ANALYSIS
"But Greece is not just another debtor. It is a potentially fragile state
on the edge of a Europe that is facing a massive migration crisis and a
dangerously nationalistic Russian leadership looking for opportunities
to cause trouble. The eurozone must find a way to ensure future debt
discipline, without provoking an even deeper crisis in Greece," writes
Adair Turner in Project Syndicate.
"The
ECB forced a shutdown of the Greek banking system and made clear it
would only let it function again once a deal on sovereign finances had
been struck. This has established beyond any doubt that the independence
of the eurozone's central bank from politicians is nothing of the sort.
Far from being independent, the ECB does governments' bidding.
But its dependence is selective—and that is something that should worry
the citizens of eurozone nations beyond Greece," writes Martin Sandbu
in the Financial Times.
"The
underlying question raised by the Greek financial crisis has been
largely ignored, which is whether Greek adoption of the euro—or even the
creation of the Eurozone
at all—was a bad idea to begin with, and one that will not get better
with time. This is the question that Germany must fear, that Greece, and
others, ultimately come to realize that it is Germany that has
benefited most from the creation of the euro, and that others,
particularly the weakest economies, may ave paid a steep price to be
members of the Eurozone club," writes David Paul
Found on Facebook:
"All the world's people, save for the top less than 1%, are being ripped off in the greatest coup in human history.
This
coup arises out of Wall Street (Goldman Sachs and others), the
architects of over a decade of US financial deregulation and subsequent
shady dealings and derivatives, and the lending and debt restructuring
institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank.
Goldman
Sachs is complicit in creating a shady derivatives deal with Greece
that hid the extent of the nation's debt while nearly doubling it.
Now,
while Goldman Sachs top executives reward themselves with salaries each
year in the tens of millions, the IMF is attempting to force austerity
measures in Greece that ensure not ONLY that all but super elites truly
pay for these shady debt deals, but that even more wealth and power is
transferred upward, sealing the deal on a population's inability to
preserve any real autonomy or power - as the majority of citizens will
be too busy merely surviving.
In
the name of "debt management", under the guise of a dishonest narrative
that makes it look as if this small country was simply "irresponsible",
and now must tighten the belt and pay up, the coup can either be
interrupted, or completed.
If
these test-runs of first US citizens (with the bail outs and subsequent
calls for austerity while those who caused the crisis in the first
place get richer) and now Greece, what happens next could determine how
successful this all-out assault on the people of the world by these
narcissists and sociopaths will be.
If
Greece caves to IMF demands, and the common Greek people are made to
foot the bill of shady financial dealings (as we let happen in the US),
these test-run micro coups will be complete - and they will pave the way
for a thinly disguised repeat of a process that occurred in the 80's
and 90's all across Central and South America (as well as other
nations).
That
process is called "Dependency Theory" or merely "Dependencia", by our
truth-telling economists. Under Dependencia, the IMF and World Bank
would grant small, under-developed nations huge loans to "improve
infrastructure", in other words, to pave way for multinational
corporations to have the infrastructure they required in order to
extract natural resources and get cheap, even slave labor for their
products. Attached to these loans were interest rates and other
mechanisms designed to balloon debt in under-resourced nations, with
(surprise!) stipulations that, if a nation couldn't service its debt as
agreed to in the terms, then, amidst other things, publicly owned or
shared resources, such as power, water, healthcare and so on, would be
"privatized" - under the guise of privatization being the "responsible"
thing to do.
Under
"responsible" privatization of previously shared or publicly owned
resources, things would become more "efficient". These "wasteful"
nations would learn "true" efficiency, under the benevolent arm of
neoliberal economic policies, (otherwise known as predatory capitalism),
and everything would be cheaper and more efficient!
No
matter that Dependencia has proven empirically, beyond a shadow of a
doubt, to be a Machiavellian scheme to "benignly" invade a nation and
have unfettered access to massive resource extraction and cheap labor,
but also a massive and ongoing power and wealth transfer upwards - no
matter - if you went to Harvard Business School in the last 15 years,
since Dependencia has been irrefutably exposed as nothing more than a
slick and prettified but slow and deadly effective coup - the Milton
Friedman enamored Ivy Leagues have been teaching neoliberal economic
policy to hundreds of thousands of young people year after year, as if
it a foregone conclusion that these policies are proven, healthy,
normal, and of course the only true path to your "financial freedom".
