Falling prey to endless populism

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Kalispera, filoi mou! Good evening, fellers!

First of all, as you know, for atmosphere play this in a separate tab: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDN0UlKYwt0

GEIA SOU!

Well, seems like Greece is heading toward a new election on June 17. The leaders of the parties who reject the rescue plan of the Holy Trinity (IMF, EU, ECB) successfully torpedoed every possible chance for a compromise solution and scratched off the work of their predecessors, the mainstream PASOK and New Democracy party, plus the tiny Democratic Left, which seemed somewhat willing to help for the creation of a stable government, but that proved too little, too late. Curiously, the two big absentees from the whole game were the neo-Stalinist Communist Party (KKE) and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party (XA). So what we've got is a curious situation where the political landscape is now dominated by two opposite radical formations (the populist left-wing SYRIZA party, and the national-conservative Independent Greeks party (ANEL)), but still not the most radical of them all (i.e. two lesser evils). So typically Greek, lol!

     
(KKE / SYRIZA / PASOK / ND / ANEL / XA)

Unfortunately, Greece is now in its worst shape since WW2, but anyone who's been living within 1000 km around Greece, and who has cared to look a bit closer, must've already realized that this crisis is not so much economic as many foreigners (and many people within Greece) still seem to want to believe, but rather it comes from deeper within the Greek society. It's largely a cultural thing, and originates from some curious national traits that've been carved there for generations. However this didn't prevent a horde of demagogues and populists from exploiting the well known old conspiracy card, claiming that the Greeks are under the yoke of the international banksters(tm), and under the dictate from Brussels. On the last election they used some pretty awkward claims to win votes:

1) Some "bad Europeans" and agents of the "New World Order" are after their nice country, plotting to blow up its debt seven-fold, and "crush" the Greek people with new austerity measures and tightening of the belts - all of this, of course, orchestrated by no one else but George Soros himself, with the help of Goldman Sachs and Frau Merkel herself;

2) The only salvation is to tear up all prior agreements, legalize a new sort of super-nationalization scheme, hire another 100 thousand bureaucrats in the public sector (which already has 700 thousand, while it only needs 200 thousand), and this will somehow bring back the living standard from the pre-crisis times. Just refuse to pay any of the debt, and everything will sort out itself on its own. In their desperation, people saw a hint of hope in this, and they voted the mainstreamers out, and brought the populists in. But because they failed to form a government, a new snap election is on the way next month, and they're expected to cement their positions even more (Because, "see? nothing is being done, the incumbents are to blame!")

Number (1) of the above 2 arguments belongs to Panos Kammenos, the chairman of the Independent Greeks (read: ultra-nationalist) party which won 10% of the vote. Number (2) belongs to Alexis Tsipras, the chairman of the far-left SYRIZA party (a coalition of radical leftists) which in fact unites 12 radical groups like Maoist, Trotzkyist, as well as some marginalized social elements who've been previously convicted for arson, looting and pogroms in Athens.

SYRIZA got 16% which is a huge leap compared to their previously usual 3-4%. They probably wouldn't have gotten these votes if there wasn't the charismatic young demagogue Tsipras at the helm. He sensed the pulse and the big pain of the Greeks and, together with the far-right Kammenos, he said the old big parties like New Democracy and PASOK should be punished for all the evils they've brought upon the country. Now, obviously those really did fuck up big time in the recent decades, but meanwhile some of their achievements are being conveniently omitted in the Tsipras and Kammenos speeches. Like the EU entry (1980, New Democracy's achievement), the Euro-zone entry (2001, PASOK), the well organized Olympic games (2004, PASOK and then New Democracy), and the rising living standard overall. Unsustainable living standard though, and that's the main problem.

In practice, the two radical parties embraced blatant demagoguery and populism, and it brought them a result much above what anyone had expected, and more importantly now, way beyond their ruling capacity. On May 6 they punished the big traditional parties and brought things to an impasse situation where nothing could be done without their consent. And they ain't giving it so easily. In fact they ain't giving it at all. Still, the most extremist parties, the Communists and Golden Dawn still remain left out of the big game. For now.

Meanwhile, many Greeks still appear to be getting further out of touch with reality, some really weird ideas keep popping up these days, and the media have blown them out in no time and made them mainstream. Examples:

1) The Europeans are little else but a bunch of usurers who demand money that's not being owed, therefore all prior agreements with the Big Three should be scratched off, no money should be paid to anybody, or at least just a small part should be paid (because the Greeks are such nice guys, you know).

