Left victory in Greece breaks new ground

[Starry Messenger]

http://peoplesworld.org/left-victory-in-greece-breaks-new-ground/

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Initial policy announcements by Tsipras are strikingly radical. On domestic policy, he immediately stopped further privatizations, including of port facilities, and doubled the minimum wage. He announced free electrical service for 300,000 of the country's poorest families. There will be food aid and efforts to create jobs in a country where a quarter of the workforce is unemployed. Unpopular property taxes will be cut, but will be more than made up for by a crackdown on Greece's notorious practice of tax evasion by the rich, and higher taxes on the wealthy. In the past Syriza has promised to tax the country's wealthy shipping industry, which currently pays no income tax.

The new government plans to go to the Troika, not hat in hand, but with new demands, including the repayment by Germany of a "loan" that Greece was forced to hand over to the Nazis when they occupied the country during World War II. Greece will ask for new conditions for the repayment of its current bailout loans, amounting to a renegotiation and a moratorium on current payments.

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Among the Greek and European ruling classes, reactions to the election mix panic and rage. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble declared that the Troika and Germany would not budge from their harsh position toward Greece: that the Greeks have only themselves to blame for their current sufferings caused by irresponsible and dishonest management of their economy by past governments. The fact that Syriza has raised the issue of Nazi German despoiling of Greece during World War II, for which Greece was never compensated, did not improve the mood in Berlin. Other ruling-class figures threaten to push Greece out of the European Union.

If Tsipras sticks to his guns, there will be a mobilization of right-wing forces in Europe and beyond. The European ruling class does not just fear what might happen in Greece, it fears the example Greece might give to other poor nations such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland, which might throw over the Troika regime of austerity and privatization and demand that the crisis of capitalism not be balanced on the backs of workers and the poor.

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[libdem4life]

1. Feed the poor? Tax the Rich? Ask corporations to pitch in a bit? What a concept.

That last paragraph is profound. And after those "poor" nations, i.e. the peasants, figure it out, then we might get a whiff of it here Over the Pond. Then our Very Own Ruling Class might take heed....especially those who are cozy with the European Ruling Class. Or, more likely, batten down the protective economic hatches even more.

I particularly like the phrase "the crisis of capitalism". When it reaches its death throes, it's not going to be pretty. But it will happen because every entity is cyclical, just like human beings and plants and universes et al; birth, life, death, rebirth ... as something further along the evolutionary cycle.

Nothing new under the Sun...Solomon.

[catnhatnh]

2. New National Anthem?

[Ghost Dog]

3. Alexis Tsipras's "open letter" to German citizens published on Jan.13 in Handelsblatt

... In 2010, the Greek state ceased to be able to service its debt. Unfortunately, European officials decided to pretend that this problem could be overcome by means of the largest loan in history on condition of fiscal austerity that would, with mathematical precision, shrink the national income from which both new and old loans must be paid. An insolvency problem was thus dealt with as if it were a case of illiquidity.

In other words, Europe adopted the tactics of the least reputable bankers who refuse to acknowledge bad loans, preferring to grant new ones to the insolvent entity so as to pretend that the original loan is performing while extending the bankruptcy into the future. Nothing more than common sense was required to see that the application of the 'extend and pretend' tactic would lead my country to a tragic state. That instead of Greece's stabilization, Europe was creating the circumstances for a self-reinforcing crisis that undermines the foundations of Europe itself.

My party, and I personally, disagreed fiercely with the May 2010 loan agreement not because you, the citizens of Germany, did not give us enough money but because you gave us much, much more than you should have and our government accepted far, far more than it had a right to. Money that would, in any case, neither help the people of Greece (as it was being thrown into the black hole of an unsustainable debt) nor prevent the ballooning of Greek government debt, at great expense to the Greek and German taxpayer...

... Germany, and in particular the hard-working German workers, have nothing to fear from a SYRIZA victory. The opposite holds. Our task is not to confront our partners. It is not to secure larger loans or, equivalently, the right to higher deficits. Our target is, rather, the country's stabilization, balanced budgets and, of course, the end of the grand squeeze of the weaker Greek taxpayers in the context of a loan agreement that is simply unenforceable. We are committed to end 'extend and pretend' logic not against German citizens but with a view to the mutual advantages for all Europeans...

/... http://syriza.net.gr/index.php/en/pressroom/253-open-letter-to-the-german-readers-that-which-you-were-never-told-about-greece