Haven't seen this one in circulation yet:

Dear Chancellor Merkel,

The never-ending austerity that Europe is force-feeding the Greek people is simply not working. Now Greece has loudly said no more.

As most of the world knew it would, austerity has crushed the Greek economy, led to mass unemployment, a collapse of the banking system, made the external debt crisis far worse, with the debt problem escalating to an unpayable 175% of GDP. The economy now lies broken with tax receipts nose-diving, output and employment depressed, and businesses starved of capital.

The humanitarian impact has been colossal – 40% of children now live in poverty, infant mortality is sky-rocketing and youth unemployment is close to 50%. Corruption, tax evasion and bad accounting by previous Greek governments helped create the debt problem. But the series of so-called adjustment programs has served only to make a Great Depression the likes of which have been unseen in Europe since 1929-1933. The medicine prescribed by the German Finance Ministry and Brussels has bled the patient, not cured the disease.

Together we urge you to lead Europe to a course correction before it is too late for Greece and for the Eurozone. Right now, the Greek government is being asked to put a gun to its head and pull the trigger. Sadly, the bullet will not only kill off Greece’s future in Europe. The collateral damage will kill the Eurozone as a beacon of hope, prosperity, and democracy, and could lead to far-reaching economic consequences across the world.

In the 1950s Europe was founded on the forgiveness of past debts, notably Germany’s, which generated a massive contribution to post-war economic growth, peace, and democracy. Today we need to restructure and reduce Greek debt, give the economy breathing room to recover, and allow Greece to pay off a reduced burden of debt over a long period of time. Now is the time for a humane rethink of the punitive and failed programme of austerity of recent years and to agree to a major reduction of Greece’s debts in conjunction with much needed reforms in Greece.

We urge you to take this vital action of leadership for Greece and Germany, and also for the world. History will remember you for your actions this week. We expect and count on you to provide the bold and generous steps towards Greece that will serve Europe for generations to come.

Yours sincerely,

Heiner Flassbeck, former State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance;

Thomas Piketty, Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics;

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University;

Dani Rodrik, Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton;

Simon Wren-Lewis, Professor of economics, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University

I just watched Paul Mason's interview with Varoufakis and it's been rather depressing. Most of what he says is perfectly reasonable given the structural confines of the EZ. But it's all based on a belief in "mutual interests", a belief that negotiations can, and will, lead to a "mutually beneficial deal" with the financial inquisition.

Not sure if he's just adhering to his role as FinMin or if he truly believes it. I'd say it's a questionable assumption at best. From over here, it certainly looks like the creditors' position is "pay up, bitch!", end of story. Schäuble is not going to compromise, the majority of parliament is all in on neoliberalism and most of the electorate either doesn't care or even consents. Merkel might agree to a deal, given how she holds no convictions whatsoever except that being in power is better than not being in power. But Schäuble cannot be reined it with half the party being in lockstep with his actions.

No deal worth signing. Either full capitulation or they'll continue this charade with their buddies from PASOK and ND.

If we take for granted the need for cost cutting, it would be only logical, if not an outright neccessity in a democracy, to leave the details up to the local representatives. Payment of X Euros expected by mm/dd/yy, figure it out yourselves.

Why do it any other way?

Well, you know the three most discussed possibilities as well as I do: shock doctrine, an attempt to force Syriza to commit political suicide, and bureaucratic automatisms.

During the first stages of this facade, I would have put my money square on shock doctrine. The measures are just too damn beneficial to the "there is no society" kind of thinking. It's horseshit, economically, and tremendously damaging, socially.

Replacing Syriza with the Old Guard seems quite appealing, given the behind-the-scenes deals with the nepotistic elite as a means to facilitate a smoother transitition once those pesky commies are out of the picture. The vitriol against Varoufakis is just staggering in this regard. News of the World got nothing compared to what our respectable media has hurled at Varoufakis and Tsipras.

My take on the automatisms on the other hand is rooted in how our politicians and our public has been arguing this entire time. Neoliberalism is the gospel, dissent is heresy. Privatisation is good, cutting wages is good, flexible labour market is good, taxation of wealth is bad, deficit is bad, surplus is good. They drank the kool aid, they are in it hook, line and sinker.

And as a result, the diagnosis is always the same, and so is the treatment. And fuck me for using this ass of a metaphor, given how the language used is the most subtle means of manipulation. "Rescue" the Greeks, "drowning" in debt, "tighten your belt". How about: food only on five days a week, grandma gets to croak on diabetes and your baby boy dies of diphtheria.

Yes, I had a fucked up day. The discussion in parliament about the "Greek problem" was a disgrace and high treason of the humanistic ideas that are supposed to be the foundation of the European Union.

Folks on the street haven't been all too friendly towards the Greeks for some years now, and the exhaustion caused by this mess only added to an attitude of "just get it over with" over the last year or so.

For nearly three years, I have tried to provide counter-arguments whenever someone went off on a tirade against the Greeks (and others) during a conversation with me, or generally around me. You can't really try to explain the birth defects of the Eurozone in 20 seconds or less, but just having some raw data ready at hand (pensions, wages, state of the healthcare system, etc) was usually enough to get people thinking.

But today was different. Today was ugly. Three times I was involved in an ad-hoc discussion about Greece and three times people couldn't care less about the facts at hand. It always boiled down to "we've paid enough, they need to piss off". Period. End of story. People turned sour, big time. All this time, I had never been yelled at, or laughed at, not even once. Until today.

Worst of all, a friend of mine with family back in Greece stopped arguing altogether. What's the point, she said...