2) The whole planet is now gripped by the tentacles of the NWO, there's an international plot against Greece, they want to steal their wealth (It remains unclear what that wealth constitutes exactly).

3) If all agreements are scratched off, the Germans and the other Westerners will be begging Greece to accept them, because without Greece the Euro would crumble, and the price for the West would be much steeper. So the Greeks are holding the strong cards in this game and are in the favorable position to blackmail the West. (Way to go, Greece!)

4) The evil banks and the shady banksters (Greek ones and foreign) are to blame for everything. Not the Greek people. Those annual 13th and 14th salaries and all the awesome bonuses, and taking Euro subsidies for agriculture and tourism and spending it for cars and houses - all that doesn't really count. Irrelevant. We're talking about the banksters now, aren't we? Stop diverting the topic, Europe!

5) And what about the workers in the public sector and the huge ineffective bureaucratic machine that practically ate much of the private sector? They should be protected at any cost, and all their demands should be met. Because they're the backbone of this society.

SYRIZA went even further, initially proposing to confiscate the money of those citizens who have above 20,000 euro of annual income. I.e. over 1.5 million Greeks. And using the remaining savings of the Greeks still residing in the Greek banks (worth 165 billion euro) to prop up the finance system. How? Through forceful nationalization of all banks. Finally, SYRIZA officials told CNN that "The wealthy should pay for the crisis, because they're to blame for all of Greece's ills". What is meant by "wealthy" and where exactly the line between "wealthy" and "not wealthy" is, remains unclear. So I assume some special tribunals would be needed? Nah. That's too much work. Better put another arbitrary threshold like the above mentioned 20,000 euro.

The most heroic example to emulate for Tsipras, the SYRIZA chairman, is probably Hugo Chavez. And also some other heroic revolutionary personalities of the past, with a mostly anarchist profile. Panos Kammenos of the Independent Greeks on the other hand doesn't seem to have such idols, but nevertheless he emulates Tsipras' rhetoric, only he's on the opposite end of the spectrum. What distinguishes him is his extensive use of church phrases and religious memes to gain influence among the religious Orthodox Greeks (and believe me, Greeks are very religious), most of whom are usually leaning center-right. Hence, his popularity is growing.

The populists on either side are exploiting the atmosphere of societal collapse in the post-election period in Greece, and they're doing it very skillfully. But the goal is not to work toward a constructive solution, but rather to shoot down any efforts for working together with Europe. As if Greece is a separate island universe on its own. Also doing self-advertisement based on the election results. Seems like SYRIZA is on its way to becoming the top political force after the June election (if it takes place at all), possibly with 110 seats out of 300, including the special 50-seat bonus that's being given to the winner of the election, by law (presumably, that's meant to guarantee a stable majority in parliament). So, it's very likely they'd try to form a coalition with the Independent Greeks and some other smaller formations, and will try to form a far-left-far-right government. Which ultimately brings things into Weird-o-stan.

If this becomes reality, we'll see Greece sliding well into the basement (just when you thought it had reached the floor), because there'll soon come a moment when these formations will be urged by IMF and EU to ultimately state their stance on the rescue agreements recently signed by Greece. And obviously they don't intend to respect those agreements. Which practically means Greece will be out of the Euro-zone, as it'll become technically impossible to find enough money to cover their deficits.

I deem it highly unlikely that a new agreement with EU would be reached on the PSI deal (the one about cutting private debt to 53%), and if these parties do even half of the things they say they intend to do, they'll inevitably bring the country to a complete economic Titanic/iceberg rendez-vous. Economic catastrophe, coupled with complete diplomatic and trade isolation. That's expected to happen as early as the end of this summer. And EU will probably try to create a quarantine zone around Greece so that they isolate the ulcer and prevent the disease from spreading wider and affecting other economies. So, hello new banana republic.

