Grčka - enormni dug, protesti oko mera štednje

[MancMellow]

@obojica

 

sustinski - jeste: the Greeks blinked first

 

 

Opet, ni Svabe nisu bas Anglosasi, nisam siguran ni da bi njih u ekstremnom slucaju teranja stvari do same ivice, motivisao samo racio. Iz onih komentara u novinama izbija frust, kao i iz izjava Sojblebajzera.

Edited February 22, 2015 by MancMellow

[BlackGeorge]

1. pa, ono, ako im je neko nesto uzeo, to nisu Grci

 

2. paradoks istorije - sto vece sranje napravis, vise ti oproste. ne vazi apsolutno, ali u lepoj meri, posebno za XX vek

 

3. u svakom slucaju to treba malo vremena da se spremi, da ne bude panike. ali recimo bas varufakis je to zagovarao 2010-te. ipak, 70% grka je protiv toga

 

4. ako bi samo najzdravije ekonomije ostale u EZ, evro bi (eventually) najverovatnije znatno ojacao.

 

Da li stavka 3., ako se ostvari u buducem periodu, iskljucuje mogucnost obracuna sa korupcijom (zataskavanje propascu)?

 

Ova nova vlada pocinje da me podseca na Milutina Mrkonjica, kao radimo puteve, kurcimo se, a niko nece da pipne ono sto je najvaznije - grdelicka klisura, jer je najteze. :D

[aram]

ne vidim zasto bi iskljucivala?

 

a ako si ocekivao da se razracunaju sa decenijama stvaranim koruptivnim sistemom mega bogatasa za mesec dana, sta da ti kazem, smanji ocekivanja.

[Frank Pembleton]

 

 

2. paradoks istorije - sto vece sranje napravis, vise ti oproste. ne vazi apsolutno, ali u lepoj meri, posebno za XX vek

 

 

 

Too big to fail...

[Eraserhead]

 

Zanimljiva tabela za one koje tema interesuje

[MancMellow]

Pa ako se za nju racuna od posle WW1 onda je pobednik Poljska :D

 

A dobro pitanje je i - kad je Nemacka postala "nezavisna"?  ^_^

[Anduril]

Zanimljiv clanak o strategiji pregovaranja Grcke:

 

 

 

Challenging the red lines of Greece

Alexios Arvanitis 19 February 2015

Yanis Varoufakis has said that he does not intend to back down from his rather high “red lines”. European leaders, and especially German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, are currently exploring just how true that is.

Yanis Varoufakis with his Dutch counterpart Jeroen Dijsselbloem. Demotix/Angeliki Panagiotou. All rights reserved.

Yanis Varoufakis, Greek finance minister, is the front-runner in the Greek negotiation with the European institutions to alleviate Greek debt and loosen austerity measures. He is clever and seems eager to answer all questions and concerns. At the same time, he is quite defensive and reluctant to retreat from any of his positions.

In his NY Times opinion article on the February 16, Yanis Varoufakis explicitly said that he does not intend to back down from his rather high “red lines”. European leaders, and especially German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, are currently exploring just how true that is.

A “red line” is obviously a point of no retreat for every negotiator. Anyone who is acquainted with negotiation analysis knows that a red line is de facto set by the Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (otherwise known as BATNA).

People may set red lines as high as they wish, but they will be forced to resort to their best alternative immediately after they fail to reach agreement. Imagine, for example, that you are negotiating the sale of your car. What is the lowest price you will accept? Obviously, you should never accept a price lower than the best other offer you might have (which is your BATNA).

On the other hand, you should not reject an arrangement that is much better than your BATNA, because your BATNA is exactly what you will get if you reject the arrangement. In other words, the BATNA represents the absolute lowest price you should be willing to accept.

Rational negotiators use their BATNAs as red lines, as points of no retreat. If they set higher red lines, they could walk away from profitable arrangements and eventually experience much worse outcomes.

For Greece, Grexit is probably the best alternative in the case of no agreement with its European counterparts (since appealing to Russia or China are generally considered nightmare scenarios). No red line should be above it. Still, Dr. Varoufakis has set red lines that outline a much better living standard for Greeks when compared to the living standard under the Grexit scenario. He seems ready to reject European help, unless it is offered with much more lenient conditions. Why would he risk a solution that is so much better than his BATNA?