And
THIS is the ideology that underlies the latest coup of all - Obama's
TPP - the most secretive multinational trade deal ever conducted, for it
is the next phase of a total transfer of power not just away from
regular citizens of nations everywhere, but from nationstates themselves
- into the hands of untouchable, unaccountable, super-sovereign
corporations.
If
Greece bows to IMF austerity demands at the end of the day, and if the
TPP is not stopped, then we will - each of us - be playing a role in the
destruction of our own futures, and our ability to have a real say in
them (unless we are very wealthy, and that is a different kind of
prison.) And we will have no truly effective tools whatsoever to stand
against the onslaught of gutting countless small businesses' ability to
exist because they can't compete against, say, slave labor from Vietnam,
of the hamstringing and gutting of labor rights, fewer rights of
protection over our environment and the right to not poison our children
(ie, you don't need to know what's in your food or where it comes from!
You don't have that right - endocrine systems and ecology be damned!)
Very
few Americans are paying attention to what's happening in Greece or to
the TPP. But Greece is the beginning of the European version of
Dependencia - let's call it Dependencia Phase Two. What happens in
Greece is a harbinger of what will happen in much of Europe, if the
Greek people and their leaders fail to truly, meaningfully stand up to
it. (In the US, the coup has just been passively interrupted - as Obama
functioned as a Trojan horse for increased neoliberal power yet the
nation lacked the zeal to gut its own programs quite so quickly despite
being inundated by the Koch-funded PR machine - ie, unions, teachers,
firemen and other civil servants are your "enemy", and social security, a
program you've ALREADY PAID FOR, needs to "go".)
We
are all the test cases for sociopathic economic policies that have been
proven to, time and again, enslave nations, reduce people's autonomy
and harm their ability to survive; policies that have gutted education,
dumbed down and indentured future workforces; policies enforced by key
players in the radical stratification of wealth across societies, such
as we see in the most corrupt nations on earth - the stratification that
was the spark, literally, for Arab Spring.
You
see, the silent partners and key players behind Dependencia Phase Two -
they could care less whether the middle class survives in the US, for
ultimately, they can build (and already have done) their customer bases
elsewhere.
They don't need YOU. For they have a new breed of burgeoning middle class elsewhere, such as China and India.
Mark
my words, every Republican running for president is frothing at the
mouth to gain entrance into the new, multinational club of the super
elites - at least in an honorary capacity, where they do the bidding of
those who hold the true power and receive a pat on the back and perks
from it - just as our Democrat former "close the revolving door between
Washington and Wall Street" Attorney General Eric Holder has done. Mr.
Holder was a perfect lap dog, and he has been well rewarded by his
masters.
And
while Koch-funded conservatives are frothing at the mouth to join this
club, Hillary is not far behind them - she just sounds better, and will
enact neoliberal policies a little bit slower, and with a cherry on top.
(Oh, she'll be better with social causes, of course. But is gay
marriage and good talk about education enough, with all that is at
stake?)
So,
America, we can keep watching Fox News and waving our red, white and
blue, while voting for people who can't wait to sell you and your job
and your retirement down the river; we can vote for a Wall Street
darling/puppet, our own Monsanto and Walmart cozying political royalty,
just because she's a woman, and she'd be better on social causes than
all those insane alternatives (but nothing else), and we can keep being
distracted by our gadgets and comatose, spineless, mainstream media, and
we can keep listening to sociopaths on soapboxes and hating on gays and
unions and immigrants, which is EXACTLY where they want us, or...
Or?
Or I don't know, but not this.
I don't know, but not this.
Or
rather I do know, or, at least with a whole bunch of other smart and
caring people and their ideas I will know, we COULD know, but it will
take guts and gumption and energy and time we don't have, and it will
take most of America getting its collective head out of its ass and
turning the damn TV and specious "news" sources OFF, and it will take
LONG-term work and doing and planning.
And
it will take getting money OUT of politics and cleaning up MOST of
Congress, and getting people with real integrity - people who are NOT
beholden to Wall Street, in.
It's going to take a good many things.
Because,
if we don't get it together to figure out how to have a smart and
nonviolent revolution of, well, almost everything, we look forward to a
very grim future on many fronts indeed, for just about everyone.
And
I for one am not down with that madness. I'm down for something far
better than that, and I'm willing to be a part of how we get there, but
America...
you need to be willing too."
~ J Bolen
in the Huffington Post.
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