Showing posts with label syriza party. Show all posts

Saturday, 31 January 2015

Greece Is Now a Russia Sanctions Veto. Merkel Is Foaming at the Mouth

Yes, regardless of the "economic" fall out of the new Greek Syriza government, the very fact that Greece is standing and saying "NO!" very loudly to the EU and actually has a veto power is being greatly understated by the western media. Remember, on Tuesday when all of this was made quite clear in the face of the EU issuing statements against Russia without asking for the opinions of, or voting in favor of by the EU nations that they purportedly represent, Greece wasn't the only one to say "NO": Hungary, Slovakia and Austria ALSO stood up and voiced their disagreement- a fact that was under-reported and completely whitewashed over by the western media mobsters.

Things in Europe are getting very..... interesting.

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Greece Is Now a Russia Sanctions Veto. Merkel Is Foaming at the Mouth

Greece is now effectively a veto power when it comes to future Russian sanctions. Merkel will have to find a new country to bully.

17 hours ago | 3678 26

http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/01/30/2975

In recent months, Kotzias wrote on Twitter that sanctions against Russia weren’t in Greece’s interests.

This article originally appeared at Zero Hedge

Two days ago, Zero Hedge first, and shortly thereafter everyone else, pointed out something stunning: the biggest surprise to emerge so far out of the new anti-Troika/austerity Greek government was not so much its intention to proceed with the first test of "Odious Debt" - this was largely known in advance - but its dramatic pivot away from Germany and Europe, and toward Russia.
As we noted before, not only has Greece already blocked all ongoing privatization processes, a clear snub of Merkel and the Troika which demands the piecemeal blue light special sale of Greece to western buyers as part of the "bailout", but is also looking at plans to reinstate public sector employees and announce increased pensions for those on low incomes: further clear breaches of the Troika's austerity terms.
But the most important message that Tsipras is sending to Europe is that (after meeting the Russian ambassador first upon his election) Greece is now effectively a veto power when it comes to future Russian sanctions!
This was first hinted when the Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, who arrives in Brussels today to discuss possible additional sanctions on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, said a few days ago that the Greek government disagreed with an EU statement in which President Donald Tusk raised the prospect of “further restrictive measures” on Russia. As Bloomberg observed before, in recent months, Kotzias wrote on Twitter that sanctions against Russia weren’t in Greece’s interests. He said in a blog that a new foreign policy for Greece should be focused on stopping the ongoing transformation of the EU “into an idiosyncratic empire, under the rule of Germany.”
And Europe, shocked that one of its own has dared to question its "unanimous" policy toward Russia, a policy driven by the US foreign state department whose opinion of Europe is best captured by the hacked and intercepted "Fuck the EU" outburst by Victoria Nuland in February 2014, has been forced to backtrack.From DPA:

The European Union denied Wednesday that it ignored Greek objections when it issued a statement raising the prospects of new sanctions against Russia.

The row is the first of several clashes expected between Brussels and Greece's new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, who was elected Sunday on promises to renegotiate the bailout granted to Greece by its European neighbours and the International Monetary Fund.

Tsipras has in the past also spoken out against sanctions on Russia, rejecting the use of "Cold War language."
The EU has imposed several rounds of sanctions on Russia for its role in the Ukraine crisis, notably economic measures restricting Russian access to European credit markets and European exports. On Tuesday morning, EU leaders in a joint statement tasked their foreign ministers with considering "further restrictive measures" when they meet on Thursday.
But Tsipras complained to Greek media that his country had not been consulted on the statement. "Greece do not consent," a statement by Tsipras' office said on Tuesday evening, adding that the announcement from Brussels violated "proper procedure."
A spokesman for EU President Donald Tusk, who issued the statement on behalf of the leaders, denied that Athens had been sidelined during the preparation of the text.
"We consulted everybody, as we always do, and we didn't ignore or sidestep Greece in any way - quite to the contrary," Preben Aamann told dpa. "We tried to find a special solution that would accommodate them."

Actually what the EU "always does" is to ignore the voices and interest of everyone but the most powerful. And as for "not ignoring" Greece, apparently the EU failed. Only this time Greece, its government no longer a Eurozone lackey, will no longer let it slide: "Greek broadcaster Skai said newly appointed Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias would bring up the issue at Thursday's meeting in Brussels. Tsipras is also expected in the Belgian capital on February 12 for an EU summit that will touch upon the situation in Ukraine."
And here is how Russia just won another completely unexpected victory in Europe: "EU sanctions require unanimity to be implemented, so a Greek veto could block any further measures." And all thanks to the epic blunder by Brussels to allow a European nation to voice its opinion in a democratic fashion.