In his NY Times article, he says that his red lines originate from what is right, irrespective of consequences, consistent with the teachings of Immanuel Kant. In other words, Yanis Varoufakis argues in favor of positions that are based on moral principles. The principles themselves lay out the red lines, not Greek interests or the so-called BATNA.

However, Dr. Varoufakis gets his Kantian ethical argument wrong. In his conclusion, he suggests putting the interests of European citizens center-stage in order to uphold Kantian ethical principles. This argument is entirely correct for utilitarian economics, but completely wrong for Kantian ethics. 

Immanuel Kant famously argued that ethics should be free of interests and should only be subject to the demands of reason. He would completely factor out Greek or European interests or any of the win-win solutions that have been offered. If anything, he would stress the duty arising from prior commitments of Greece toward its European counterparts. In fact, the argument "There are rules that should be followed", which many European leaders use, is based in exactly this sort of Kantian reasoning.

If it is Greek or European interests he wants to serve, Dr. Varoufakis should set red lines on par with the prospective dire situation following a possible Grexit. If it is Kantian duties he aims to uphold, his red lines should include the obligations that the previous Greek governments have undertaken. In reality, Yanis Varoufakis does neither. Instead, he commits to red lines that are set by the internal political agenda in Greece and fails to provide consistent, credible justification.

Without credibility, the presentation of his red lines has simply been proven useless. It was inevitable that European leaders would eventually challenge these red lines. Greece will be retreating to new red lines until European leaders decide that they have gone far enough.

[Anduril]

Irska je jedna od drzava koja ima veoma ambivalentan odnos prema onome sto se sada desava sa Grckom:

 

 

 

Why the Irish political elite is terrified of Syriza

Fintan O’Toole 28 January 2015

The Irish political elite is deeply invested in an essentially religious narrative: Ireland sinned, Ireland confessed, Ireland did penance, Ireland has been forgiven, Ireland will be rewarded. If Syriza's strategy in Greece succeeds, this will be exposed as a folly.

Irish PM Enda Kenny, along with Michael Noonan, Barry O'Neill and Joe McHugh. Flickr/Fine Gael. Some rights reserved.

Ireland is not Greece. If government ministers and technocrats wore t-shirts, this slogan would be imprinted on those in charge of managing the crisis that hit Ireland in 2008. There is a certain irony here — when the Eurozone began to feel the first tremors of the banking earthquake, it was Ireland and its rogue banks that were feared most as the source of possible contagion.

Over time, it suited the narrative of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund to shift that stigma onto Greece. The Irish government has been only too happy to play along: Ireland’s image as the success story of bailouts and austerity is good for investment and good for access to international financial markets.

But Syriza’s victory in the Greek elections poses a profound challenge to the Irish governing class — does it keep insisting that Ireland has no common cause to make with Syriza or does it acknowledge that Europe is divided between the creditors and the debtors and that Ireland is firmly in the latter camp?

It is true, of course, that at many levels Ireland and Greece are not especially similar. Ireland entered the crisis with very low levels of public debt. The Irish economy has been much more deeply integrated into the global system — Ireland has survived the crash in part because of its close ties to the US and British economies where austerity has been limited. The Irish political system has deeper roots in caution and conservatism. Unemployment in Ireland, especially youth unemployment, has been somewhat limited by the relative ease with which Irish people can emigrate to English-speaking countries like Australia and Canada — a significant factor in reducing the scope for protest. While Irish systems of governance (regulation, corruption, tax collection) proved to be catastrophically bad, they were, for many reasons, easier to reform (at least on the surface) than their Greek equivalents. 

Yet these differences, important as they are, cannot obscure one overwhelming commonality of interest: debt. The four biggest public debtors in the Eurozone are Greece, Portugal, Italy and Ireland. The policy of socialising the liabilities of rogue private banks and the economic consequences of taking about 30 billion euro out of the economy in spending cuts and tax rises added about 160 billion to Irish public debt. At the end of 2014, the national debt was 203 billion euro — 111 per cent of GDP. (Since GDP is artificially inflated by the practices of Irish-based multinationals, even this somewhat understates the scale of the problem.) The servicing of this debt is a huge burden on a much-reduced exchequer. The total annual take in income tax for Ireland is around 18 billion euro. Interest on public debt takes around 8 billion of this. Debt service currently costs as much as the running of Ireland’s entire education system. As a percentage of GDP, Ireland’s debt service costs are actually higher than Greece’s.

