Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

[don]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

Right. Now how do you say "hopium" in Greek?

Perfecto, Woods. (or more precisely, the perfect blend)

[vt]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

"Societe Generale's Michel Martinez says the Greece's debt load totals 317 billion euros (more than 175% of GDP and rising) Interest payments alone comprise 5% of the nation's GDP. This will not work as it is now.

Martinez believes that if the Eurozone decides to take action, it could lower Greece's burden by extending bond maturities to 50 years and forgiving interest payments . This would make the GDP ratio a manageable 125% by 2022- what the IMF believes is sustainable for the country."

from Jon Markman

[don]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

"Societe Generale's Michel Martinez says the Greece's debt load totals 317 billion euros (more than 175% of GDP and rising) Interest payments alone comprise 5% of the nation's GDP. This will not work as it is now.

Martinez believes that if the Eurozone decides to take action, it could lower Greece's burden by extending bond maturities to 50 years and forgiving interest payments . This would make the GDP ratio a manageable 125% by 2022- what the IMF believes is sustainable for the country."

from Jon Markman

They would.

[touchring]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

"Societe Generale's Michel Martinez says the Greece's debt load totals 317 billion euros (more than 175% of GDP and rising) Interest payments alone comprise 5% of the nation's GDP. This will not work as it is now.

Martinez believes that if the Eurozone decides to take action, it could lower Greece's burden by extending bond maturities to 50 years and forgiving interest payments . This would make the GDP ratio a manageable 125% by 2022- what the IMF believes is sustainable for the country."

from Jon Markman

Why not extend the maturity to 100 years so that the next 4 generations of Greeks can help pay for it?

Greece needs something more drastic than that. A 30% one-off haircut to the debt will be nicer.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

This is the underlying ethos of the man appointed as finance minister for Greece. Everyone needs to understand where he comes from and why he has what it will take to succeed.

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/01/27/of-loss-and-retrieval-latest-and-last-article-in-wdw-review/

[don]

Dual Greek/Aussie Finance Minister - Keen Choice?

One of Yanis Varoufakis’s top priorities will be to renegotiate the terms of Greece’s €240bn bailout deal.

The anti-bailout government of Greece’s new leftist prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has been announced, with the post of economics minister – chief negotiator with the country’s international creditors – going to a radical economist who has described austerity programmes as “fiscal waterboarding”.

With Greece set on a collision course with Europe over the Syriza-led government’s plans to reverse draconian belt-tightening and renegotiate the country’s massive debts, Yanis Varoufakis, who calls himself an “accidental economist”, confirmed in a radio interview on Tuesday morning that he would take up the key position.

The rest of the government, the first in Europe to openly oppose the bailout conditions demanded by the European Union and International Monetary Fund, was announced by the newly installed minister of state, Nikos Pappas, on Tuesday afternoon.

There are 39 cabinet members in total, of whom six are women,with academics taking up a number of key cabinet posts.

Tsipras chose economist and veteran leftwing politician Giannis Dragasakis as deputy prime minister, responsible for overseeing negotiations with the “troika” of the European Commission, the IMF and the ECB.

Panos Kammenos, party leader of coalition partner the Independent Greeks, has been made defence minister, while the blind MP Panaghiotis Kouroumblis will helm the health ministry.

The cabinet was being sworn in on Tuesday afternoon.

One of Varoufakis’s top priorities will be to deliver on Tsipras’s election pledge to renegotiate the terms of Greece’s €240bn bailout deal, despite widespread and sometimes forceful opposition from other European countries, led by Germany.

Varoufakis, 53, studied in Britain and has also taught in Australia, Greece and the US. In pre-election interviews he promised to end what he described as Greece’s humanitarian crisis, slice a chunk off its €320bn debt mountain, and destroy the country’s oligarchs who “viciously suck the energy and the economic power from everybody else”.