Thing is, for the populists and radicals a situation of complete economic ruin and societal disintegration is often the most fruitful soil to thrive and gain more influence. But the reality will likely be very different from what they're hoping for. It won't be a controlled chaos, it'll be absolute chaotic chaos and Greece will be a Third World country for a very long time. The current problems in the Greek society will be just a kids' game compared to what's about to follow next, if the collapse of the entire banking sector and the closing of the biggest industries is allowed to happen. Because Greece still has some real economy, but as soon as that's scrapped too, there'll be nothing to drag it out of the mud any more. There might come a moment when the populists will be realistically evaluated by the people, but the tricky thing with democracy is that no matter how viable and open it is, sheer democracy alone still won't be able to recover the missed opportunities when Greece's partners, one by one, decide it's no more use to keep trying to help, and start quitting this futile effort.

The bleak reality is that today Greece lives and breathes solely thanks to the tax money from other European countries that's being poured into this broken bucket. That money deserves respect because it's hard earned, as does the immense patience of those millions of Europeans who are still compelled to put up with the constant tomfoolery of a small nation who just won't "get it", who can't ever be pleased by anything, who blames everyone else but itself, and who's not ready or willing, or capable of self-introspection and auto-criticism. A nation which unfortunately wasted too much time partying and living a life beyond its means, pumping up an artificial living standard, creating an uselessly ballooned bureaucratic machine, where double and triple salaries and bonuses compared to those in the respective private sector were being spilled all over the place for zero work being done. A country where 200 thousand pensions were being regularly given to fanthoms, and EU subsidies for agriculture were being systematically used for personal gain, and easy loans from banks were being piled up and delayed for the future generations, and the EU was being lied to about the true scope of the budget deficit.

And now Merkel is being compared to Hitler, and the Greek documentary propaganda movies blaming Europe for Greece's own errors abound, containing such nice parallels like the bombing of Greece by the Luftwaffe in WW2! We have a nice proverb here in Bulgaria for cases like these: "You feed a dog, it barks back at you".

The Greek politicians never told their people the hard truth, they chose to conceal it and ignore the coming iceberg. And the truth is that this was all a huge balloon that has already burst, and everybody should roll up their sleeves already, and start working together really hard, to turn Greece into a real developed society, with real purposes and real values. Not the values of the 2-to-4-hour afternoon nap, but the ones of hard working people who are honest with themselves and with the rest. The populists chose to step on this lack of realism on part of their people, and they gave them false hopes that there's really a way back to the old non-stop party lifestyle. Well, no. In practice, they're now leading their country into a dark room, and they're about to throw the key through the window. It's evident from the fact that they managed to convince 3 million voters not to vote for the pro-development parties, with all their flaws and errors, and not to go the hard but constructive way of working to reform their broken society from the inside, step by step. Instead, they've chosen the easy way of sitting and doing nothing, and postponing the problem. But this time it won't work that way. It's too late to afford to do nothing.

Comments

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Great summary. It's easy to be furious at the Greek situation nowadays, and unfortunately populism works everywhere else, so why not on the Greek people.
The parties causing the current disruption are either criminally idiotic or criminally greedy *and* idiotic, both options are equally bad in the end.
If the election goes to the birds and a new coalition of these clowns wins, I can' t blame people in other EU countries to just throw their arms up in the air
and focus on quarantining the crazy zone. Now, I get that you do that by a trade freeze, but what other means does the EU have to stop the crisis from spreading
too much outside the guilty borders?

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

What has been suggested for a while was to draw a line of the economies that the stronger economies (okay, Northern Europe) will be willing to save and those that are on their own. Those within the wall will have their banks supported and access to something like Eurobonds, where the stronger economies guarentee some portion of the borrowing for the weaker ones. This would prevent problems in Greece from driving up borrowing costs in Spain and Italy and also prevent runs on their banks, both of which would cause them to join Greece.

Of course, the Germany would demand that those countries borrowing money would continue reforms. If they were unable or unwilling to implement these reforms, this plan would cause more problems that it would solve.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

You could boil this lovely, timely and informative post down to three words.

We. Are. Fucked.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Some are more fucked than others. ;-)

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. As Paul Krumgan wrote two weeks ago. (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/eurodammerung-2/)

Eurodämmerung

1. Greek euro exit, very possibly next month.

2. Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors try to move their money to Germany.

3a. Maybe, just possibly, de facto controls, with banks forbidden to transfer deposits out of country and limits on cash withdrawals.

3b. Alternatively, or maybe in tandem, huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing.

4a. Germany has a choice. Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain, plus a drastic revision of strategy — basically, to give Spain in particular any hope you need both guarantees on its debt to hold borrowing costs down and a higher eurozone inflation target to make relative price adjustment possible; or:

4b. End of the euro.