It would seem quite obvious, therefore, that Ireland has an enormous stake in Syriza’s suggestions for a European debt resolution conference. Yet, almost immediately after the Greek election, the Irish finance minister Michael Noonan seemed to dismiss the whole notion when he described a debt conference as “not necessary yet”. He also went out of his way to suggest that Ireland did not really have a debt problem: “Our debt is in a very good position now; it’s affordable and it’s repayable.”

Why would the Irish government take such a line? In the short term, it is concerned to reassure financial markets that Ireland is the success story it is supposed to be. There is a certain logic in this: Irish 10-year bond interest rates were trading at under 1.1 per cent at the beginning of this week, while Greek 10-year bond interest rates are close to 9 per cent. There’s a strong financial incentive for Ireland to place as much distance between itself and Greece as it possibly can, all the more so because it is hoping to replace some of its expensive IMF loans with cheaper money raised on those international markets.  

But beyond this, there is a deeper terror — the fear that Syriza might actually succeed. The strategy adopted by both the governments that have been in office since 2008 has been one of strict obedience to the demands of its lenders. Everything has been sacrificed — up to and including national sovereignty during the so-called bailout by the Troika — in order to place Ireland as the Eurozone’s exemplary pupil.

There has been a mutual interest at work here. Angela Merkel and the Eurozone leadership need a success story in order to prove that the dual policy of socialising private debt and imposing austerity is both legitimate and effective. The Irish government needs to be able to show its own electorate and international lenders that it is indeed a great success, that the imposition of so much private debt on citizens has made both moral and economic sense.

Hence, Ireland does what it is told and gets in return the gold star for diligence, effort and perseverance. Just last week, the IMF’s Christine Lagarde told The Irish Times that Ireland has “set standards” for other indebted nations to follow — Greece was hardly far from her mind.

If Syriza succeeds in getting major concessions on debt, this whole strategy will be exposed as folly. The Irish political and technocratic elite is deeply invested in an essentially religious narrative: Ireland sinned, Ireland confessed, Ireland did penance, Ireland has been forgiven, Ireland will be rewarded. But if Greece stops doing penance and is nonetheless rewarded, this begins to look like what it almost certainly is — a rather childish view of how power works in the world. 

There is thus a kind of quiet hysteria behind the insistence that the massive public debt that is Ireland’s legacy from the Eurozone crisis is “affordable and repayable”. Who is the debt “affordable” for? Not for the 400,000 children who are now living in deprivation in Ireland. (The rate of child poverty has doubled since 2008.) And how exactly is an economy with fewer than 2 million workers and massive levels of household debt going to repay 200 billion euro, especially if Eurozone deflation makes the debt even more extreme?

The disjunction between the official insistence that everything is fine and the reality as experienced by most Irish citizens will make for a deeply divided response to Syriza. For the government to insist that Ireland has no stake in a comprehensive resolution to the European debt crisis may make it popular in Frankfurt, Brussels and Berlin but it will do little for its already battered popularity in Dublin and Cork. On the other hand, Syriza’s victory is a huge boost to the Irish opposition, especially to Sinn Fein, which has long placed itself as the Greek movement’s Irish ally. 

Most probably, the Irish government is hoping that it will get the best of both worlds. It will hold the orthodox line while at the same time Syriza wins some concessions that would then be passed on to Ireland as well. It may be far too clever a game to try to play at a time when Europe’s future is being contested and the pressure to pick sides will be hard to resist. 

[hazard]

Zvucim kao papagaj, znam, ali Irska je verovatno zemlja koja je najvise bespotrebno propatila zbog politike spasavanja (tudjih) banaka preko ledja poreskih obveznika. Za razliku od Grcke ili Italije, nema price o korumpiranim elitama i lenjom javnom sektoru da maskira tu cinjenicu. Ako Siriza dobije nesto opipljivo, skoro ceo irski politicki establisment ce ispasti nevidjene budale.

 

Irska je trebalo da postupi kao Island, tj. Island na primeru Irske moze da vidi kako bi prosao da je slusao ultimatume iz EU.

[Anduril]

I na kraju, i Siriza zna da bude nacionalisticka sto je po meni daleko najveca opasnost od ovog sukoba oko dugova i ko ce da ih plati.