A prolific blogger and media commentator who dresses in brightly coloured shirts and jeans, Varoufakis – who has dual Greek and Australian nationality – abandoned a job at the University of Texas to join Tsipras’s team in the election runup, and celebrated Sunday’s result by paraphrasing Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, saying: “Greek democracy today chose to stop going gently into the night. Greek democracy resolved to rage against the dying of the light.”

Syriza failed by just two seats to win an outright majority in Greece’s 300-seat parliament and on Monday formed a coalition government with the small rightwing Independent Greeks (Anel) party.

Analysts have described it as an unnatural alliance and warned it might not survive long, pointing out that ANEL - best-known for vitriolic attacks on Germany and the Troika and for the occasional unashamedly antisemitic, racist and homophobic outbursts of its populist leader, Panos Kammenos – are unpredictable and that the two parties, while they agree on the need to end austerity, hold directly opposing views on many key social issues including immigration.

While the IMF said it was ready to continue supporting Greece and looked forward to discussions with the new government, the head of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, warned that a reduction in the country’s debt was “not on the radar”. The EU issued a stiff statement that Greece would risk its place in the eurozone if it fails to meet its austerity and debt commitments.

Syriza has promised to reverse many of the huge public-sector spending cuts and wage and pension reductions implemented by the previous centre-right government, but several eurozone countries made clear they thought its plans were unrealistic.

“In our view it is important for the new government to take action to foster Greece’s continued economic recovery,” Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel’, said. “That also means Greece sticking to its previous commitments.”

The British prime minister, David Cameron, was more conciliatory on Monday night, congratulating Tsipras and welcoming his “intention to tackle corruption and increase tax transparency across Greece”.

But the UK chancellor, George Osborne, said Syriza’s promises to voters appeared “very difficult to deliver” and “incompatible with what the eurozone currently demands”, warning that any resulting uncertainty would have an impact on Britain.

Varoufakis has long criticised Europe’s handling of the economic crisis, attacking the conservative economic orthodoxy that demands budget rigour and market-friendly structural reforms.

That approach amounted to “a cynical transfer of banking losses on to the shoulders of the weakest taxpayers”, he said on his blog earlier this month. He has also likened the tough terms of bailout deals to “fiscal waterboarding” that risked converting southern Europe into “a form of Victorian workhouse”.

[don]

Re: Dual Greek/Aussie Finance Minister - Keen Choice?

Stockman weighs in . . .

We can heartily praise Alexis Tsirpras for calling bull on the destructive puzzle palace economics thrust on his country by the hypocrites and liars who rule from Brussels. And his finance minister designate, economist Yanis Varoufakis, is surely on the right track when he targets the rent-seeking bankers, big businesses and media operators who have plundered the Greek state for decades.

Indeed, his pledge that “we are going to destroy the Greek oligarchy system” should resonate throughout the length and breadth of Europe. After all, what has smothered growth, enterprise and hope in the EU is exactly the kind of crony capitalist corruption of economic life and exploitation of the state that had already wrecked the Greek economy—-even before the Trioka administered the coup de’ grace.

So the Syriza Shock is an inflection point. It represents the beginning of the end of unimpeded rule by the elitist apparatchiks who dominate the central banks and the economic policy machinery of Brussels, Washington and London. Overwhelmingly, their half-baked Keynesian and statist solutions have propped up the giant banks, fueled stupendous inflation of financial assets and enabled an era of obscene gambling windfalls to the very rich which is unprecedented in modern history.

But what centrally administered financialization has not done is relieve the middle and working classes from a relentless assault on their living standards or a growing recognition that their voices have been totally muted in the halls of government. So it was only a matter of time before a revolt of the “demos” would materialize; and, needless to say, what could be more supremely fitting than that the insurrection has started in the very land where the demos first found its voice?

But here’s where the good news turns into the heavy trauma ahead. Greece’s problem is not simply the oppressive details and features of the “memorandum” imposed by its Troika overlords.

