Italy and Greece join Spain to aid Gazans

 

UPDATE 09/30/2025:  Sadly...

UPDATE 10/01/2025:

More legal than Iran-Contra

U.S. President Joe Biden is able to skirt congressional opposition to Ukraine aid by donating weapons to Greece with the expectation that Greece will then donate its own surplus equipment to Kyiv, according to a Jan. 30 report published in Forbes.

A U.S. legal authority known as Excess Defense Articles (EDA) allows the president to deem certain weapons systems surplus and transfer them to partner nations at a cheap price or without cost.

[...]

Kathimerini reported that Greek political and military leadership have already agreed to transfer surplus equipment to Ukraine.

  Kyiv Independent

Was that option not available to Ronald Reagan? Or did he want the Contras to have the best, latest arms?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile, in Greece

[Greeks] have been left astonished and alarmed by the [British] government’s handling of the public health emergency. Britain’s chaotic strategy, initial soft-touch approach and high death toll have been met with disbelief in a country that, despite the eviscerating effects of a near decade-long debt crisis, has kept the virus under control.

[...]

In contrast to the more than 31,000 who have now succumbed to the disease in the UK, Greece has recorded one of the continent’s lowest casualty rates, with 150 deaths and fewer than 2,700 confirmed coronavirus cases after enforcement of tough measures to contain the epidemic early on.

[...]

It has been a stark change of fortune for a nation more usually associated with civil disobedience and incompetence.

[...]

As Britain enters the week uncertain of whether its lockdown will be significantly eased, Greeks are preparing beaches and hotels for a tourist season they hope will begin in July as restrictions gradually unwind.

  Guardian

I assume they have safeguards against foreigners bringing covid-19 with them. Or maybe they are still not letting any flights into the country.

Pride has replaced anger and shame – sentiments that prevailed throughout the rollercoaster ride that was the country’s brush with bankruptcy. Trust in the ability of state institutions has also reportedly returned.

[...]

[Prime Minister Kyriakos] Mitsotakis, a former banker who assumed power less than a year ago, has also been credited with decisive leadership, shutting down the economy – a body blow when it was just beginning to recover – and deferring to medical advice from the outset.

The Greek leader understood that the country’s austerity-hit health system would quickly collapse if the virus wasn’t contained. Experts in infectious diseases were brought in, taking centre stage with daily briefings.

“He is a details man who reads every study, every new bit of research about any advance on the virus,” said an aide.

I am so jealous.

There was, he added, no room for spin, showmanship, hubris or “any of the feelings of invincibility” that so often shackle nations with an imperial past. “We were very aware of Greece’s limitations.”

"Trying to make a hole in water."

P.S. I love the sound of Greek names.

The world shutting down

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Nothing to see here

Presidential candidate Donald Trump is heard on tape discussing with his attorney Michael Cohen how they would buy the rights to a Playboy model's story about an alleged affair Trump had with her years earlier.

[...]

The recording offers the public a glimpse at the confidential discussions between Trump and Cohen, and it confirms the man who now occupies the Oval Office had contemporaneous knowledge of a proposal to buy the rights to the story of Karen McDougal, a woman who has alleged she had an extramarital affair with Trump about a decade ago.

[...]

The recording, which was provided to CNN by Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis, was made in September 2016.

[...]

The audio recording of Trump and Cohen relates to whether Trump should buy the rights of the story from American Media, which paid McDougal $150,000 in August 2016 for her story about an alleged 10 month affair with Trump. The story was never published by AMI.

  CNN

The audio is provided at that CNN link.  I like the part where Trump shouts out an aside to someone, "Get me a coke, please."

Here's what Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, told CNN's Chris Cuomo:

Davis later added: "Ladies and gentlemen, if you voted for Donald Trump, listen to the tape and ask yourself: Is Donald Trump lying when he said he didn't use the word 'cash' and accuses Michael Cohen of using the word 'cash'? Cohen has been disparaged. Cohen has been insulted and called all sorts of things by people around Donald Trump."

[...]

"What do they fear, Chris? Why am I representing him? They fear that he has the truth about Donald Trump. He will someday speak the truth about Donald Trump. The truth is that when Donald Trump said 'cash,' which Rudy Giuliani knows that only drug dealers and mobsters talk about cash, it was, you heard Michael Cohen ... say what? 'No, no, no, no.'"

