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.

Thanks for that update, you are able to provide info that my usual sources just aren't.

The reports I have seen from Greece are similar, they just want it dealt with.

The thing I really don't understand is why the creditors are so insistent that it is ONLY the poor who have to lose out. I mean, the welfare system is a large expense but not the only one... surely they could get a few bob for some of their old military aircraft?

The whole public debt isn't actually that large, at about €29,000 per Greek, and the amount due any time soon is also not that large, it's just inconceivable to me that it could have come to this.

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...

Unknown.

If the ECB pulls ELA, the Greek banking system goes belly up. Again, consequences unknown, but Deutsche Bank for instance didn't seem particularly stable during the last months, so the denial of any contagion risk might have been premature. Additionally, Draghi is tasked with maintaining the stability of the Euro and taking away Greece's last lifeline might just be too far out of his mandate, even for him. Keeping ELA up without increasing the limit will achieve the same result within days though.

If Greece fails to make its payment to the IMF tomorrow, it's at the discretion of Lagarde whether she pulls the plug. Info has been somewhat contradictory, but there should be a 30 day window before the board has to call it a default.

If a default is triggered this week, it's up to the ECB and the EC again. They have shown unwillingness to let things go bust, all the recent months of muddling through should be testament to that.

They cannot have a failed state within Europe without feeding right into the anti-European parties on both ends of the spectrum; they cannot throw Greece out of the EZ; they cannot revitalise the Greek economy without doing a 180 against their own ideology; they cannot let Syriza pull Greece out of the shit without encouraging Podemos. It's an impasse alright.

Should the Greek people vote against the proposal, a proposal that is no longer on the table, it'll be back to negotiations. Should they vote in favour of it, and should it still be available to them at that time in the first place, Tsipras might even get a majority for it in parliament, but Syriza will blow apart right then and there. The left wing cannot agree to further enslavement.

If, however, everything goes sour and Greece does indeed exit the EZ, introduce a new Drachma, the whole shebang, then we're in uncharted terrorities. The situation in Greece would deteriorate even further, given how much they rely on imports, especially of fuel. And the EU, already shaky from the tens of thousands of bodies floating in the Med, the falling standard of living for tens of millions and the sustained unemployment of an entire generation; this fecking union cannot turn the cradle of democracy into a failed state and survive. The governments might be ok with it, but the French people would rip this shit to shreds one way or another, and rightfully so.

Yanis Varoufakis ‏@yanisvaroufakis 6h6 hours ago

Capital controls within a monetary union are a contradiction in terms. The Greek government opposes the very concept.
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19:01
TSIPRAS ANNOUNCES CAPITAL CONTROLS AND BANK HOLIDAY
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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.

Greek voices from the underground - BBC News

I've read two different explanations for opposing higher taxes. The kinder one is that the creditors realise how bad the Greek economy is and don't want to support measures to make it even worse. Alternatively they just don't believe that raising taxes will get more money (which is probably true).

That said though, since the measures they want to add would also depress the economy, it seems quite ideological.

The less kind explanation is that the creditors are tired of dealing with Tsipras, and are pushing for terms that they know he would be unable to get through parliament so that the deal will fail.

Neither side has really made much effort here, although in fairness to Greece they don't have nearly as much room to move.

Actually, the (wikipedia) link in my first comment says that the phrase "call a spade a spade" was created from a (mis)translation of ancient Greek. The original Greek apparently said "calling a fig a fig, and a trough a trough", but the trough became a spade (shovel) and the fig got dropped.

The word "spade" by itself being used as a slur probably does come from playing cards ("black as the ace of spades"). Wikipedia says that (racist) definition was first included in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928.

I guess that "call a spade a spade" fell out of popularity a bit because people were concerned that it might be assumed that the use of "spade" was meant in a racist way, even though it wasn't originally. But now I think maybe most people don't know the usage of "spade" as a slur, so the other phrase is becoming more acceptable again? I had never heard "spade" used as a slur before talking to a friend from the UK.


...And even though I'm OK with "call a spade a spade", or even a lot of the more blatant pushing the limits that comedians like Seinfeld, Chris Rock, etc. do, I do think that there is a point where you have to realize you're just asking for trouble. I remember a while back, some politician got into hot water for (technically correctly) using the word "niggardly" to mean "stingy" or "cheap". That *is* correct usage, and the origin is entirely disconnected from the similar-sounding slur.

