Galbraith on Greece

[astonas]

Re: Pilger on Greece

There are two ways to conquer a nation; one by sword and the other by debt. John Adams.

Debt is an ingenious substitute for the whip and chain of the slave driver.

The first word in recorded history for "Freedom" was the Sumerian word Amargi. It did not mean freedom as we conceptualize it today but debt freedom.

By the standard of Amargi, very few countries have "freedom" today and Greece is one of the worst nations for "freedom." This is not to mention the debt burden the majority of Americans have.

They don't need to conquer Greece with the sword or tanks, they already control the political process for the next few generations by wielding the debt sword of Damocles.

Kant understood this well even in 1795.

Of course! I don't think anyone is claiming that the debt is not problematic, when it comes to maintaining sovereignty! Quite the reverse. It is everything you say, with Kant's and Michael Hudson's additions as well.

But Kant's objection, if any, would have been that the democratic process in Greece had failed to represent the people, when it was issuing the debt in the first place. That the debt was odious, based on its initial acquisition within Greece, and that the government of Greece had failed to represent its citizens' interests against the initial private bondholders when it issued the debt.

Subsequent transactions between democratically elected governments would not in themselves have been something that Kant would object to. He was in FAVOR of structures like the European Union, and was trying to create a pathway to HELP them form, when he wrote the essay including his rules. But he was also entirely clear that the rules had a crucial prerequisite, and that was a government that was democratically elected to represent its people's best interests.

So if Kant had an objection, it would have been that Greece's democracy was insufficiently developed (not really representing the welfare of its people, but instead serving a ruling class of oligarchs) to be either issuing massive debts, or entering into long-term transfers of sovereignty, such as joining the EU. Clearly, the second must have a higher standard for representation than the first.

If an elected government were able to adequately represent the interests of the people of Greece, he would have no problem with it choosing to cede sovereignty to a larger, umbrella government, even for largely financial reasons.

The US started out as such a government, with states at very different levels of economic strength (Kant was in favor) and the EU is trying to follow the same path.

I could even concede that Kant would still object. But Kant's objection would never be to the path itself, in the abstract. He would instead object to the eligibility of certain states to begin the journey.

Call that splitting hairs, if you will. But the difference has consequences in both the justification of the existence of the European Union, and the viability of Greece remaining within it.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Pilger on Greece

With the very greatest of respects, for someone that is simply presenting a personal view of the underlying mindset of either side of the negotiations; you seem to be unable to see your own words:

Have you done so lately? I mean really consider the possibility that you are, from the ground up, entirely wrong on an issue you care about. It is an important intellectual exercise, and not easy, but failing to do so can lead to some spectacular blow-ups. The damage Varoufakis did is just the most recent example. [/Aside]

My viewpoint remains; the concept of a negotiation requires agreement; on both sides. Imposing a settlement is not any form of a "deal". Taking your viewpoint highlighted above and mixing that with what happened requires you to read this; all of it, here I highlight a small part.

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/30/the-defeat-of-europe-my-piece-in-le-monde-diplomatique/

"From the beginning, time and again, we proposed that legislation should be passed on three or four areas that we agreed with the institutions – e.g. measures to tackle tax evasion, to shield the tax authority from both political and corporate influence, to address corruption in procurement, to reform the judiciary etc. Their reply was: “No way!” Nothing should be legislated before a ‘comprehensive review’ was complete.

During the Brussels Group negotiations, we would be asked to present our plans for VAT reform. Before we could pin down an agreement on VAT, the troika representatives would shift to pension reforms. They would immediately rubbish our proposals before moving on to, say, labour relations. Once they rejected our proposals on that, they would shift to privatisations. And so on, ensuring that the discussions moved from one topic to another, before anything was agreed, without any serious negotiation on any of topic, creating a process that resembled a cat chasing its tail. For months the troika representatives stonewalled, insisting that we should talk about everything, which is equivalent to negotiating on nothing at all."

The right to refuse whatever is on offer is the foundation stone of negotiation; where the maxim Caviet Emptor was created precisely to define that not agreeing was fair, as also having to accept the result of agreement.

You cannot have it both ways; describe that you are simply describing the process and in the same post; bad mouth one of the participants.