Is that a clear admission that Giuliani, Trump and Cohen are drug dealers or mobsters?

"There's no way the President is going to be setting up a corporation and then using cash, unless you're a complete idiot," Giuliani said on Fox News Tuesday night.

If the shoe fits.

When the existence of the apparent deal with AMI was first reported by The Wall Street Journal just days before the election, the campaign said that the President was unaware of anything relating to a McDougal payoff, and Hope Hicks—then a spokeswoman—denied that Trump even had an affair with McDougal. But the recording, made two months earlier, suggests otherwise.

[...]

"I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David," Cohen said in the recording, likely a reference to American Media head David Pecker.

When financing comes up again later in the conversation, Trump interrupts Cohen asking, "What financing?" according to the recording. When Cohen tells Trump, "We'll have to pay," Trump is heard saying "pay with cash" but the audio is muddled and it's unclear whether he suggests paying with cash or not paying. Cohen says, "no, no" but it is not clear what is said next.

Whatever is said, it's clear that, contrary to what Trump and Giuliani have been saying, Trump knew about the McDougal issue. It belies their contention (that was obviously bullshit all along) that Cohen took care of all the issues with alleged Trump sexual relationships without discussing what to do about them with Trump.

"There's no indication of any crime being committed on this tape," Giuliani said on Fox News Channel Tuesday night.

Whoever said Trump's affairs and payoffs was criminal?

Clean-up on aisle one.



Yeah, I see a dud, too.

But, there's rumbling in farm country.  That must be addressed.







The phrase is "nipping at your heels" - as in a dog.  Not "snipping".  What snips at your heels?

Wait!  He's just seen Fox & Friends...



What kind of lawyer?  The slimey kind that works for a slimey client who's a well-known liar who stiffs contractors and treats his lawyer like shit.  That's what kind.  Maybe Cohen's not as dumb as he looks.

What I don't understand - and I'd really like to know - is why Trump's lawyers waived attorney-client privilege on this tape, even after the Special Master who was assigned to review all the material seized from Cohen by the FBI ruled that it was privileged. Unless something else is so bad they're hoping this particular shiny object will distract everyone from whatever that is.

And, by the way, I don't see where Trump has made any mention of the wildfire tragedy happening in Greece.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 8pm:



Indeed.  They just banned a CNN reporter from a press event.

Game on at Davos

Or, the Roman Colosseum.

Donald Trump's administration is "a danger to the world" and is attempting to "establish a mafia state", according to a speech by financier and philanthropist George Soros at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

  IB times

Actually, as I mentioned before, Trump's whining about Palestine being disrespectful to the US, does sond like mob talk. You have to wonder how any organization could function with him at the top, though.

Soros told the audience that the US Constitution, other institutions and "a vibrant civil society" are standing in the way of Trump's plans.

[...]

Soros told the audience that the US Constitution, other institutions and "a vibrant civil society" are standing in the way of Trump's plans.

[...]

The billionaire also took aim at monopolistic technology and social media companies, which "while once liberating, are now socially damaging". He said that the power to "shape people's minds" now lies in the hands of a few companies, and that those without freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. In another attack on Trump, Soros pointed to the 2016 presidential elections as an example of this.

The billionaire also took aim at monopolistic technology and social media companies, which "while once liberating, are now socially damaging". He said that the power to "shape people's minds" now lies in the hands of a few companies, and that those without freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. In another attack on Trump, Soros pointed to the 2016 presidential elections as an example of this.

[...]

One solution would be a "multi-track" approach to EU membership, in which member states are free to form coalitions of the willing to pursue particular goals in which they agree.

The EU should also drop the requirement for member states to adopt the euro, Soros said, as "I would like to see Britain remain a member of the EU or eventually rejoin it, and that couldn't happen if it meant adopting the euro".

George Soros knows infinitely more about finance than I do, but I think the idea of the Euro was not such a bad one. The problem was that it was not applied equally to all members. That's one of the things that caused Greece to fall. A euro from a Greek bank was not equivalent in strength and favor as a euro from a German bank. Greece's once finance minister who quit once Greece's president decided to go along with the EU austerity proram, does know as much - and maybe more - about finance than George Soros, and this is what he had to say:

Varoufakis: Well, imagine if in the United States you treated people from Arizona as non-Americans or as people that must fend for themselves and whose banking system is their own problem. Then you wouldn't be having the United States of America.