The true evil is the very structure and modus operandi of the entire EU and its euro based monetary system. Greece will forever be under the boot heel from the north if it seeks to merely “restructure” its debts and supplicatory relationships with Brussels and Frankfurt—–even if it plays a resolute, courageous and crafty hand of poker during its upcoming “negotiations” with the EU and IMF apparatchiks.

The fact is, Brussels is the epicenter of an utterly failed superstate and the ECB is a radically misconceived monetary experiment that has no place to go except toward an eventual violent implosion. Moreover, the relevant irony here is that these wholly misbegotten institutions have mis-appropriated the very ideas—–wider scope for open trade and productive enterprise and the conveniences and efficiency of common money—-on which a Greek revival truly depends.

Stated differently, the EC and ECB are about centralization and elite governance of political and economic life—the polar opposite of their phony neo-liberal narrative. They embody the conceit that by “going big” and empowering “the best and the brightest” to manipulate the machinery of the state—including its central banking branch—-that centralization will overcome the disabilities, economic barriers and parochial follies of nation-state economics and national currencies.

The wholly unlikely and smashing victory of Syriza is proof positive that these foundational assumptions are wrong. Bureaucratic centralization does not even remotely deliver the economic virtues and prosperity of free markets; it delivers, instead, a mindless outpouring of rules, dictates and taxes—-because that’s what policy apparatchiks do—- which impede commerce and enterprise throughout the superstate as a whole (i.e. the EC). At the same time, of course, it empowers the central apparatchiks to leverage their monopoly on fiscal resources and legal authorities to ride roughshod on the common folk who inhabit the regions, former states and localities—-especially during times of trouble and duress when the latter most go hat-in-hand seeking subventions from the center.

Likewise, the “euro” doesn’t even remotely resemble common money—-that is, gold-backed national currencies at fixed exchange rates—– of the type that brought rising efficiency, trade and constructive economic integration to the European family of nations before 1914.

Instead, the “euro” is just a pretext for a rotten regime of hyper-activist central banking controlled by unelected monetary central planners pursuing crackpot theories and doctrines that destroy everything which authentic common money can accomplish. Namely, honest price discovery, efficient allocation of capital and self-correcting financial discipline that keeps at bay the gamblers and punters who inexorably gravitate to financial markets, and which ultimately holds them accountable for their fits of folly and greed.

At the end of the day, the route to the prosperity of freer markets in goods, labor and capital is smaller states, not superstates. The way forward is through rejecting trade protectionism and mercantilist fiscal subsidies and tax privileges as a matter of domestic policy and entering reciprocal agreements to open markets abroad.

Likewise, the route to honest, efficient common money is to eliminate central bank intervention in capital and money markets entirely; replace interest rate pegging with free market prices; remove once and for all the noxious idea that central bank “puts” and the wealth effects manipulation of risk asset prices is a magic elixir that causes economic growth and higher living standards; and, most especially, absolute renunciation of the fraudulent practice of monetizing the public debt.

So the retention of local political sovereignty and the dignity of smaller scale democracy is compatible with, not inimical to, a regime of freer markets for entrepreneurs, labor and consumers; and an honest financial system free of crony capitalist exploitation and plunder.

The Syriza Shock is at its essence a demand rising up from the demos for recovery of exactly this kind of “sovereignty” and “dignity”, as Mr.Tsipras has so eloquently put it. But the monumental challenge facing the new Greek government is that these democratic virtues can never be recovered by “negotiations as usual” with the arrogant, corrupt and self-serving apparatchiks of the EU and ECB. Nor can they be sustained if Greece remains shackled—-even under a new, more balanced and “friendlier” memorandum of affiliation and obligation—-to these failing institutions.

Fortunately for Greece, the EU is already on the slippery slope towards its demise. The strategy of escape, therefore, is about avoiding debilitating future costs, not retaining sustainable benefits.