Have you done so lately? I mean really consider the possibility that you are, from the ground up, entirely wrong on an issue you care about. It is an important intellectual exercise, and not easy, but failing to do so can lead to some spectacular blow-ups.

Polite bad mouthing another here has only shown us your true colours.

In one thing you were correct; I spend far too much time here and not enough on matters that are far more important.

Chris is on Holiday!

[gnk]

Re: Pilger on Greece

Chris, Varoufakis and Tsipras both knew or should have known that extended negotiations during a bank run would lead to capital controls. Ultimately, they should have seen where the negotiations were going months ago. How did I know and they didn't?

It was a failure on Varoufakis' and Tsipras' fault.

The excuse "they led me on" is a childish one. We're talking about people that have the ultimate responsibility of an entire nation's economy! They were either irresponsible or naive. Period.

I see nothing of what astonas wrote as badmouthing. We all have our biases. I have one by living in Greece. To me, a drachma adoption these past few months would have been catastrophic.

Capital controls were completely avoidable. All the Greek negotiators had to do was draw a line at a certain date, well before the SHTF, and do their best before then. They didn't. They gambled. They lost.

I was recently at a friend's restaurant and a well connected Director of a major Athenian hospital was there. Rumor has it that at the night of the referendum, Tsipras briefly visited a hospital due to severe panic attacks. He, and Varoufakis (judging from recent interviews) did not expect the "No" vote to win, let alone by a large margin. The ultimate goal of the soviet style/3rd world dictatorship badly worded/ambiguous referendum was to save a politician's ass. It was to keep SYRIZA from falling and to shift the blame onto the people.

An abdication of authority - and an unnecessary one at that which led to capital controls.

Yes, Varoufakis et al were a COMPLETE failure. With disastrous results. How can one argue that? By saying they were outwitted or stonewalled by the EU, to me, is akin to their admission of idiocy.

Chris, if you were selling your house, and I offered you a low amount and you said no and dragged on the negotiations, could I blame my subsequent homelessness on your refusal to sell your house? At what point am I responsible to find another (cheaper) house or raise my offer?

All negotiations are the same.

[gnk]

Re: Pilger on Greece

This interview was done soon before the referendum. Does this look like a successful FM? Is he saying what I think he's saying? Is this defensible?

http://bcove.me/fk4kddnn

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Pilger on Greece

Greece Isn't a Morality Tale

By Mark Buchanan

One of the more troubling elements of the recent drama over Greece's debt was the urge by many to see a deficiency of national character, rather than euro-zone economics, as the problem. Right-leaning opinion, not only in Germany but around the world, put the trouble down to Greek corruption and, worse, laziness: The bad people of Greece retire too early and produce less per capita than the European average, despite working longer hours.

We shouldn't conclude much of anything from such comparisons. It's a complete myth that economic productivity somehow reflects the average ability of people to work hard. It has far more to do with the nature of industries in different nations, and how technology has changed their productivity over time.

Nearly 20 percent of Greek economic output comes from tourism, which is natural enough, given the nation's surpassing beauty. Aside from the Internet making it easier to book and advertise trips, however, tourism remains a labor-intensive activity not that different from 30 years ago. People take planes and taxis, stay in hotels, eat meals, listen to music and take excursions on boats. All of that requires a large number of people to cook and serve, entertain, clean rooms and drive taxis for long hours. The amount of these things that can be produced per hour and per person hasn't changed a lot with time.

Compare that with, say, the German automobile industry. According to Eurostat data, the total output of the European motor-vehicle industry -- German companies account for about half of it -- grew in the decade before the financial crisis by about 4.4 percent a year. That corresponds to a doubling of output in 15 years. Much of this increase came from gains in manufacturing productivity -- value created per hour of work -- which in Germany, according to OECD numbers, grew by 40 percent over the same period.

In other words, rapid economic growth in Germany and other fast-growing, developed nations has come mostly from improvements in industrial efficiency, not from some morally superior character of the workers in those nations.

All this links up with a notion that economists call Baumol's cost disease, originally proposed by William Baumol and William Bowen in the 1960s. Why, they wondered, do some things like education, medical care and live musical performances get more expensive with time, while so many other things, like manufactured goods, get cheaper?

he answer is simply that productivity improves faster in some industries than in others. As auto manufacturers make ever more and better cars -- faster and with fewer workers -- they can sell them more cheaply and still afford to raise wages. In contrast, a live orchestral performance today takes as long and demands as much skilled labor as it did two centuries ago. Getting good musicians requires wages that rise as fast as elsewhere in the economy, and so prices in "stagnant" sectors of this sort go up relative to others.