Brancaccio: And that's the conundrum that Europe is still in. It didn't fix it.

Varoufakis: Indeed, we created the common currency, but did not create everything else which is necessary not to make the common currency a place of shared prosperity.

[...]

Brancaccio: Just so we know a piece of the story, what did the finance minister of Germany want to do but his chancellor wouldn't let them do?

Varoufakis: Wolfgang Schaeuble, decades ago, was a committed federalist, but a combination of Angela Merkel — who usurped him and effectively stole, that's in his view, the prime ministership, the chancellorship from him, as well as the French, did not want a proper federation.

They wanted all the benefits from a common currency, but without the obligations of a federal democratic political system. Schaeuble was against that. But over the years, he became a cynical man, using the finance ministry to do that which he would have wanted to do as the chancellor of Germany.

  Marketplace

On the Other Hand, When in Brussels...

European leaders hoped President Donald Trump would explicitly endorse NATO’s bedrock collective defense clause during his visit to Brussels on Thursday, after he spent the presidential campaign suggesting it was hollow. He didn’t.

[...]

Baltic countries, in particular, are worried about massing Russian military forces that could overwhelm them, and were hoping for the typical, ironclad U.S. commitment, but left disappointed.

[...]

In a speech at the opening of NATO’s new headquarters, Trump slammed U.S. allies for not spending enough on defense before an uncomfortable-looking audience of fellow heads of state, and in between sparked awkward run-ins with other leaders that underscored strained U.S.-European relations since Trump took office.

[...]

“This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States,” Trump said in a speech. “And many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years and not paying in those past years,” he said yet again. (Of course, as Trump has had explained to him countless times, countries don’t pay any dues to NATO, as they do to organizations like the U.N., so it’s unclear what he is talking about.)

[...]

Currently, only five of NATO’s 28 members — the United States, United Kingdom, Poland, Estonia, and Greece — meet the alliance’s benchmark of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense.

  Foreign Policy

Greece? Jeez, they can hardly feed themselves these days. Couldn't they get a discount?

“We should recognize that with these chronic underpayments and growing threats, even 2 percent of GDP is insufficient to close the gaps in modernizing, readiness, and the size of forces,” [Trump] said.

[...]

After the speech and some tense run-ins with his peers, Trump and the other NATO leaders gathered for a photo op on stage, while leaders mingled and chatted with one another. No NATO leaders were seen approaching Trump to speak with him on his way out.

NO, and Macron and Merkel were in a friendly huddle together and with others every time the camera was on them.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Western Media's Venezuela Smear & Neoliberal Policy

On Monday, March 27, I received a message from a Bloomberg reporter asking me about a very nice compliment that the President of Venezuela and Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement, Nicolás Maduro, had said about me.

[...]

The reporter, Christine Jenkins, asked if I knew President Maduro or could explain what he found of value in my writing. I said that I thought he probably was referring to my discussion in Killing the Host of a September 2014 Harvard Business Review article by William Lazonick, “Profits without Prosperity,” calculating that for the decade 2003-2012, the 449 companies publicly listed in the S&P 500 index spent only 9% of their earnings on new capital investment. They used 54% to buy back their own stock, and 37% to pay dividends. I told the reporter that I thought the President’s point was that the financial sector was not financing capital formation and employment to increase output.

I told her that I had not followed Venezuela’s economy closely in recent years. I did say that I had discussed how Argentina and Greece were subjected to austerity as a result of foreign debt, and my belief that no sovereign nation should be obliged to impose austerity on its population to pay foreign bondholders. That has indeed been the problem confronting Latin America for decades, and is a central theme of all my books since Super Imperialism in 1972.

And to cap matters, of course, U.S. foreign policy has mobilized the World Bank and IMF to back creditor interests, foreign investment and privatization – while isolating countries from Cuba through Venezuela (and now Greece) to demonstrate that neoliberal diplomacy will make such a country a pariah if it makes a serious attempt to oppose austerity and financialization.