It wasn't just Zero Hedge who first suggested the Greek Russian pivot: here is RBS' Greg Gibbs who says that there are now "concerns Greek government may threaten to veto further Russian sanctions in exchange for debt relief fuels fear of conflict."
To be sure, Germany, whose theatrical opposition to money printing folded like Boehner's lawn chair last week, as it is now all too clear the preservation of German export dominance (and hence aversion to the DEM) and the sanctity of Deutsche Bank is what it is all about no matter the hyperinflationary concerns of the people, is quite furious that the grand ambitions of Europe's economic powerhouse - which as we reported moments ago has now officially entered deflation - have been crushed by tiny, depression-ridden Greece.
Here is Germany's economy minister Gabriel, who was on the tape earlier, casting fire and brimstone at Greece. From Reuters:

Greece should not burden the rest of Europe with its internal political debates,German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Thursday, adding that Greece's own inequalities were to blame for problems that it tried to blame on its multilateral lenders.
Gabriel told parliament Greece should stay in the euro but the new leftist leader Alexis Tsipras must respect the terms of its bailout. Greece could not blame the "troika" of multilateral lenders for its own unfair distribution of wealth, he said.
"All democratic people must respect the democratic decision of voters and a newly-elected government's right to decide its course - but the rest of Europe's citizens should not have to expect changes in Greek politics to burden them," he said.

Of course, as long as the changes in Greek politics allowed the rest of Europe's citizens to continue to benefit at Greek expense, nobody batted an eyelid. But change the equation and all hell breaks loose.
And the final confirmation that suddenly tiny Greece may have all the leverage in Europe is that moments ago Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that European sanctions on Russia are complicated by the "new Greek government."
The good news for Greece, of course, is that it now has all the optionality: it can use its veto power as a bargaining chip to unblock US foreign policy in Ukraine (because at the end of the day, Europe is merely losing as a result of the Russian sanctions) and demand a debt haircut in exchange for siding with John Kerry on further Russian "punishment." Or he may simply hold the line and hold off for a competing, better offer from Russia and the BRICs, whose leverage may be nominal now that crude is plummeting, but if and when the last shale junk bond investor blows up and the US shale renaissance is over sending crude soaring right back to $100, then watch as the oil exporters are back with a bang, and dictating geopolitical terms.
And whatever happens, please don't remind Brussels that point 40 of Syriza's 40 Point Manifesto, aka the "nuclear option", is "Closure of all foreign bases in Greece and withdrawal from NATO."
It is so bad that Business New Europe went so far as to ask if the New Greek Government is "Russia's Trojan horse inside the EU?"
In any event, the European balance of power has just shifted and in a way that nobody anticipated:
The biggest winners: if only for now: Greece and Russia (and, while it will never be admitted, all those Europeans who desperately need the Russian import market).
The biggest losers: all the unelected Eurocrats in Brussels who at this moment are scratching their heads how to bring the bad news that there is no longer unanimity on Russian sanctions to John Kerry, and all thanks to a country nobody thought would dare to speak up.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-29/putins-unexpected-victory-germany-furious-greece-now-russian-sanctions-veto

Monday, 26 January 2015

Greece: Victory for the people or a test?

I have talked about "testing the waters", about the fact that we see the small(ish) moves that are the indicator of bigger moves to come. The Icelandic revolution was a prime example of how the testing is done.

Yesterday the Greek people voted in what was a legendary election to free themselves from the slavery of the European Union. Already a coalition majority government has been formed and the smoke hasn't even cleared yet from the parties of last night's victory. While the newly formed Greek government has to deal with the "EU Situation", Tsipras has already been very clear that Greece will NOT deal with the terror troika of the IMF, ECB and European Union. This is moment of truth.

Will Greece exit the Eurozone? Will they tell their slavers to drop dead and just walk away? More importantly though is the question: What does this mean for other ailing EU nations that have long been under the heel of the Eurozone's Bandit Barrons and their crushing "austerity" economic warfare against the people? As this article below points out, while the Western Media whores want to talk trash about Greece and their entry into the EU verging on fraud to begin with (which in itself is bullshit as it was Goldman Sachs that created the false numbers and deceived the Greek people into believing that their economy was stable and could sustain becoming an EU state), the example of Spain disproves this spin-doctored rhetoric.