This dynamic is a significant contributor to relentlessly rising medical costs around the world. Medical technology certainly drives productivity improvements, but time-consuming individual interactions between doctors and patients remain necessary. Doctors can't give high-quality health care to more patients in one hour today than they could a few decades ago. Prices rise, but not because doctors are getting lazy.

Getting back to Greece: It's no surprise that the productivity per capita of its tourism-heavy economy hasn't kept up with Germany's industrial juggernaut. These are different economies supplying different kinds of goods. Before 2010, Greek productivity per capita was stable at a level of about 93 percent of the European average. Productivity in Greece only plummeted after 2010, following the imposition of severe austerity.

Here's the simple, amoral story of Greece and Germany: One economy thrives on rapidly advancing industrial technology, the other on valuable economic services that get created and delivered in ways that just don't change a lot with time. The Greeks aren't lazy, and the euro zone's problems have nothing to do with anyone's moral shortcomings.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Pilger on Greece

Greece’s Relentless Exodus

By JAMES ANGELOSJULY 28, 2015

BERLIN — One of the most heartbreaking scenes I’ve witnessed from the Greek crisis took place in Swabia, a hilly, prosperous region of southern Germany.

Swabia is home to a thriving auto industry that has long lured laborers from Southern Europe, including many Greeks. Most of them came in the 1960s and early 1970s. By the time I visited in 2013, the economic depression back home was creating a new exodus. From 2010 to 2013, about 218,000 Greeks emigrated, according to an estimate from the Greek statistics agency. Nearly half of them went to Germany.

In a factory town dotted with half-timbered houses, I visited a warehouse owned by the son of Greek immigrants. There, I met a new employee who had recently arrived from northern Greece, a 38-year-old woman named Maria Saoulidou. She was hanging packages of children’s party supplies on a rack. Ms. Saoulidou told me the supermarket where she had worked in Greece had stopped paying her. For a while, she kept working there anyway in the hope that the paychecks would arrive, but the money never came. Work for her husband, a truck driver, had also dried up. When they ran out of savings, the couple decided to start a new life in Germany, where an uncle lived. They left their two young sons back home with the children’s grandparents.

In Swabia, the couple lived in a gloomy, dank basement rental that was sparsely furnished with a mattress and a couple of chairs. They were planning to bring the children once they had a more suitable home. “It’s very hard,” Ms. Saoulidou said, nearly in tears with a package of balloons in her gloved hand. I looked down at the floor and noticed that one of her shoes was badly torn. Once the boys arrived in Germany, she said, the family would never return to Greece for more than a visit. “We’re looking after the future of our children, and unfortunately, there is none for them in Greece.”

Ms. Saoulidou’s story resonates with me in part because I’m the American-born son of Greek immigrants and have inherited a grasp of what Greeks call xeniteia — a term for wandering abroad but that implies nostalgia for the motherland.

Greece has a long history of emigration, and there are large Greek diasporas in America, Germany, Britain and Australia. Almost everyone you meet in Greece has extended family members living abroad. In decades past, the pain of seeing them depart inspired many folk songs. “My exiled and dissatisfied bird,” go the lyrics to one of them. “Won’t you have mercy and turn around?”

My paternal grandfather left Greece for the United States in 1916. He worked for two decades laying railroad tracks and cooking in kitchens from Chicago to El Paso before his homesickness got the better of him and he returned to his village near the Corinthian Gulf. There, with the money he’d saved, he built a nice home and started a family that included my father. When my father was a teenager, he received some simple guidance about life in America from my grandfather: “In America, if you work for a week, you get paid for a week.” My dad left Greece on a ship bound for New York at age 17.

Over the course of my life, Greece secured its place in the European Union, benefiting greatly from subsidies for agriculture and infrastructure, and later, from the cheap borrowing euro membership enabled. Even as dire problems loomed, an increasingly wealthy Greece became a nation people migrated to rather than a place people left behind. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, waves of Albanians and ethnic Greeks from the former Soviet Union flocked to Greece.