[...]

If you are inevitably going to default on sovereign debt, it’s best to stop paying now and keep what foreign exchange you have, and try to renegotiate the debt to bring it within the ability to be paid. Otherwise, you will end up suffering the legal tangle of default, but be stripped of funds needed by the domestic economy to survive.

  Michael Hudson

That is exactly what happened to Greece, and exactly the advice the ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis was giving his country in negotiations with the EU and was ultimately ignored.

I haven’t studied the legal status of Venezuela’s foreign debt, or what alternatives the government might have had open to it in the face of strong opposition from its domestic oligarchy as well as foreign pressure.

[...]

On Wednesday, [Jenkins] got back to me, and said that she was going to write up an article for Bloomberg.

I asked for a copy, and she wrote back that “Hi – so we actually aren’t allowed to send articles before publication!” That’s what raised a red flag in my head. My impression is that every serious reporter checks back with his or her source to ascertain that the report is accurate. This seems to be basic journalistic ethics.

[...]

[The article] was nothing at all like what I had said. It made me appear to be criticizing Venezuela’s politicians and, by implication, President Maduro. But at no point had I criticized Venezuela’s attempts at reform. Rather, I had criticized the problem of neoliberal opposition to countries trying to uplift their populations along the lines that Venezuela had done, using debt leverage to force countries to impose austerity. It looks to me like Venezuela is getting the “Greek treatment.”

[...]

I was appalled to find the article a hit-piece on Venezuela, and to make me appear to criticize President Maduro by implying that the country is not helpable. I never said that I was not “a fan of the socialist leader.” I applaud his attempts to maneuver as best he can within the corner into which Venezuela has been painted.

[...]

None of my beliefs are what Bloomberg [...] implied.

[...]

As I wrote to the Bloomberg reporter after reading her story: “The problem is that I AM sympathetic with the AIMS of Chavez etc. The problem is the hostility all around him that is undercutting the economy. That’s what makes the problem insolvable.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Meanwhile in the Eurozone

The mounting debt crisis in Greece has sparked fears the euro is on the verge of collapse.

[...]

[Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek ex-finance minister, who was against a "bailout" that Greece obviously could not repay] said: “You must come to terms with reality. The tragedy was in 2010 a bankrupt country was given a huge loan not to save it but in order to transfer, cynically, huge banking losses from the books of the Franco-German banks onto the shoulders of the weakest taxpayers in Europe.

  Express

Which, in itself makes no sense other than the short term. Once Greece cannot cover those losses and is destroyed financially, they can't be bled any more.  But then, humans always seem to be about the short term.

The International Monetary Fund has called on Europe to provide “significant debt relief” to Greece – despite EU creditors ruling out any further assistance before the current programme expires in 2018.

Jesus, even the IMF says this won't work. In the past, they've been the biggest pusher of austerity measures on the planet.

The organisation added progress to date in turning the crisis around has been “significant” but acknowledged that deep cuts to public services and pensions had come “at a high cost to society, reflected in declining incomes and exceptionally high unemployment”.

[...]

The crisis could boil over as soon as July, with Greece due to repay some £6 billion (€7 billion) to its creditors – money it cannot repay without foreign intervention.

And in turn, that could spark another go at Grexit.

And then Italy.

In Italy [...] some hedge funds are making direct bets that the prices of Italian bonds will collapse.

[...]

Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank’s president, promised in summer 2012 to do whatever it took to save the euro, but the debt burdens of Italy and Greece have become progressively worse amid the stagnation of their economies.

Italy’s debt as a share of its economic output has risen to 133 percent from 123 percent during that period. In Greece, debt has increased to an expected 183 percent of the country’s total economy from 159 percent.

These figures highlight a harsh economic reality: Just as an individual will struggle to pay off a punishing credit card bill if her salary stays flat or falls, a country cannot reduce its debt pile without expanding its economy.

  NYT

Her?

For investors interested in making specific bets against Italy, two studies that conclude the country is unlikely to be able to repay its debts in full have attracted the most attention.

And that should not be legal. Betting on the market. This is how global finance crashed in the first place, and partially responsible for Greece and Italy being in the trouble they're in.