The utterly foolish plunge by Draghi and his ECB money printers into full-bore QE, for example, has already put the euro into a death spiral. This means that the hedge fund gamblers who piled into sovereign debt of France, Italy and the other peripheral countries waiting for Draghi to redeem his lunatic pledge to print-whatever-it-takes, are poised with their fingers on the sell button.

In fact, today’s yields for 10-year French, Spanish and Italian debt at 0.54%, 1.35% and 1.48%, respectively, are patently absurd. These are the obligations of failing, aging, dirigisme-ridden welfare state economies that would pose profound, hair-curling credit risks to real investors. But there are none—–the so-called market for EU-19 sovereign debt is just one gigantic front-running speculation that will end in a firestorm of broken confidence in the ECB and relentless dumping of the vastly over-valued bonds which have been temporarily sequestered in the financial parking lots of hedge funds, prop desks and clueless and mostly already insolvent national banks.

So the central goal of Greece’s new government should be escape from the looming EU/ECB disaster, not a re-set of the terms of its fetters and servitude. If the new government of Greece really means to liberate its people, it would repudiate its debt to the IMF entirely——for it is the despicable arrogance of the IMF apparatchiks that have brought Greece’s economy to its lamentable state.

Likewise, if a 50% haircut of its debt in 1953 was good enough for Germany at the time, it is also good enough for Greece today. What the new government needs to “negotiate” is the time period for repayment of the balance, which by all rights should be considerable. After all, even the vengeful victors at Versailles were willing to give Germany 50 years to make its reparations—–and the Germans actually were co-perpetrators of the immense war carnage that encumbered Europe, not its victim.

But the operative matter is “settlement” of the Greek debts, as in the notion of final and forever. The new government need not worry in the slightest that its “credit” might be damaged with the IMF and EU. These are destructive agents of the global elites’ statist rule; Greece must never go back to them, not for a cent.

What Greece needs to do, instead, is re-establish its own credit and re-constitute its own money and central bank. But there is a huge catch, and its undoubtedly not really within the mind-set of the motley leftist coalition which the Greek people have turned to out of sheer desperation.

A mini-ECB on the Aegean would only compound the nation’s misery and expose the long-suffering Greek people to an even more traumatic round of hyper-inflation and financial strangulation.

Instead, what Syriza must seek is an honest central bank that does not coddle it commercial banks and financial gamblers; does not pretend to fix the price of money and debt and micro-manage the domestic economy; and is restricted to the narrow remit that was accorded to the classic bankers’ bank of pre-Keynesian times. Namely the Bagehotian function of providing back-up liquidity at a penalty spread above the free market interest rate against good commercial collateral that represents production already made in the economy, not an open-ended call on future taxpayers.

Likewise, if Syriza want to rid itself of the Greek oligarchy and the plague of crony capitalism, it needs to shrink the vast expanse of the Greek State which not withstanding “austerity” still totals nearly 60% of GDP. This means drastically reducing its essentially useless military; means-testing its extensive public pensions and other social welfare benefits; and eliminating the vast array of its costly domestic subsidies and mercantilist economic arrangements.



Moreover, Greece must finance its revamped state with honest taxes on the people based on a distribution of burdens that its politics can embrace; and, if it must incur fiscal deficits, it needs to rely on honest borrowings in the capital markets, not monetization by the central bank.

For a government steeped in leftist doctrine that’s a tall order, to put it mildly.

But here’s the thing. If the new government pursues the path of negotiations with Brussels and a “re-set” of its debt and obligations within the EU, it will inexorably betray its mandate to restore Greek sovereignty. At the end of the day, a negotiated re-set will only amount to reshuffling the terms of Greece’s servitude to a superstate and central bank disabled economic system that is already going down for the count.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Dual Greek/Aussie Finance Minister - Keen Choice?

Wow! Thanks Don. As they say; follow that....

Well, I have just put this up on The Times London:

What Greece needs is as many as one million small, well capitalised, prosperous, job creating businesses; moreover, where the capital invested into them is immediately deposited into the Greek banking system. Sadly, not one word of which is included in the above report.