Over the past several years, however, life for many people in Greece has become insufferable. Unemployment exceeds 25 percent, and Greek businesses routinely fail to pay their workers on time. Young families have been particularly hard hit; 40 percent of Greek children live below the poverty line. In these circumstances, many Greeks put off having kids.

Given these conditions, many Greeks have chosen to take advantage of the European Union’s free movement of labor. Germany is one of the main destinations. There is a simple reason: Greece has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union; Germany has the lowest. Resentments against Germany — Greece’s most powerful creditor — quickly fade when it comes to the prospect of a regular paycheck.

Many of those leaving Greece are highly educated professionals and scientists seeking greater opportunity and better pay. An estimated 135,000 Greeks with post-secondary degrees have left since 2010 and are working abroad, according to Lois Labrianidis, an economic geographer and official in Greece’s Economy Ministry. “We think this is human capital that is crucial for the development of the country,” Mr. Labrianidis told me recently, calling the departures a “major blow.”

Still, emigration — for both the emigrants and Greece — is often better than the alternative: remaining unemployed at home. In theory, expatriate Greeks could send their earnings to family or return and apply the skills they’ve gained abroad. But recent emigrants aren’t sending much home in the way of remittances, and it’s unclear whether Greece will ever be able to offer the opportunities that could lure back its brightest minds. Why return to a place where it’s almost impossible to find a good job?

While much of the attention on recent Greek emigration has focused on the highly educated, I’ve been surprised by the number of working-class Greeks I’ve met who left due to financial desperation. On more than one occasion, I’ve met Greeks who, upon learning that I live in Germany, have asked me for help finding menial work there.

“Can you help get my son a job?” one woman asked me, while her granddaughters played with my child in a suburban Athens square. The woman told me her son had closed his construction business after demand for his work disappeared. He had recently left for Düsseldorf, where he was renting a cheap room and looking for a job. He’d left his wife and daughters behind until he could get settled. She told me she was afraid her granddaughters weren’t getting enough to eat. “Please, mister,” she said. “You’d be saving a whole family.”

The latest bout of political and economic tumult has further damaged Greece’s battered economy. And the recent agreement for a third bailout deal — with its emphasis on austerity — only repeats the mistakes of the past. Unless the Greek government and its creditors act with far more urgency to restore growth, one outcome is certain: Many more Greeks will be seeking their futures elsewhere.

James Angelos is the author of “The Full Catastrophe: Travels Among the New Greek Ruins.”

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Pilger on Greece

GALBRAITH: My connection, of course, was with Yanis Varoufakis. I remain very respectful and admiring of the Greek government. What is next I think will be up very much to the creditors who are in a state of disarray at the moment, with a very clear statement made yesterday by Christine Lagarde of the IMF, that the IMF was not prepared to participate in the financing of the proposed program under current conditions. And that is going to I think create a set of issues between the IMF and especially the German government which will have to be resolved by them. And if they can't resolve it that will be on their responsibility and not the responsibility of the Greek government [at all].

So that is in some sense, that was the curtain raiser on the next round of this drama. And one which I'm pleased to say I will watch from a safe distance.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?...&jumival=14382

[ProdigyofZen]

Re: Pilger on Greece

But Kant's objection, if any, would have been that the democratic process in Greece had failed to represent the people, when it was issuing the debt in the first place. That the debt was odious, based on its initial acquisition within Greece, and that the government of Greece had failed to represent its citizens' interests against the initial private bondholders when it issued the debt.

Subsequent transactions between democratically elected governments would not in themselves have been something that Kant would object to. He was in FAVOR of structures like the European Union, and was trying to create a pathway to HELP them form, when he wrote the essay including his rules. But he was also entirely clear that the rules had a crucial prerequisite, and that was a government that was democratically elected to represent its people's best interests.

Astonas, I agree.


Now Jimmy Carter says we are an oligarchy:

"On July 28th, Thom Hartmann interviewedformer U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as ifthis massive question were merely an aftethought), asked him his opinion of the2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014McCutcheon decision,both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. Thesetwo historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money)now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter answered:
“Itviolates the essence of what made America a great country in its politicalsystem. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being theessence of getting the nominations for President or being elected President.And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congressmembers. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as apayoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favorsfor themselves after the election is over. …

At thepresent time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon thisunlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already inCongress has a great deal more to sell.” "

Where has Carter been? "sometimes get, favors for themselves after election is over." Did he mean "always gets favors."