[T]he Mediobanca report highlights just how little Italy has benefited from being in the euro: Growth has been literally zero, and the economy’s competitiveness as an exporter has deteriorated.

Too bad Italy's name doesn't lend itself as well to exiting the EU as Britain and Greece.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Goldman Sachs' Desructive Global Hand

June 30, 2105

According to investigative reports that appeared in Der Spiegel, the New York Times, BBC, and Bloomberg News from 2010 through 2012, Blankfein, now Goldman Sachs CEO, Cohn, now President and COO, and Loudiadis, a Managing Director, all played a role in structuring complex derivative deals with Greece which accomplished two things: they allowed Greece to hide the true extent of its debt and they ended up almost doubling the amount of debt Greece owed under the dubious derivative deals.

A February 2012 BBC documentary on the Goldman Sachs deal provides a layman’s view of the dirty underbelly of the deal, calling it “a toxic import” from America that is “hastening” the downfall of Greece.

  Wall Street on Parade

Yes, that Gary Cohn. Trump's choice to head his economic policy team.

March 3, 2010

Goldman Sachs is at the center of the scrutiny. Recent reports show that the firm consulted Greece as far back as 2000 on ways to take on more debt--and then hide it by packaging the liabilities into complex securities that were then counted as assets. It's the same kind of financial trickery that contributed to the massive housing boom and bust in the U.S.

[...]

Goldman used its insider knowledge of Greece's precarious financial situation to bet on a potential default by Greece. Thanks to its complicated financial maneuvers, the super-bank stands to make a killing in the event Greece defaults or needs to be bailed out.
  Socialist Worker

Which is exactly what happened. Goldman played the same game on Greece in 2010 that it played on American investors in 2007. And it made a killing off both, while its victims were financially destroyed. No one at Goldman paid any price for fleecing people in America, so why not play the game on Greece?

Importantly, investors don't actually have to own the asset that they are arranging a [credit] swap to cover. Thus, swaps can become a tool for gambling on defaults occurring--and can even contribute to defaults taking place.

This is the equivalent of everyone else on a street buying fire insurance on one person's house--and then collecting when the house burns down. There's a reason that's illegal in the insurance business--the incentive is for all kinds of people to load up on insurance and then commit arson to collect. But on Wall Street, the same sort of activity applied to financial investments--called naked credit default swaps--is perfectly legal.

In the case of Greece, it seems that the speculators have pushed the country closer to default.

[...]

These practices forced even Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke--hardly a critic of Wall Street--to admit last week, "Using these instruments in a way that intentionally destabilized a company or a country is--is counterproductive."

"Counterproductive." Not immoral? Unethical?

But, counterproductive for whom? Certainly not for the banksters at Goldman Sachs.

The interest rate that Greece would have to pay on bonds that can raise this money is currently being valued at 7 percent--nearly double what Germany has to pay to borrow and 3 percentage points higher than Greece's borrowing costs before this crisis.

This is the result of investors betting in various ways against Greek bonds. The problem has become so vexing that the German government is trying to identify speculators in Greek debt to prevent them from profiting from any bailout.

How about the big one: Goldman Sachs?

A report in the German newspaper FAZ indicates that AIG sold the credit default swaps on Greece. Ultimately, these transactions enabled Greece to borrow 1 billion euros without adding to its official debt--and according to Bloomberg, Goldman was paid $300 million for arranging the deal.

And that was just one deal.

[...]

In late 2009, Goldman came calling again. A team, led by Goldman President Gary Cohn, proposed that Greece push debt from its health care system into the future by creating another set of derivatives. The proposal was rejected. But Goldman wasn't done. It had loaded up on credit default swaps covering a default by Greece.

[...]

"Wall Street, led here by Goldman and AIG, helped to create the debt, then helped to create the hysteria about possible defaults," Marshall Auerback, a professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, wrote. "As [credit default swap] prices rise and Greece's credit rating collapses, the interest rate it must pay on bonds rises--fueling a death spiral because it cannot cut spending or raise taxes sufficiently to reduce its deficit."

[...]

As a result of these activities, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Reserve Bank are investigating the role that Goldman played. But given the kid-gloves treatment that Goldman has received--not to mention the extent that it's already been bailed out by the government--it seems highly unlikely that anything will come of these inquiries.