A problem u EU je mnogo vise "klasni" nego nacionalni...

 

 

Should we worry about Syriza’s new nationalist rhetoric?

Ioannis Tsioulakis and Evi Chatzipanagiotidou 20 February 2015

In the lead up to the election, and especially since forming a coalition with the Independent Greeks, Syriza's rhetoric has adopted an increasingly nationalistic tone. What does this mean for discourse in Greece and anti-austerity politics in Europe?

Alexis Tsipras with Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos. Flickr/sher xla. Some rights reserved.

In a recent article in The Guardian, Dan Hancox argued that parties like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain have been successful because of their progressive populist rhetoric, which embraced ideas of ‘the people’ against internal and external economic elites rather than traditional Marxist class struggle.

This strategy Hancox connects to Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s idea of ‘radical democracy’, which sees populism as a useful tool in the struggle for socialism. These ‘populist’ ideas were indeed strongly present in the movements and protests that challenged previous governments and led to the popularity of both Syriza and ANEL.

But closer to the January 2015 elections, and increasingly after the formation of a coalition government, Syriza has relied more on nationalist/patriotic language than on challenging the elites within Greece and the EU. Two weeks before the elections, Alexis Tsipras promised to form ‘a government for all Greeks, not just one political side’, while in his emotional first address to the parliament as prime-minister he declared the formation of a ‘government of national salvation’.

At the same time and as part of a patriotic repertoire, an external ‘other’ has been constructed through the development of an anti-German narrative, which was evident in past anti-austerity mass mobilisations and more recent pro-government protests during the EU negotiations. The anti-German rhetoric has claimed its legitimacy largely on the basis of an anti-Nazi trope and by making references to Greece’s resistance to Nazi Germany during WWII.

This perspective seems to resonate with some members of the new Syriza government. Nikos Kotzias, for instance, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, has regularly reproduced an argument originally presented in his book ‘Patriotism and the Left’ about the need to distinguish between ‘good’/necessary patriotisms and ‘bad’ nationalisms; the former is associated with anti-colonial and/or socialist movements, like in India, Latin America and China, while the latter refers to imperialist states like Germany. Their past as imperialists is what, according to Kotzias, makes countries like Germany refrain from overt expressions of ‘patriotism’ found in other countries who are ‘proud’ of their struggles for national independence and sovereignty.

Of course not all nationalisms are the same in terms of their formations, agendas, articulations and power dynamics. A strict separation between patriotism and nationalism, however, can be misleading and may entail risks. As empirical and historical evidence from multiple contexts show, the boundaries between the two are often blurred.

Anti-colonial nationalist struggles can also involve violent conflict and intolerance towards internal ‘others’; Cyprus is an obvious example close to home. Moreover, patriotism, as a form of nationalism, does not only mask internal power dynamics and class struggles by creating a false image of a unified ‘self’, but it also prioritises this ‘self’ over other political alliances and formations across and beyond borders.

It is worth acknowledging here that the shift from the leftist language of opposing economic elites within and outside Greece to the nationalistic rhetoric of ‘saving the nation’ has been successful for Syriza in two ways: firstly, it helped the party increase its popularity. Recent polls show overwhelming support for its proposed policies. Secondly, it has encouraged people across political divides to participate in demonstrations supporting the government in its negotiations with EU officials. However, from a perspective of anticapitalist struggle, this strategy is problematic for two reasons:

a)      By adopting a nationalistic rhetoric, Syriza ignores the class dimensions of the economic crisis and deflects attention from the Greek oligarchs who systematically profited from it. By recalibrating the anti-austerity cause as a Greek struggle against Germany, the implication is that Greece will either succeed or fail as an entire nation. This, however, masks the institutionalised inequality within Greek society and betrays the movements of the unemployed, the poor, and the disenfranchised that brought Syriza to power.

b)      As a strategic move towards overthrowing austerity all over Europe, this is a poor one. By presenting themselves as the spokespersons of a nation struggling to survive, Tsipras’s team have indeed managed to create solidarities abroad. How effective are these going to be in the long run, however, if they are supporting a one-off, nation-driven negotiation, rather than speaking on behalf of a generalised radical movement against neoliberalism?