The only viable, long term solution to the entire European problem, is new private sector job creation. It is the only route to increased tax income to repay government debt and to stabilise the entire Western banking system. Every other so called "solution" knocks down one side or the other; as does this report

Europe needs positive thinking; not increased negativity. Europe needs at least 6 million new, very small, private sector businesses; each employing a minimum of 5 employees; each in turn doing their utmost to succeed, competitively. That was how we British once became a very prosperous nation; that is the only viable route to a prosperous European economy.

Instead of politicians and bankers arguing the toss, negatively; we need millions of citizens working their butts off to succeed; in their own right; positively.

So, why not try some new; positive; thinking?

In turn generating the question:

"What would 1 million small Greek business actually do - sell each other lotus leaves?"

@Scribe The most fascinating aspect of the whole underlying debate is the total lack of vision of the potential of a prosperous nation; that no one outside of banking and finance can see any purpose to a nation of citizens; other than either borrowing from a bank to buy ..... whatever they need, or applying for welfare to pay for whatever they need. The whole structure of true prosperity is totally invisible.

Those millions of businesses will put to work the imaginations of their founders, to create the means of improving their individual lot; each one trying something they believe will work to create stable turnover and thus prosperous employment for their surrounding communities.

Yes, it is true, many will fall by the wayside; but failure is an important part of innovation as no one has all the answers. Just like an Olympic contest, millions all over the planet set out to succeed; each falling away as their capabilities level them out to their level of attainment; leaving only one individual as the final winner. Now imagine every Olympic contest where only one individual is permitted to run that final race; so how do you pick them from the rest of humanity?

By being so dismissive of any potential, one must assume that you will make that final choice. Except that that will be YOUR idea of success; not mine, nor that of millions of others. In your world, no one is permitted to try except that single individual you have chosen; in my world I see everyone trying, hard, competitively; to succeed in their own right; on their own terms; as free individuals; setting out on their small road to success; using their own individual imagination; often as a part of a team.

None of this can happen without a system of accepted rules, agreed mechanisms; associated institutions; designed to deliver free enterprise equity capital to all those potential founders who will in turn; create a solid foundation of grass roots prosperity; to underpin the economy of any nation that takes up the baton to succeed.

So, once again, I ask; why not try some new thinking?
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/busine...cle4335496.ece

[touchring]

Re: Dual Greek/Aussie Finance Minister - Keen Choice?

The Greek PM should invite Jack Ma over. I'm sure he would have good ideas on how to create a million web-based jobs in an environment where there are no rules and fakes aplenty. ;)

Wow! Thanks Don. As they say; follow that....

Well, I have just put this up on The Times London:

What Greece needs is as many as one million small, well capitalised, prosperous, job creating businesses; moreover, where the capital invested into them is immediately deposited into the Greek banking system. Sadly, not one word of which is included in the above report.

[EJ]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

For the reasons I stated in the other post on Greece:

No.

And what most media reporting on the story don't get is that a Tsipras win means nothing in a Parliamentary system if he doesn't have enough votes/representatives to form a government. Either a coalition will need to be formed, which so far seems unlikely, or, a second round of elections will be held.

When it comes to which leader most Greeks trust to govern, Samaras of New Democracy beats Tsipas. I think it is likely we'll be going for another election and then Samaras will have a better chance to form a coalition with POTAMI, the third largest political party.

But either way, the end result will be the same. The only change is the damage Tsipras' rhetoric has caused to Greece in the investment world (stock market drop, corporate bond market hit, etc...) And also, the unnecessary economic cost of holding the election(s).

An overall tremendous waste of time, energy, and money, yet wonderful fodder for the media.

Thank you for your contributions. This election is another chess move in a long process toward a federal Europe.

[touchring]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

I'm just wondering for how much longer Germany can maintain their competitive edge before going the way of Japan.