Now, there was a bet that could have paid off handsomely, if anyone had been dumb enough to take it.

Oh, and one more thing for Greece:

In addition, privatizations--also done at the behest of financial firms like Goldman--mean that former sources of government revenue, such as toll roads, are no longer in the state's hands--leaving it even less able to pay its public debt.

July 16, 2015

[Goldman CEO, Lloyd] Blankfein and his Goldman team helped Greece hide the true extent of its debt, and in the process almost doubled it. And just as with the American subprime crisis, and the current plight of many American cities, Wall Street’s predatory lending played an important although little-recognized role.

[...]

 For its services, Goldman received a whopping 600 million euros ($793 million).

[...]

 After the 9/11 attacks, bond yields plunged, resulting in a big loss for Greece because of the formula Goldman had used to compute the country’s debt repayments under the swap. By 2005, Greece owed almost double what it had put into the deal, pushing its off-the-books debt from 2.8 billion euros to 5.1 billion. In 2005, the deal was restructured and that 5.1 billion euros in debt locked in. Perhaps not incidentally, Mario Draghi, now head of the European Central Bank and a major player in the current Greek drama, was then managing director of Goldman’s international division.

[...]

As we know, Wall Street got bailed out by American taxpayers. And in subsequent years, the banks became profitable again and repaid their bailout loans. Bank shares have gone through the roof. Goldman’s were trading at $53 a share in November 2008; they’re now worth over $200. Executives at Goldman and other Wall Street banks have enjoyed huge pay packages and promotions. Blankfein, now Goldman’s CEO, raked in $24 million last year alone.

Meanwhile, the people of Greece struggle to buy medicine and food.

[...]

Meanwhile, cities and states across America have been forced to cut essential services because they’re trapped in similar deals sold to them by Wall Street banks. Many of these deals have involved swaps analogous to the ones Goldman sold the Greek government. And much like the assurances it made to the Greek government, Goldman and other banks assured the municipalities that the swaps would let them borrow more cheaply than if they relied on traditional fixed-rate bonds—while downplaying the risks they faced. Then, as interest rates plunged and the swaps turned out to cost far more, Goldman and the other banks refused to let the municipalities refinance without paying hefty fees to terminate the deals.

[...]

Three years ago, the Detroit Water Department had to pay Goldman and other banks penalties totaling $547 million to terminate costly interest-rate swaps. Forty percent of Detroit’s water bills still go to paying off the penalty. [...] Likewise, the Chicago school system—whose budget is already cut to the bone—must pay over $200 million in termination penalties on a Wall Street deal that had Chicago schools paying $36 million a year in interest-rate swaps.

A deal involving interest-rate swaps that Goldman struck with Oakland, California, more than a decade ago has ended up costing the city about $4 million a year, but Goldman has refused to allow Oakland out of the contract unless it ponies up a $16 million termination fee.

[...]

Borrowers that get into trouble are rarely blameless, of course: They spent too much, and were gullible or stupid enough to buy Goldman’s pitches. Greece brought on its own problems, as did many American homeowners and municipalities.

But in all of these cases, Goldman knew very well what it was doing. It knew more about the real risks and costs of the deals it proposed than those who accepted them.

  The Nation

And it kept that knowledge to itself because that was key to soaking the victims.

This is the swamp from which Trump has pulled at least four creatures for his administration, Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn to head Treasury and Finance Policy, respectively.

Draining the Goldman swamp to stock the White House.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

From Greece to Great Britain

The groundwork for the Brexit debacle was laid last July when Europe crushed the last progressive pro-European government the EU is likely to see – the SYRIZA government elected in Greece in January 2015. Most Britons were not directly engaged with the Greek trauma. Many surely looked askance at the Greek leaders. But they must have noticed how Europe talked down to Greece, how it scolded its officials, how it dictated terms and how it made rebellious country into an example, so that no one else would ever be tempted to follow the same path.

[...]

If the hard right can rise in Britain, it can rise anywhere. If Britain can exit, so can anyone; neither the EU nor the Euro is irrevocable. And most likely, since the apocalyptic predictions of economic collapse and “Lehman on steroids” that preceded the Brexit referendum will not come true, such warnings will be even less credible when heard the next time.

