EU but also across the world. The bailouts have been for the European
financial sector, whilst passing the debt from being owed to the private sector, to the public sector.
Greece government debt payments
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Total
Principal
(minus
payments
covered by
new T-bill
issuances)
€19.3bnv
€25.5bnvi €12.7bnvii €16bnviii €23bnix
Total €32.5bn €40.5bn €22.4bn €23.2bn €30.6bn €149.2bn
Who the Greek debt is owed to, end-2014
Amount owed
IMF €27 billionxv
EU €194.8 billionxvi
ECB €26 billionxvii
Other €69.2 billionxviii
Total €317 billion) It was clear in 2010 that the Troika programme wouldn't solve the problem of Greek debt
When the Troika' programme began in 2010 Jubilee Debt Campaign warned that this was
repeating mistakes made in developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Bailing out European
banks rather than making them cancel debts would ensure the private speculators would get repaid,
whilst the public would pay the costs of having to cancel debts in the future. Austerity would crash
the economy, increase poverty and unemployment, and increase the relative size of the debt. This
is exactly what has happened.
This was also known within the institutions conducting the bailout. Leaked minutesxix of the IMF
Board meeting in 2010 which decided on the bailout showed that many countries were opposed and
thought debts should be cancelled instead. Most strikingly, drawing on their own experience of
failed bailouts in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Argentina argued that a "debt restructuring should
have been on the table". Brazil said the IMF loans:
"may be seen not as a rescue of Greece, which will have to undergo a wrenching adjustment, but as
a bailout of Greece's private debt holders, mainly European financial institutions".
Iran said it would have expected a debt restructure to be discussed, as did Egypt, which said the
IMF's growth projections were "optimistic", a word repeated by China. The growth projections were
extremely optimistic; Greece's economy is now 19% smaller than the IMF said it would be, having
shrunk by more than 20% since the start of 2010.
India warned that the scale of cuts would start a spiral of falling unemployment which would reduce
government revenue, causing the debt to increase, and making a future debt restructuring
inevitable. They did; unemployment in Greece is over 25%, with almost two-in-three young people
out of work.
The combination of the crashing of the economy and the Troika debts means Greek government
debt has grown from 133% of GDP in 2010 to 174% today.
The bailout and austerity programme did not take place because it was thought it would help the
Greek people or reduce the size of the debt. It was done to save European and Greek banks and
protect the profit of speculators.
3) Syriza's proposals have a clear precedent
Syriza is proposing a debt conference based on the London conference' which agreed debt
cancellation for Germany in 1953. The 1953 conference agreed to cancel 50% of Germany's debt to
governments, people and institutions outside the country, and the payments on the remainder were
made conditional on Germany earning the revenue from the rest of the world to pay the debt.
Greece was one of the countries which took part in the debt cancellation.
Syriza is proposing debt cancellation through a similar conference (some have suggested of around
50%, though there is no policy officially stated), with the remainder of the debt to be paid over
several decades to ensure that Greece can continue to repay.
The German debt deal in 1953 was very successful. It supported German economic recovery, and
gave an incentive for creditors to trade so that they would be repaid.
4) The 2012 private creditor write-down was a flawed solution
In 2012, two years after the bailouts began, it was finally accepted that Greece needed some debts
cancelling. An agreement was reached with many private creditors to cancel 50% of the debt owed o them. However, by this stage, the IMF, EU and ECB had been bailing out these reckless lenders
for the previous two years, so many had already been repaid. None of the debts owed to the public
institutions were included in the debt reduction.
Moreover, whilst the IMF, EU and ECB debts were excluded, debts owed to Greek banks and
financial institutions, including pension funds, were not. The 50% debt reduction bankrupted these
banks, so the Greek government borrowed more money from the IMF, EU and ECB to bailout the
banks. The pension funds which lost large amounts were not refunded.
Finally, whilst a large majority of private creditors agreed to the debt reduction, various vulture funds
refused to do so. These speculators bought up Greek debts owed under British law cheaply and
have continued to demand to be paid in full. The total amount of vulture fund' debt which avoided
the agreed restructuring was €6.5 billion.xx The Greek parliament passed legislation to enforce the
agreed debt reduction on all bonds held under Greek law, but the British government refused to do
the same. The vulture funds have continued to be paid, making a huge profit on the amount they
bought the debt for. This was effectively profit being given to the vultures by the IMF, EU and ECB,
which has left a debt for the Greek people.
At the end of 2011, before the debt relief', Greece's government debt was 162% of GDP.xxi Today it
is 174%.
5) If Greece defaults, it will not have to leave the Euro
Syriza's policy is to hold a conference to negotiate debt reduction, rather than a default on the
debt.xxii However, if a default did take place, there is no economic reason why this would mean
Greece would leave the Euro. Forcing Greece out of the Euro would be a political retaliation to a
default.
Even if Greece were forced out of the Euro it could continue to use the currency, just as many
countries use the US dollar without the approval of the US government. What other Eurozone
members could do is withdraw European Central Bank lending to Greek banks, so that all Euros in
circulation in Greece would have to already be there, or come from income from trade.
Whilst Syriza has said it will not unilaterally default on the debt, defaults tend to be economically
beneficial for the country concerned.
At the end of 2001 Argentina defaulted on unaffordable debt payments. In 2000, Argentina's debt
payments had reached 45 per cent of exports ($14 billion),xxiii double the amount the IMF and World
Bank regard as payable.xxiv At the time the Argentine people had experienced three years of
recession. The percentage of the population living on less than $2 a day had quadrupled from less
than 5 per cent in the early 1990s to over 20 per cent.
Following the default, the Argentine economy began growing again, poverty fell rapidly and the
country became more equal.
Argentina size of economy, 1990-2011 (1990=100).
Source: World Bank database
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
Percentage of population living on less than $2 a
day (1991-2010). Source: World Bank database
0
5
10
15
20
25
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009) The way the world deals with debt crises is not working
The Greece and European debt crisis is the latest in a long-line of debt crises which have affected
all continents since bank lending was liberalised in the 1970s. The African and Latin American debt
crises of the 1980s and 1990s were followed by the East Asian Financial Crisis of 1996-1998,
Russian default in 1998 and Argentina default in 2001.
The current case in the US courts, where vulture funds have forced Argentina to default on its
debts, has convinced developing countries that change is needed and rules need to be introduced
through the UN for resolving debt crises. In September 2014 a UN resolution was passed by 124
votes for to 11 against to establish a new legal framework for the debt restructuring process (such
as a bankruptcy procedure for governments). The first negotiations in this process are taking place
in early-February 2015.
However, despite the clear failures to resolve debt crisis in Europe, the EU decided to abstain on
the vote, with the UK and Germany amongst those who broke from this collective position and voted
against. Such governments are acting as if the international debt system is working fine, when
current events in Greece and Argentina show it is clearly broken and in need of major overhaul.
References
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
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