And we’re talking about months, not years, for this to play out.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Greek euro exit

Yet another blow to European pride originating in the Balkans.

Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks

That is an understatement. Who would keep their money in an Arkansas bank for a split second when they had good reason to think that Arkansas would soon leave the US and go off the USD and start printing its own currency?

3a-3b

You can just write "rioting and civil unrest" or "parade of horribles" here. Dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria.

Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain

Without a fundamentally restructured EU this ain't gonna happen. If it does the Germans will go down in history as the single most generous nation in history. That whole unpleasant business from 1914-1945 will officially be history. But they won't. How can they? Spain is not Greece, and Italy (ITALY!) is not Spain. There aren't enough printing presses or paper in all of Germany to print the Euros necessary. And then who will buy them?

4b. End of the euro.

I still doubt it. It should happen, the EU is an unholy mess cobbled together with cement made solely from the good will of the German taxpayer. Indeed, I want it to happen, for the good of the world economy. But I think the psychic consequences of seeing yet another Grand Illusion tumble before base, crud, ugly reality will be something the Euro Faithful in Paris, Brussels and Berlin will move heaven and earth to avoid. They shouldn't, but admitting this whole thing was a monumental waste of time in search of a solution to something that wasn't a problem... it is just... hard to imagine.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Krugman stated in an interview that the only way to stave it off, is if Germany would allow some inflation in the equation.

Q: You've been talking about how in order to get past this crisis, germany and the european central bank need to become more comfortable with inflation. i think folks think of it as bad. how would inflation help? what would that do?

Krugman:
> the most important thing right now is that there was a huge bubble, not so different from the bubbles here. there was a huge bubble in southern europe which led to their costs and their prices getting out of line. right now you have spain is probably 30% too expensive relative to germany . that needs to come down. if it comes down through de deflation in spain that's devastating. it also means the burden of their debt becomes worse. if a significant part takes place not through deflation in spain in inflation in germany , that's a much more feasible solution. it's still going to be painful for spain . it's going to be painful for italy . it turns it from pain that will kill their economy to pain that's tolerable. plus a little bit of inflation reduces that burdens everywhere. inflation helps there too. that's the reason why we could use more inflation too. the europeans crucially. if they cannot make this adjustment if overall inflation will be below 2%, that's the end of euro.


the entire 10 minute interview is viewable here. (http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-rachel-maddow-show/47483910#47483910)

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Imagine you are an average, industrious, German voter. Are you going to vote for this? Letting prices rise in Munich, making your beer and wrust more expensive so things don't get so tough in Madrid or Milan and they can keep retiring at 50 and having a siesta or a couple bottles of Chianti at lunch? How would you react to the party in Berlin who agrees to this?

that's the end of euro.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Well, I think you're misrepresenting things a tad by saying "making your beer and wrust more expensive so things don't get so tough in Madrid or Milan and they can keep retiring at 50 and having a siesta or a couple bottles of Chianti at lunch?" But your broader question, if Germany will be willing to cut the Spanish and Italian economies some slack for the bubbles they experienced (unique to their regions if I understand Krugman properly) and prevent the EU from falling apart, yeah that's the question.

Time will tell.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Well, most folks in Milan and Madrid will not be retiring at 50 any longer.

Besides, taking away the moralizing, Germany is part of the problem as much as Italy and Spain (not Greece, they're a whole problem in themselves). Germany has been able to keep its economy humming because of the shared currency, they can export as much as they want to southern europe without seeing their currency appreciate, which would make their exports less competitive. They've used this to keep employment high and save gobs of money. These might make them fiscally responsible, it also makes them partly responsible for the current crisis. The German trade surplus with the rest of Europe is unsustainable and will result in crisis after crisis unless the Germans keep paying the Southern Europeans for the privilege of making stuff to sell to them or they can spend more or they start spending more by themselves.

Greece's departure from the Euro won't be devastating in itself, the effect on Portugal, Italy, and Spain would be.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

On the downside, having this mess at your borders is bad news for your economy. On the upside, it creates some opportunities for you to host the remaining Greek private business in your country, and infuse all that capital into your economy.

How exactly you guys will play your cards, will determine if you'll draw positives or negatives from this situation.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I've yet to see the first Greek businessmen-turned-piccolos at our hotels in the Bansko skiing resort, but I'm told that moment will come too.