BUT, you pretty much *have* to expect that people are going to jump to the other conclusion, so I think it is reasonable/best for people under public scrutiny (politicians, etc.) to avoid the word. On the other hand, if Seinfeld or Chris Rock wanted to work that into a bit that exposed our ignorance of the correct/original definition for comedic effect, I think that would be a good thing. And potentially funny.

At some point, yes. But for the time being, increases in productivity (automation) are less of a job killer than your everyday policies and ideologies.

Speaking of my own country, the amount of work not being done is enormous, and the aggregate of work not having been done over the last decades is absolutely staggering. The current economic system not only unloaded a great number of burdens onto society, it also never found a way to come up with a way to integrate the aforementioned work. No one is willing to pay for it, so it doesn't get done, period. The most prominent examples would be infrastructure works of all kinds (energy, most of all), ecological restauration and care for the elderly. Our national railroad alone could hire 100,000 people and still be understaffed.

You can have full employment next year, but not if you expect the private sector to provide the jobs within the current system. The public sector could create them, if you use a sovereign, free-floating currency, but ideology doesn't allow for it.

As long as we focus on finding people for a given job, there'll be mass unemployment, no matter what. Reverse the process, create/find jobs for a given people and we might make some headway.

Again, ideology doesn't allow for it. And that's also what made me stop advocating for an unconditional basic income (UBI). The financial details of it can be a nightmare, yes, and it would be a break with a social welfare system that survived two world wars. But the deal breaker for me was politics.

A UBI would mean taking the boot of the peasants' necks. Liberty and (some) equality made real. Love it.
But look at how vicious the Greeks are attacked these days, not just by the elite, but by our fellow worker bees. They're not just burying the last bit of European solidarity in Greece, they're unloading all their frustrations onto the schmucks who had very little to begin with. It's despicable. And it indicates to me that any attempt to introduce a system that would take from people the need to work would unleash unimaginable hatred from the usual suspects. And significant portions of the public would go along with it, given how easy it already is to channel their frustrations towards "welfare queens" and "moochers".

So yeah, a UBI would be lovely. Finally some liberty, finally more negotiating power for the worker (can decline any job offer without repression). But the shit would need to hit the fan hard before there can be any room within the political sphere for it.

Last week Tsipras put out a rather dejected sounding press release that I thought meant they were ready to raise the white flag, but just after that thing returned to normal

I think there are two factors at play over the primary surplus, firstly the creditors are in no mood to lend more money to help Greece's recovery, and secondly the primary surplus promised by Greece is, at least to start with, so small that any possible contraction would be more of a rounding error.

I was a little bemused to read this http://gu.com/p/49h6n/stw article on the UK's voluntary austerity. If you look at where they're spending money (tax cuts for the rich, who don't spend money) and where they're saving it (taking from the poor, who do) you have almost guaranteed an economic slowdown.

That leads to the thought that, as not all government expenditure is equal, surely a Greek government with more than usual amount of economic nous could surely come up with something.

Or, alternatively, agree to kick the can down the road for another 9 months.

I'd really like to think that the former is possible, no matter how unlikely.

Depressing, isn't it?

It does seem to me that Greece is better off without the Greek kleptocrats in charge, but if Syriza have any clues how to improve things, they haven't revealed them in a forum that I've picked up on.

I am starting to think that the reforms that Greece needs, to modernise and broaden its tax system, could and should come first and that any negotiations with creditors should follow. Ideally this would be done without actually killing the residual dregs of Greek industry... and as you say, an industrial relations policy would be a really good idea. The current policy of selling everything to outsiders and marginalising the Unions looks like it will go the same way as everywhere else it's been tried, leaving behind a core group of disenfranchised and unemployed poor folk.

At least there is the political will for change, even if they seem quite clueless about how to go about 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.

Yeah, sounds like implementing the Croatian system would take more organisation than the Greeks have. Even the promised loan of tax department officials from Germany probably wouldn't be quite enough (and I'm not sure why Tsipras hasn't quietly taken up the offer, except that it does suit him to keep his cards close to his chest for now).

My confusion stems from every single article reading as if there is some compromise actually underway or imminent, but they never provide enough hints to work out what it might be... and anything I can think of is immediately proven false in the next update.

For instance, if Syriza had announced the €2B as an end to the suffering from austerity, and now the measures will only affect Government and the Oligarchs, then it would have made perfect sense... but instead both sides just keep giving out the same messages they have since the start.

I think it's possible they'll muddle through in the end, but at this point it's not at all clear how.

I can play about the first 3 minutes on expert in guitar hero before my arm starts to fall off. This girl must have the forearms of a greek god.