[...]

That such a campaign could prevail – leading soon to a hard right government in Britain – testifies to the high-handed incompetence of the political, financial, British and European elites. Remain ran a campaign of fear, condescension and bean-counting, as though Britons cared only about the growth rate and the pound.

[...]

The political effect has sent a harsh message to Europeans living in Britain, and to the many who would have liked to come. The economic effect will leave Britain in the hands of simpletons who believe that deregulation is the universal source of growth.

[...]

If the drop in sterling lasts, British exports may actually benefit. If the world gets skittish, the dollar will rise and US exports may suffer, with possible political consequences in America this fall. Otherwise, in the most likely case, the markets will settle down and British life will continue normally at first – except, of course, for immigrants.

  James Galbraith

We shall see, said Grandpa. We shall see.

By the way: what US exports?

While Greece Struggles

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

While We're on the Subject of Refugees

Turkish police have seized more than 1,200 unsafe life jackets destined for use by migrants trying to reach Greece by sea, in a raid on an underground workshop that used Syrian child labour, a report said Wednesday.

[...]

The news of the seizure comes a day after Turkish authorities announced that the bodies of 36 migrants had been found on its Aegean coast after their boats sank in bad weather while trying to cross to the Greek island of Lesbos.

Turkish newspapers on Wednesday published harrowing images of the corpses of the refugees as they were found on Tuesday morning, with their faces in the sand and wearing life jackets that had apparently been of no use.

[...]

AFP correspondents who reported on the wave of migrants heading from Turkey to Greece this summer had seen a booming trade in life jackets in Turkish resorts for sale at suspiciously low prices.

  Telegraph

A Little More Varoufakis

Lecture on democracy (specifically in Europe) and global economy.

Why Can't WE Have Sane People in Government?

Okay, so Yanis Varoufakis is no longer the Greek fiance minister, but for a short time, Greece looked poised to do something remarkable - break free of the IMF -  and Varoufakis was instrumental in the attempt. I just came across this Russian interview (in English) that makes him even more impressive, in my mind, than I've already seen. Thought I'd share.

P.S.  the You Tube title is misleading.  He does indeed explain why he's no Putin fan, but that's only one question in the entire interview.



Since the audio is terrible, I spent a couple of hours transcribing it, in case you want to read instead of strain to hear.  (If you're interested at all.)  I'm posting it "below the fold".  (Click "read more")

US in Latin America: Wikileaks Cables

When Greece’s left government decided to hold a national referendum on the troika-imposed austerity program, the European Central Bank retaliated by restricting liquidity for Greek banks. This triggered a prolonged bank closure and plunged Greece further into recession.

 Though Greek voters ended up massively rejecting austerity, Germany and the European creditor cartel were able to subvert democracy and get exactly what they wanted: complete submission to their neoliberal agenda.

 In the last decade and a half, a similar fight against neoliberalism has been waged across the breadth of an entire continent, and mostly outside of the public eye. Although Washington initially sought to quash all dissent, often employing even fiercer tactics than those used against Greece, Latin America’s resistance to the neoliberal agenda has in large part been successful. It’s an epic tale that’s gradually coming to light thanks to continued exploration of the massive trove of US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

[...]

Much of the story of the US government’s efforts to contain and roll back the anti-neoliberal tide can be found in the tens of thousands of WikiLeaked diplomatic cables from the region’s US diplomatic missions, dating from the early George W. Bush years to the beginning of President Obama’s administration.

The cables — which we analyze in the new book, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire — reveal the day-to-day mechanics of Washington’s political intervention in Latin America (and make a farce of the State Department mantra that “the US doesn’t interfere in the internal politics of other countries”).

  Jacobin

Read more.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

How Rich

Bullied and forced by Germany, the Greeks have to dance faster to stay in the Eurozone.

Greece's parliament will have to formally approve the following measures Wednesday:

--Streamline the VAT system and broaden the tax base to increase revenue. This will likely include raising sales taxes on restaurant meals and other items to 23%. And could include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, from 26%.

--Overhaul the pension system, which would include setting the standard retirement age at 67 and discouraging people from retiring early.