As for Greek ladies, perhaps it's time they walk out of home and start working. I mean the older generations (40+). For too long have they been kept at home, I know it's a cultural thing, but cultures change under pressing circumstances. Look at Russia during WW2. Women carried the whole economy through the war while their men were dying on the battlefield. After the war, the Russian society wasn't the same any more.

Yes, I know it sounds like an extreme prediction, but I can see some dramatic changes happening in the Greek society in the next 10-to-20 years. It took much less for us to undergo our own Exodus wandering, after all.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

They chose the national day of Iceland for their next election? SYMBOLIC!

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Iceland and Greece should have a national rugby match that day! Winner gets the other country's currency! YAY!

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Can it be handball instead? >:)

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it may be a good time for another junta coup d'etat in Greece, that should be interesting to the EU. Actually I don't see them being able to do much except hurt themselves by resisting the external pressures. Greece has a lot of potential economically but it all crumbled with the credit crisis, since they were so over-leveraged in providing financial services (again looking for the most profitable sectors while actually producing nothing). When you make really good friends with Goldman Sachs, your small and very clever country becomes at first very rich then it becomes again Greece, Iceland... you know how that goes. Unfortunately now every solution seems politically extreme, and that's not what most people want. Most Greeks, as most southern Europeans do, want in the end to live in a peaceful democracy but in the meantime they also want to party a lot. If I was the Merkel+Hollande+Rompuy hivemind I'd say let them break their windows and cars, let them liquidate their bank accounts and elect their own wingnuts and then come slowly to the realization that no one will help them without getting something in return.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I find it horribly ironic how Greece has a Neo-Nazi movement that large at this point in time. Like Russia and Israel Greece is not a place where you'd expect to see such dimbulbs.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Greece is a society torn by contradictions and plagued by extremes. Separatist movements in Crete, communist traitors fighting on behalf of the Soviets and trying to split up in Northern Greece, all sorts of stuff. In fact Greece has a long tradition of extremism of all sorts.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well it certainly is a rather Byzantine system.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Bad-dum-CHING!

[theplanfailed.livejournal.com]

Wait. MY understand ing Stalin and the Dawn party's must be flawed. Aren"t they the same thing?
It seems to me that no matter which party wins, the same thing is gonna go down, Communism.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Stalin was a communist authoritarian statist. Golden Dawn are neo-fascist (the legacy of Ioannis Metaxas). Ultra-nationalist, racist, xenophobic, isolationist, and authoritarianist.

[theplanfailed.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for letting me know the difference. It will be easier to seperate the two in my head space now. :)

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Motivations differ, results are the same.

Someone who focuses solely on results will find no dicernable distinction, On the other hand someone who cares about intent will...

[theplanfailed.livejournal.com]

I see what you are saying and that's true.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually even then you'd still find that between Stalinists and Nazis, whether Mk. I or Neo- varieties. Stalinism for one thing thinks in terms of the same system as everyone else, if in an evil and twisted fashion. Neo-Nazism and Nazism OTOH......

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I disagree with your assesment of the motivations and nature of both Fascism and Totalitarian Communism but that particular dead horse has been well and truly beaten to paste.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And I retract not one word of my statements on both. Things like the Komissarbefehl and encouraging soldiers with a free pass for war crimes are what one expects of the Thirty Years' War, and the Nazi state in fact was a revival of the Thirty Years' War concept of states fighting because it was all they were able to do. Stalinism, by contrast, was an evil mutation of established principles and concepts that had already existed but at the blacker end of the morality spectrum, within the same spectrum used by everyone else ll the same.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No. Nazism in its modern and older variants is anti-Semitic and values a state whose primary ethos is War forever without pity and without end. Stalinism was when Communism transformed into the uber-bureaucracy and in practice is hard to fully export by virtue of representing the Peter the Great/Ivan the Terrible tradition of Russian statedom.

[theplanfailed.livejournal.com]

That is a very interesting distinction.
Thank you for explaining it to me. I know in the future I'll be able to tell the difference.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this post! Although it doesn't bring any optimism in me. I hate to say it, but Greece will have to drink the full glass of bile before it begins to step back on its feet.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Sometime you just have to stand back and let the kid shock himself before he learns not to stick his fingers in the socket.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

No....they use 220v in Europe.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Well who's bright idea was that?