Yanis Varoufakis ‏@yanisvaroufakis 6h6 hours ago

Capital controls within a monetary union are a contradiction in terms. The Greek government opposes the very concept.
--------------------------

19:01
TSIPRAS ANNOUNCES CAPITAL CONTROLS AND BANK HOLIDAY
--------------------------

Again, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDWzGm1W0WY&feature=youtu.be&t=8s

The head honcho of the Bank of Greece is hardcore conservative, and the move was anticipated, but the communication again... wtf indeed.

The leaked counterproposal is fucked up. Nevermind my ultra left wing preferences, opposing higher taxes on corporations while cutting benefits for the poorest of the poor is fucked up. That's fuel for the anti-European parties. They can paint themselves as the protectors of the plebs against those feudal overlords in Brussels and Berlin with this kind of shit.

There are depressingly few journalists who call Osbourne out on his permanent-surplus horseshit....

While we're on the subject, the rhetoric from the left flank of Syriza against austerity seems to be shifting from failed policy to tool of class warfare. Or maybe it's just getting reported more prominently.

The IMF, and Lagarde especially, is also receiving more heat by the day for letting themselves get dragged into this troika business by Strauss-Kahn.

Yet in all this, there still isn't anyone willing to pull the trigger.

They all try to appease the mighty gods of the economy, with austerity chosen as their way of showing penance.

Apparently, Gidiot is about to offer his own Victorian version of what our local buffoons instituted under the label "Schuldenbremse".

They came up with plenty of ideas and concepts, if you were to believe them. But none of it can be turned into legislation as that would be a unilateral act, and unilateral acts are a red line for the Troika. Meanwhile, the Troika insists on a comprehensive plan and opposes any form of piecemeal reform, so they can't even get an agreement on things they agree upon.

Again, that's what Varoufakis says. Maybe he's full of shit, maybe they all are.

Like you said, a fresh round of muddling through might be what's ahead of us. Should things go sour instead, it truly would be an epic fuck-up. Some twenty years down the road, historians will probably do their best Rocco impressions when looking at this mess.

Varoufakis is on stage at an IMK gig in Berlin right now. It was ~40 minutes of old news, really, at least if you've been following the developments over the last couple of months.

The interesting bit is that he's still making a clear commitment to a permanent primary surplus. For a country as devastated as Greece, that's austerity. Some argue that a 5% deficit over 5-10 years would be required to get Greece back on track, Bill Mitchell and Jamie Galbraith even make the case for running a 10% deficit to get some traction.

Since Varoufakis has to be aware that a primary surplus of any size is still contractionary, I wonder what funky accounting voodoo he has in mind to circumvent this contradiction. Just surplus recycling via the EIB? Who knows...

Edit: the ongoing panel discussion is interesting though.

Edit #2: the recording is now up again:
http://www.boeckler.de/veranstaltung_54282.htm (Varoufakis' talk begins at 12:30)

Edit #3: SPON has a piece on it this morning and one of the first comments correctly calls them out on it.

That's what's left on the table, isn't it? I'd divide the exit option into orderly and disorderly, but the core of it remains the same.

Yet we have to keep in mind, Syriza was elected on a program diametrically opposed to the troika demands. And an EZ exit is equally far outside its mandate. Not to mention that a significant portion of Syriza is made up of former PASOK supporters, who would need a whole lot of convincing to vote for an EZ exit.

A referendum sounds decent enough, but they should have a strategy in place for the post-EZ time. Merely getting rid of the Euro won't get them out of the shit. In fact, I'd argue that a clear strategy is an absolute neccessity to even get a "favorable" outcome from any referendum. The public needs to have a clear picture of what awaits them behind any choice they might be presented with.

For starters, they should be perfectly clear about what it would take to get the Greek economy started again. Greece has very little to offer at this time, so every effort must be made to improve the domestic market. Plans for rebuilding its productive base should be worked out prior to any referendum. Industrial policy spanning at least 5-10 years would be needed.

Question is: can a non-EZ Greece muster up enough political capital to run the vast fiscal programs required to pull the economy out of the shitter? Or would they be stuck with a recessionary focus on balanced budgets, just like the rest of us?

In any case, within the constraints of a monetary union with neo-mercantilist Germany, Greece will not get the fiscal expansion it needs and will remain a shithole, just shy of a failed state.

My Google-fu was good enough to find out what I was dealing with, and from what I read, the unbearable stench is supposed to last just 24-48 hours. So for the time being, that little fucker has a sheltered place of honor next to my bike rack in the backyard. Temps are very mild these days, so it should be fine.

As soon as the smell of a thousand rotting corpses is gone, it can come back inside. But not a minute earlier. I don't want any of my neighbours to start ripping open the floor, looking for dead rats and whatnot.

Balls of steel can be the cause of horrific injuries.

And nope, not photoshopped. His knee is all fucked up.

The Labour Party Manifesto is quite the mixed bag, if the Guardian's bullet points are reasonably accurate.

Some good ideas in it, but looming over all, again, is the one-two of deficit reduction and "competetive" (aka miniscule) corporate tax rates. Any guess on how many of their decent ideas would be scrapped due to budgetary constraints? My money would be on 70%+.

If I remember correctly, the Croatians put everything else on hold when they introduced their system and had their entire staff out in the field for 6 months to enforce it. After that, the system was widely accepted and controls could be tuned down to a normal level.

Greece cannot go down the same route if most of what little bureacracy they have is still in cahoots with the previous nepotic governments. Maybe some third party can provide personnel for a few months...

The €2B come straight from our Tax Avoider in Chief, Juncker. Some say he's more of a federalist, more willing to compromise to keep the EZ together. Doesn't really matter though, Greece is too far down the rabbit hole.

As for Syriza: your guess is as good as mine. If they don't start praying to our Lord Austerity soon, the Troika won't hesitate to let them drown. And if they do get on their knees, Syriza will split and everything's back to square one.