The Chinese are starting to move from consumer into infrastructure and the enterprise field, and it won't be long (10 years time frame) before they can replicate what Germany and France makes.

This is a very competitive world, the rest of the world will power ahead and will not wait for you to settle Greece, Ukraine or ISIS.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

I'm just wondering for how much longer Germany can maintain their competitive edge before going the way of Japan.

The Chinese are starting to move from consumer into infrastructure and the enterprise field, and it won't be long (10 years time frame) before they can replicate what Germany and France makes.

This is a very competitive world, the rest of the world will power ahead and will not wait for you to settle Greece, Ukraine or ISIS.

Every nation will have to re-balance their internal economy to take account of increased investment in those surrounding them. In which case, a reduced external market requires acceptance of the need to change the underlying thinking. Change, from a positive outlook; is always good. So think positively.

[don]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

as the pot bubbles, little by little . . .

Financial Times:

A spokesman for the ruling coalition of Alexis Tsipras, prime minister, said Greece had not approved a statement from EU heads of government that asked their foreign ministers to review further sanctions in response to the latest flare-up of violence in eastern Ukraine, blamed by the US and most European nations on Russian-backed separatists.

The Greek statement raised questions over whether the new government, led by the radical leftist Syriza party, would support a continuation of existing EU sanctions, including visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials and Moscow-supported separatists, when they come up for renewal in March.

German chancellor Angela Merkel warned last month that Moscow was trying to make some Balkan states “politically and economically dependent”.

Nikolai Fyodorov, Russia’s agriculture minister, suggested on January 16 that, if Greece’s debt woes forced it to leave the EU, the Kremlin would help Athens by lifting a ban on Greek food exports that forms part of the measures adopted by Moscow in retaliation for western sanctions.

Syriza has already given a taste of its foreign policy outlook in the European Parliament, where, since last May’s elections, its MEPs have adopted a number of pro-Russian positions, including voting against a EU-Ukrainian association agreement.

Costas Isychos, a Syriza foreign affairs spokesman, last year derided western sanctions on Russia as “neocolonial bulimia” and praised the military efforts of the Kremlin-backed separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine.

Syriza’s 2013 party manifesto demanded Greece’s exit from Nato and the closure of a US navy base on the island of Crete.

Though a Nato member, Greece in modern times has often enjoyed warm relations with Russia, and the Soviet Union before it, no matter what the political complexion of the government in Athens. The two countries are culturally close, with a shared Orthodox religion, and leftwing Greeks in the cold war used to have an anti-US, anti-imperialist outlook very close to the views of Moscow.

Bloomberg reports Greece's Coming Clash in Europe Starts With Russia Sanctions.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza-led coalition said it opposed a European Union statement issued in Brussels Tuesday paving the way to additional curbs on the Kremlin over the conflict in Ukraine, and complained it hadn’t been consulted.

“Greece doesn’t consent,” the government said in a statement. It added that the announcement violated “proper procedure” by not first securing Greece’s agreement.

Greece’s new foreign minister, Nikos Kotzias, has the opportunity to block further sanctions at an EU meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

Sanctions require unanimity among the 28 governments. A Greek veto would shatter the fragile European consensus over dealing with Russia, potentially robbing Syriza of early goodwill as it lobbies for easier terms for Greece’s bailout.

“Anyone who thinks that in the name of the debt, Greece will resign its sovereignty and its active counsel in European politics is mistaken,” Kotzias said at the ceremony to take over the Foreign Ministry. “We want to be Greeks, patriots, Europeanists, internationalists.”

The new government also includes Yanis Varoufakis, an economist who has called Greece’s bailout agreement a destructive “trap,” as finance minister. He advocates defaulting on the country’s debt while remaining in the euro.

Luis Garicano, an economics professor at the London School of Economics, on Twitter:

“Tsipras’s initial decisions, especially his coalition with a nationalist-hooligan party, point toward an exit from the euro, If he wanted to negotiate, he’d have teamed up with To Potami, he wouldn’t have opposed sanctions against Russia.”