:P

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between letting them stick a finger in the socket and telling them "no, you need to use two fingers to complete the circuit". It seems the Greek politicians wouldn't settle for the former.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Well-done post, but I do have some caveats.

First, I've been reading that the center parties actually did accept waaay too much debt from the banksters (especially Deutche Bank). Brad Hicks had a bit to add (http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/460514.html):

Ever since Greece dropped the drachma and took up the euro, Deutsche Bank (and others, but mostly Deutsche Bank) has been running a sweet scam with elected Greek officials of both of the (previously) top two parties: Greek politicians borrow money from DB on behalf of the country, money that's supposed to pay for things that make the economy more productive like schools and roads and airports and docks and courts -- and while they do let some of that borrowed money go to those things, they steal a lot of it.

Nobody knows yet how much. Greek reporters over the years kept documenting huge swaths of big graft, giant overseas bank accounts and whole private islands and priceless archaeological treasures spirited away into private collections, all paid for with money corruptly lent by German banks. But a recent anti-corruption audit of what wasn't even thought to be one of the more corrupt agencies has turned up estimates that are making even Greek journalists' eyes pop, 30%, maybe as much as 50%, stolen.

(Emphasis mine).

Your points on the swollen civil servant sector does not obviate the outstanding debt and corruption. It doesn't help, no, but that borrowed debt (if Brad is correct) really needs to be Jubileed or no one in Greece will eat or function normally. I'm also a bit disturbed by your assertion:

The bleak reality is that today Greece lives and breathes solely thanks to the tax money from other European countries that's being poured into this broken bucket. That money deserves respect because it's hard earned. . . .

Is it? There are two kinds of emergency money in play here. When it comes from the governments, it is probably from taxes, and thus "hard earned." There is, though, a whole bunch of central bank money pouring into Greece (and other troubled Eurozone players) that is simply poofed into existence through banking sleight of hand. Given the scope of defaults, I doubt anyone in the Eurozone will see Weimar problems. The poofed cash just patches the holes in the economy's hull.

The future should be, if anything, at least interesting.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Point well taken about the virtual money being created out of thin air and then being infused into the financial system.

Yes, like I said the mainstream parties have ruled Greece for decades, and they brought this situation into existence by allowing a culture of omnipresent corruption and a pattern of over-leverage to reach avalanche proportions. They've by far been the biggest cause of the problem. However I'm not sure the alternative that's being in offer now is any better.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

The official alternatives, no. Those parties are on the fringes of political action for a reason. Still, there is the unofficial alternative that might grow.

I've been reading lately about alternative currencies, and was going to throw this nugget (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17680904) into the post on same, but here is as good a place as any.

A few months ago, an alternative currency was introduced in the Greek port city of Volos. It was a grass-roots initiative that has since grown into a network of more than 800 members, in a community struggling to afford items in euros during a deepening financial crisis.

The part that struck me: in the article, the author refers to this system as a "barter" system. It really isn't, according to David Graeber. It is more akin to a credit/debt system on a small scale, the kind that small communities used to enjoy quite a bit. A clue that this is the case can even be found within the article:

"We can buy bread or meat in exchange for our products, or the girls can go to the hairdresser," says Peri Mantzafleri, who runs the co-operative.

"I grew up in a village - this was how it used to work in the old days, before money became involved. So this could be a chance to start again."

(I emphasized.)

This was even more common during the Middle Ages after the Roman Empire pulled back, and in pre-Roman conquest Egypt. Simple exchange/pricing systems can be put in place easily, whether or not there is an official money in circulation.

Ah, but I'm rambling a bit. More later.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I think you should write about this alternative currency in more detail, it possibly warrants a post in its own right.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Some Greek politicians did tell people the truth, or at least the softer parts of it, the people reacted by striking, rioting, and voting for people who were willing to lie to them instead.

Any ideas that Greece is in a position to blackmail the EU should have ended today when the EU trade minister confirmed that all Eurozone countries were instructed to start working on contingency plans for a exit from the Euro (Grexit). It will be a lot easier for the EU to delay providing funds for a couple of months than for Greece to live for a couple of months without EU funds. This in itself shows what a weak hand Greece has.

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Grexit! :-)))

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

Don't you love how the Brits are already setting up the drachma printing presses? Just nailing the coffin, nothing to see here.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

I hope they're leaving some space for extra zeros.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

We had 5-6 zeros back in 1992, and look where we are now! GO, GREECE! yay!