--Safeguard the independence of the nation's statistics agency

--Implement rules to meet budget targets, which could require spending cuts

  CNN Money

”Streamline the VAT system and broaden the tax base to increase revenue.”

Or maybe just get German corporations to pay their taxes.

A German company was found to be the biggest tax evader in Greece. A court in Athens found that Hochtief, the German company that was running the “Eleftherios Venizelos” Athens International airport was not paying VAT for 20 years. It is estimated that Hochtief, will have to pay more than 500 million Euros for VAT arrears. Together with other outstanding payments, like those to social security funds, it might have to pay more than 1 billion Euros.

It must be noted that under the “Troika” austerity programme Greek employees lost around 400 million Euros from cuts to their salaries.

  Greek Reporter

Boycott Germany?

Not likely in this country.  Too many people with German ancestry.  Also, we've learned to associate quality products with German design and manufacturing.  On the other hand, not many Walmart products are made in Germany, so much of America is in on the boycott by default.

So, if you're game...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I Absolutely Forbid It

Of all the aspects of Monday’s bailout deal that Greeks found humiliating, nothing drilled into their sense of pride quite like their government’s promise to sell off “valuable Greek assets” to the tune of 50 billion euros. The seven-page agreement, which European leaders thrashed out over the weekend, made no mention of where Greece is supposed to find that much property to sell. But as they scrambled for options, officials in Athens saw no way around the blood-curdling prospect of auctioning off Greek islands, nature preserves or even ancient ruins.

  Time

No.

“Those in insolvency have to sell everything they have to pay their creditors,” Josef Schlarmann, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political party, said at the time. Since publishing those remarks, the Bild newspaper, Germany’s most popular tabloid, has continued to irritate Greeks by asking why the Acropolis cannot be sold to repay debts to Germany.

[...]

The idea of locking up Greek assets in a special fund emerged on Saturday from Germany, the biggest and one of the least forgiving of the creditor-nations involved in the talks.

Yes, and isn't that remarkable?

The battleground over these reforms will now shift to Athens, where [Greek Prime Minister Alex] Tsipras will have to push them through parliament in spite of fierce resistance from members of his own government and party. Known as the Coalition of the Radical Left, the party was elected in January on a promise to avoid exactly the types of austerity measures Tsipras agreed to undertake during this weekend’s negotiations.

There's democracy for you in the land that invented democracy. Of the American style.  Elect a man on his promises and watch him turn.

German Economic Commentator's Two Cents' Worth on What Just Happened

[D]o you really think that an economic reform programme, for which a government has no political mandate, which has been explicitly rejected in a referendum, that has been forced through by sheer political blackmail, can conceivably work?

[...]

By forcing Alexis Tsipras into a humiliating defeat, Greece’s creditors have done a lot more than bring about regime change in Greece or endanger its relations with the eurozone. They have destroyed the eurozone as we know it and demolished the idea of a monetary union as a step towards a democratic political union.

In doing so they reverted to the nationalist European power struggles of the 19th and early 20th century. They demoted the eurozone into a toxic fixed exchange-rate system, with a shared single currency, run in the interests of Germany, held together by the threat of absolute destitution for those who challenge the prevailing order.

[...]

But it was not just the brutality that stood out, nor even the total capitulation of Greece. The material shift is that Germany has formally proposed an exit mechanism. On Saturday, Wolfgang Schäuble, finance minister, insisted on a time-limited exit — a “timeout” as he called it.

I have heard quite a few crazy proposals in my time, and this one is right up there. A member state pushed for the expulsion of another. This was the real coup over the weekend: not only regime change in Greece, but also regime change in the eurozone.

[...]

This brings us back to a more toxic version of the old exchange-rate mechanism of the 1990s that left countries trapped in a system run primarily for the benefit of Germany, which led to the exit of the British pound and the temporary departure of the Italian lira. What was left was a coalition of countries willing to adjust their economies to Germany’s. Britain had to leave because it was not.

[...]

Any other country that in future might challenge German economic orthodoxy will face similar problems.

[...]

We will soon be asking ourselves whether this new eurozone, in which the strong push around the weak, can be sustainable.

  Wolfgang Münchau

Well, actually, the whole planet works that way on behalf of the U.S. So, why shouldn't Germany expect it to work that way in Europe?