And so we will watch very closely. Greece is the "test".

Spain and Portugal are themselves in just as serious a situation financially as Greece is, and Spain already has a very strong movement in their population to separate from the Eurozone. ....

Testing, testing...1....2....3.....

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Is This The Day Europe Gets Its Future Back?

January 25, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:31 am

With The Greek election in full motion, and first results perhaps 12 hours away, It would seem useful, no matter how the Greeks vote, to lay to rest a few misconceptions, and to expose a few ‘conceptions’ that have – largely – remained buried to date.
The first misconception is that the Greeks borrowed like crazy and therefore deserve to be thrown into a pit of suffering and misery. It is simply nonsense, a mere political narrative. Besides, most of what was borrowed went to the utterly corrupt ‘oligarch system’, not to the people in the street. Something the EU was certainly aware of when it accepted Greece as a member. But corrupt regimes can be of great use.
A few days back, in Bunch Of Criminals!, I made the point that the EU, and its members, have no right to do to a fellow member country what they did to Greece – and want to continue doing -.
SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras said this week that he will not negotiate with the Troika, but directly with EU officials. And there is a very solid reason for that. In today’s Observer, Helena Smith interviews Greek sociologist Constantine Tsoukalas, who understands what has been happening to his country, and – rightfully – frames it in terms of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine.
What has happened to Greece is what Klein describes was done to South America and – later – Eastern Europe. Disaster capitalism. Bringing entire countries to their knees by enforcing predatory economic policies, and then using the ensuing chaos and smouldering ruins to take full control over their political, economic and social systems. Helena Smith:

Is Greece About To Call Time On Five Punishing Years Of Austerity?

For Professor Constantine Tsoukalas, Greece’s pre-eminent sociologist, there is no question that, come Monday, Europe will have reached a watershed. I first met Tsoukalas in January 2009, in his lofty, book-lined apartment in Kolonaki. For several weeks Athens had been shaken by riots triggered by the police shooting of a teenage boy. The violence was tumultuous and prolonged.
Looking back, it is clear that this was the start of the crisis – a cry for help by a dislocated youth robbed of hope as a result of surging unemployment and enraged by a system that, corrupt and inefficient, favoured the few. Tsoukalas knew that this was “the beginning of something” although he could not tell what. But with great prescience he spoke of the degeneration of politics – both inside and outside Greece – the rise of moral indignation, and the emptiness of a globalised market “that was supposed to put an end to ideology but, in crisis, has instead created this moment of great ideological tension”.
Six years later, following the longest recession on record, he is in little doubt that anger has fuelled the rise of Syriza. On the back of rage over austerity, the leftists have seen their popularity soar from 5% before the crisis to as high as 35% – more than the combined total of New Democracy and left-leaning Pasok, the two parties that have alternated in power since the restoration of democracy in 1974.
The European policy towards Greece, to a large extent, has been determined by the will to experiment with the feasibility of shock therapies,” says Tsoukalas. “It worked, but the reaction is going to be a leftwing government. Europe cannot survive as it is. The rise of fascism … should be sufficient [evidence] to everyone that it has to change.”
If Greece’s rebellion was to occur in a coherent way, Tsoukalas, who is being fielded by Syriza as an honorary candidate, believes it would be only a matter of time before it was replicated in other parts of the continent. “These elections are important because they are a reminder to the people of Europe that there is another way out,” he insists. “That neoliberal orthodoxy is not an immovable problem.”
[..] at 28 Veikou Street, Syriza runs the Solidarity Club – initially set up as a food bank in March 2013 when stories began to surface of malnourished children fainting in schools. In recent months, its staff have focused on providing medicines. “That’s the big problem now because so many are uninsured, without any access to the health system,” says volunteer Panaghiota Mourtidou. “People don’t have the money to go to doctors. If they have a toothache, they get terrified, because how the hell are they going to pay for a visit to the dentist?”
With its Che Guevara posters, Italian Euro-communist flags, chaos of boxes and tins, and makeshift furniture, there is something of a field-camp feeling about Veikou Street. But its army of volunteers are tireless. This, they say, is a battle to be won, a huge victory for the left that Greece will set in motion. “We are conscious that we have managed to unite in a way that the left elsewhere has failed to do,” says Angeliki Kassola, a theatre director. “I’ve met lots of once-strident New Democracy supporters who say they will be voting for us because they are attracted to Syriza’s vision of democracy, justice, dignity – all the things that have been taken from us in the crisis.”