[Woodsman]

Re: Pilger on Greece

...Where has Carter been? "sometimes get, favors for themselves after election is over." Did he mean "always gets favors."

I give Jimmah all the credit. Hunter Thompson called Carter one of the three meanest men he ever met.

Hunter is referencing his 1974 "Law Day" speech to the UGA College of Law Alumni and Faculty.

Well, I would like to talk to you for a few moments about some of the practical aspects of being a Governor who is still deeply concerned about the inadequacies of a system of which it’s obvious that you are so patently proud...

In general, the powerful and the influential in our society shape the laws and have a great influence on the legislature on the Congress. And this creates a reluctance to change because -- because the powerful and the influential have carved out for themselves or have inherited a privileged position in society of wealth or social prominence or higher education or opportunity for the future. Quite often, those circumstances are circumvented at a very early age because college students, particularly undergraduates, don’t have any commitment to the tight preservation of the way things are. But later, as their interrelationship with the present circumstances grow, they also are committed to approaching change very, very slowly and very, very cautiously, and there’s a commitment to the status quo...

Anyone who lives in the South looks back on the last 15 or 20 years with some degree of embarrassment, including myself. To think about going back to a county unit system, which deliberately cheated for generation to generations certain voters of this, certain white voters of this state is almost inconceivable. To revert back or to forego the one man, one vote principle, we would consider to be a horrible violation of the basic principles of justice and equality and fairness and equity....

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was perhaps despised by many in this room because he shook up our social structure that benefited us, and demanded simply that black citizens be treated the same as white citizens, wasn’t greeted with approbation and accolades by the Georgia Bar Association or the Alabama Bar Association. He was greeted with horror. And still, once that change was made, a very simple but difficult change, no one in his right mind would want to go back to circumstances prior to that juncture in the development of our nation’s society.

I -- I don’t want to go on and on; I’m -- I’m part of it. But the point I want to make to you is that we still have a long way to go. In every age or every year, we have a tendency to believe that we’ve come so far now, that there’s no way to improve the present system...But who’s going to search the heart and the soul of an organization like yours or a law school or a state or nation and say, “What can we still do to restore equity and justice or to preserve it or to enhance it in this society?”

I wish I could have been there to see Jimmy piss all over their tassle loafers, these lizards of the Georgia Bar congratulating themselves on bein' awesome lawyer dawgs.

"There you go again" Jimmy! How a guy like him made it into the White House and lived to tell the tale is something of a miracle, if you ask me.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Pilger on Greece

A jovial potato farmer whose family has tilled the fertile land on the island of Naxos for over 200 years, Stelios Vathrokilis is unfazed by all that he believes a farmer must inevitably face: God, inclement weather and natural disasters. But mention tax hikes on farmers demanded by Greece’s creditors and Vathrokilis’s face darkens with anger.

“With the new taxes we will turn the clock back to 1970 when my mother cooked on a wood stove,” the portly 50-year-old says. “Life will be like what it was when Nazis occupied the country, except this time it will be forever.”

For Vathrokilis’ compatriots, the hardships of seven years of austerity are nothing new. One in four workers is unemployed and virtually every industry has made sacrifices in jobs and in pay. Yet some sectors, notably agriculture, have been relatively untouched and even, critics say, coddled. No longer.
The change is an illustration of the hardened mood among Greece’s creditors in Brussels, Berlin and at the IMF, and a sign of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s weakened hand in the latest round of bailout negotiations.

Greece’s new bailout program, the third, looks set to scrap the status of Greece’s farmers as a protected group long the beneficiaries of subsidies and tax breaks.

Farmers have been shielded by successive governments in a nod to supporting agriculture and keeping an important voter base on side. As a consequence, farmers largely escaped the worst of Greece’s financial ruin. As the crisis bit, many Greeks who lost big-city jobs even returned to villages for the relative safety of farming.

....http://www.ekathimerini.com/200339/a...eryman-farmers

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Pilger on Greece

A jovial potato farmer whose family has tilled the fertile land on the island of Naxos for over 200 years, Stelios Vathrokilis is unfazed by all that he believes a farmer must inevitably face: God, inclement weather and natural disasters. But mention tax hikes on farmers demanded by Greece’s creditors and Vathrokilis’s face darkens with anger.