Mish's comments:

The position of Economics professor Luis Garicano is laughable.

In regards to EU sanctions, 1 vote out of 28 can kill the deal. That's a lot of leverage, especially when 27 on the other side want something from you. What are they willing to offer in return?

In contrast, when it comes to bailouts, Greece is outvoted by a huge margin, perhaps 18-1 within the Eurozone block. In this case, Greece desperately wants something from the other 18 instead of the other 27 wanting something from Greece.

The only way to negotiate when it's 18-1 against you and you need is to have some leverage. If Syriza teamed up with To Potami and agreed to sanctions, Tsipras may as well put all his cards on the table saying "here, take the ones you like".

The way to get things serious in a hurry is to figuratively hit the Brussels nannycrats smack in the face with a brick. Letting Brussels know you will kill sanctions if you do not get what you want would do just that.

Of course, sanctions are pure idiocy in the first place. So hitting the nannycrats with a brick in the face is precisely what needs to happen. That brick will set the tone for better negotiations on other matters as well.

This is likely to get very interesting in a hurry.

[gnk]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

Thanks EJ.

I think a lot of people are projecting their own sociopolitical/economic theories onto this story, adopting an innocent David and evil Goliath meme.

Greece needs structural changes. I know that may sound nebulous to many here. But here's a real-life example on how things work here in Greece:

A law expired on Dec 31st that dealt with Wills and Estates. An election followed. At this moment, if you are inheriting something in Greece, real property, etc... nothing is happening. The entire process is frozen. That means you can't sell or convey any real property until a new law is passed dictating how the new estate process works. Ask a lawyer when this is likely to happen and you get a shrug. I have cousins that are trapped by the lack of this law. This is how property rights are handled by a dysfunctional government.

Another example: private sector second language teachers/tutors need to be licensed. Makes sense, right? The Ministry of Education that issues these licenses has stopped issuing licenses until a new process is approved. This has been going on since March 2014. Still no license process.

There are many more examples that show how dysfunctional Greece is. Greek government shows no respect for property rights or business growth. How can one blame Brussels? If anything, Brussels is leaning on Greece to improve its handling of such issues. Personally, I prefer Brussels, or even Germany to come here and run things.

Recent developments:

Many people held off on paying taxes in order to see what the new taxes will be with the new Tsipras Government. We're talking about a collapse of tax revenue from December to now - probably well over a billion.

Right now:

The markets are tanking, bond yields are rising, and Tsipras just made an announcement: Greece will not default

What a surprise. Eventually his actions will follow one of his conflicting messages. I think Tsipras, just like any other newly minted national leader, is fast learning how the markets react to what you say.

This Prime Minister's tax revenue's are collapsing, bank shares tumbling, bond yields rising, stock market tanking.... We're watching the speedy education of a young, idealistic PM.

Hope he's a quick learner! He wants to give free electricity to the poor, a noble idea. But what if the whole country goes dark? Tough to pull off that one.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Will Greece be the first country to overthrow the rule of bankers and elites?

Thank you for your contributions. This election is another chess move in a long process toward a federal Europe.

Over the last couple of years I have been invited to attend regular meetings involving both representitives at the highest levels of the financial services industry and governments in London and Europe; the Burggruen Institute on Governance Public Forum in Paris being an excellent example as it was opened by the President of France and closed by the President of Spain http://berggruen.org/councils/the-fu...ope-next-steps

Right now, it is my firm belief that there is a general recognition, that they all know their dream of a federal Europe is disfunctional and must be revised. Like all strong friendships, they face real difficulties, sometimes with confrontation and even anger from those around them. Yes, it would be foolish of me to make any prediction; other than to say, I believe that what will happen is a new way forward will emerge; that will defy any previous prediction; and lead towards a successful solution for everyone.

That they want to move forward; not necessarily ending with simply a federal Europe; more, a successful Europe.