There will be plenty who don’t agree with an analysis like this. Just as there will be plenty who insist that the Greeks brought it all upon themselves. They should take a look at what my friend Steve Keen, presently “Professor of Economics and Head of the School of Economics, Politics and History at Kingston University London”, wrote this week in Forbes Magazine. That should cure a few lost souls of their foolish fantasies. And then they should take their new found insights and ask themselves: wait a minute, what is going on here? Why is Greece being squeezed the way it is? Deep down, you already know, don’t you? Steve:

It’s All The Greeks’ Fault

I fully expect most commentators to take a line like that in my title. After all, it’s common knowledge that the Greeks lied about their levels of public debt to appear to qualify for the EU’s entry criteria, which include that aggregate public debt should be below 60% of GDP. Though there’s an argument that Goldman Sachs, many of whose ex-staff are now leading Central Bankers, helped the Greeks make this alleged lie, the responsibility for it will be shafted home to the Greeks, and that in turn will be used to argue that the Greeks deserve to suffer.
The story, in other words, will be that the Greeks were architects of their own dilemma, and that therefore they should pay for it, rather than making the rest of the world suffer through a write-down of their debts. Emotion will rule the debate rather than logic. So to cast a logical eye over this forthcoming debate, I’m going to consider who is really to blame for the Greek dilemma by considering another country entirely: Spain. Today, Greece and Spain are in very similar situations, with unemployment rates of well over 25%—higher than the worst the USA recorded during the Great Depression (see Figure 1). But unlike Greece, Spain before the crisis was doing everything right, according to the EU.
More importantly still, Spain’s government debt when the EU imposed its austerity regime (mid-2010) was still well below America’s, even though both had risen substantially since the crisis. Spain’s government debt ratio was 65% of GDP then, versus 78% for the USA. The whole purpose of the EU’s austerity program was to reduce government debt levels. Reducing government debt was the political topic du jour in America as well from 2010 on, but the various attempts to impose austerity came to naught: instead, after shooting up because of deliberate policy at the time of the crisis America’s budget deficit merely responded to the state of the economy.
Politically paralyzed Washington talked austerity, but never actually imposed it. So who was more successful: the deliberate, policy-driven EU attempt to reduce government debt, or the “muddle through” USA? Figure 2 shows that muddle through was a hands-down winner: the USA’s government debt to GDP ratio has stabilized at 90% of GDP, while Spain’s has sailed past 100%. The USA’s macroeconomic performance has also been far better than Spain’s under the EU’s policy of austerity. Comparing the USA’s unemployment rate to Spain’s has to account for the fact that it was higher before the crisis—at 8.5%, Spain’s unemployment was 1.75 times the USA’s when the crisis began. It is now about 4 times the USA’s.
So simply on the data, the prima facie case is that all of Spain’s problems—and by inference, most of Greece’s—are due to austerity, rather than Spain’s (or Greece’s) own failings. On the data alone, the EU should “Cry Uncle”, concede Greece’s point, stop imposing austerity, and talk debt-writeoffs—especially since the Greeks can argue that at least part of its excessive public debt ratio is due to the failure of the EU’s austerity policies to reduce it.
But I know that data isn’t enough to sway the public opinion—let alone the bureaucrats in Brussels. So we need to know the why: why did austerity in Europe fail to reduce the government debt ratio, while muddle-through has stabilized it in the USA? Here I return to my hobby-horse: the key factor that I consider and mainstream economists ignore—the level and rate of change of private debt. The first clue this gives us is that the EU’s pre-crisis poster-boy, Spain, had the greatest growth in private debt of the three—far exceeding the USA’s. Its peak debt level was also much higher—225% of GDP in mid-2010 versus 170% of GDP for the USA in 2009 (see Figure 4).
The second clue comes from the change in debt data: the factor that Greece and Spain have in common is that the private sector is reducing its debt level drastically—in Spain’s case by over 20% per year. The USA, on the other hand, ended its private sector deleveraging way back in 2012. Today, Americans are increasing their private debt levels at a rate of about 5% of GDP per year—well below the peak levels prior to the crisis, but roughly in line with the rate of growth of nominal GDP.
The third clue? I’ll leave that for my next post—this one is long enough already. But the conclusion is that Greece’s crisis is the EU’s fault, and the EU should “pay” via the debt write-offs that Syriza wants – and then some.