“With the new taxes we will turn the clock back to 1970 when my mother cooked on a wood stove,” the portly 50-year-old says. “Life will be like what it was when Nazis occupied the country, except this time it will be forever.”

For Vathrokilis’ compatriots, the hardships of seven years of austerity are nothing new. One in four workers is unemployed and virtually every industry has made sacrifices in jobs and in pay. Yet some sectors, notably agriculture, have been relatively untouched and even, critics say, coddled. No longer.
The change is an illustration of the hardened mood among Greece’s creditors in Brussels, Berlin and at the IMF, and a sign of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s weakened hand in the latest round of bailout negotiations.

Greece’s new bailout program, the third, looks set to scrap the status of Greece’s farmers as a protected group long the beneficiaries of subsidies and tax breaks.

Farmers have been shielded by successive governments in a nod to supporting agriculture and keeping an important voter base on side. As a consequence, farmers largely escaped the worst of Greece’s financial ruin. As the crisis bit, many Greeks who lost big-city jobs even returned to villages for the relative safety of farming.

....http://www.ekathimerini.com/200339/a...eryman-farmers

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Pilger on Greece

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/...-but-standing/

[gnk]

Re: Pilger on Greece

Fodder for leftist intellectuals, all criticism, romanticism, and no solutions. The simplistic good guy v. evil guy caricature.

The "cradle of democracy" writes the author.

Ha.

A few years back [edit/correction, this episode actually took place June of this year - 2015) when the second memorandum was being voted on in Parliament, the mindless bully, Member of Parliament and now coalition leader of Independent Greeks, Panos Kammenos, called those voting in favor of the memorandum traitors. In Parliament, he yelled: "On all fours!" What did he mean? That those representatives voting for the second memorandum were assuming the doggy style position. Sorry to be graphic, but I'm just reporting here. It was very easy for Kammenos, then leader of a minority opposition party, to criticize and speak of justice, without offering a real solution.

And then Panos Kammenos found himself with coalition partner SYRIZA, and with no other real solutions, after a wasted six months of "negotiations" and a third memorandum in the making, he faced the wrath of those he jeered. When they recently voted on the deal Tsipras got in Brussels, they called each Parliament member's name. When Kammenos' name was called for his vote, he mumbled YES, face down. And then, the outburst: many opposition party members of Parliament started yelling and laughing: "On all fours!"

Ahh, the cradle of democracy.

What's the real lesson? If you can't run your own country, if you have worthless politicians whose obvious lies and impossible promises are the reason they are constantly elected, if you have a politically immature electorate that wants government benefits with no costs, eventually somebody will run your country for you.

When people weren't paying taxes, when everyone was trying to get a family member a job with the government, when pensions were being granted at the age of 50 for up to 600 "dangerous professions," when billions of EU subsidies were pouring into the economy and mostly spent haphazardly or wrongfully (farmers driving Porsche Cayennes), when the party was at full tilt, no one was complaining.

A few questions, if someone could please answer:

Why aren't these intellectuals focusing on the rest of the PIIGS anymore? What about Latvia and Estonia's experience with Austerity - remember the doomsayers a mere couple years ago?

Why is it always and only Greece?

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Pilger on Greece

Snap elections

http://www.theguardian.com/business/...a-markets-live

[gnk]

Re: Pilger on Greece

Yes, that's how failed states function. Voters vote for the best liars, and then get to vote all over again.

I said this months ago - that Tsipras cobbled together a political party that was only good at winning an election, yet not capable of governing as a cohesive unit. The extremists will depart SYRIZA and form their own (hopefully) irrelevant small party. Meanwhile, Tsipras moves to the center - the only realistic choice he ever had.

An expensive display of "democracy" and "defense of Greece." But hey, that's what the voters wanted, however costly and futile.

The political education of Alexis Tsipras cost Greece billions, yet, ironically, Tsipras may be the best shot Greece has for reforming into a modern 21st century state and EU member. Here in Greece, the bitter pill of Austerity and Reforms could only be successfully handed to the electorate by a populist.

Hey, whatever it takes, I guess...