Syriza has a real opportunity to re-appropriate populism and respond to conservatives and neoliberals who use it as an (often void and generalising) criticism in order to undermine alternative political voices. But it should be the sort of populism that brings radical democracy by giving voice to those most affected by neoliberal re-structuring in Greece and across Europe. Their voices should not be sacrificed for ‘the salvation of the nation’.

[MancMellow]

Irska je jedna od drzava koja ima veoma ambivalentan odnos prema onome sto se sada desava sa Grckom:

 

ovo je 100% tacno, i to u Irskoj je isto ludilo. Mislim taj religiozni narativ je potpuno out of place u modernoj politici, to prosto PR, spin. Nisu svi krivi. Trebalo je da ispasta onaj ko je partikularno kriv.

 

I na kraju, i Siriza zna da bude nacionalisticka sto je po meni daleko najveca opasnost od ovog sukoba oko dugova i ko ce da ih plati.

A problem u EU je mnogo vise "klasni" nego nacionalni...

 

Da je Syriza tako nacionalisticka, ne bi pre svega po Evropi imala podrsku od levice. Mislim, nisu svi na levici budale pa da podrzavaju nacionaliste. Autor pokusava da spoji tj pomesa, ucini razlike neznatnim izmedju patriotizma i nacionalizama, a razlika postoji. Tesko je naci socijaliste koji nisu tako nastrojeni, posebno u vremenima velikih drzavnih kriza. Tebi i meni se to moze da svidja ili ne, ali veoma je mali broj far-left pristalica koji ce ih zbog toga odbaciti. Sto se tice borbe protiv oligarha, ja cu ih suditi kad prodje malo vremena. Znam da meni (ho ho) neko da da vodim borbu protiv njih da ne bih nista ni pricao, niti bih ista preduzimao dok ne pocistim njihove korumpirane ljude iz policije, sudstva i ostalih bitnih sluzbi. Naravno, mogu odmah da se slozim da ce biti veliko razocaranje ako na tom polju ne postignu nista. Ali, ono, ljudi nisu na vlasti ni mesec dana, videcemo. Kao sto rekoh jednom - jel trebalo odmah da pocnu da ih hapse i da im plene imovinu? Pa ne bi moglo da se zivi od povika kako su, evo, boljsevici uzjahali vlast. 

 

Ali cekaj, pa nije istina da ne pricaju o potrebi promene sirom Evrope. Pa maltene (bar) svaki drugi put kad vidim Varufakisa da negde nesto prica, on prica o toj potrebi.

Edited February 22, 2015 by MancMellow

[Gandalf]

Ne razumem ovaj deo. Sta je tu sporno? I koja je alternativa? Polazne tacke i analiticki okvir su uvek potrebni.

ako usko definisanu "racionalnost" postavis kao polazni okvir, a sve sto se ne uklapa predstavis kao (neracionalne) anomalije, postavio si temelj koji je prilicno klimav. problem je naravno u tome sto je "neracionalno" ponasanje pre pravilo nego izuzetak, dok to "neracionalno" ponasanje postaje sasvim logicno kada uzmes u obzir kontekst, verovanja, neinformisanost... potonje je strano ljudima koji su pretpostavke o "racionalnosti" primili kao sveto pismo, i ekonomiju ucili bez izleta u (evolutivnu) psihologiju, antropologiju, istoriju.

[Sadam Husein]

Može ispasti na kraju i dobro što su obe strane spustile loptu.

[Lezilebovich]

 

Manolis Glezos, heroj antifašističkog otpora okupaciji iz perioda Drugog svetskog rata i poslanik Sirize u Evropskom parlamentu, danas je iz Brisela izneo oštru kritiku grčke vlade, povodom njene strategije tokom pregovora sa kreditnim poveriocima i vidne promene retorike. On podseća da „između tlačitelja i tlačenog nema ni govora o kompromisu, sve nalik tome nemoguće je između okupatora i okupiranog. Jedino rešenje je sloboda“.

To što se Trojka sada naziva „institucijama“, memorandum „sporazumom“, a kreditori „partnerima“, ne menja raniju situaciju.

Valjda je jasno da ne možemo da menjamo ono što je grčki narod izglasao na izborima 25. januara.

Narod je glasao za ono što je Siriza obećavala: ukidanje režima štednje koji nije samo strategija nemačke oligarhije i drugih zemalja kreditora Evropske unije, veće je i strategija grčke oligarhije; ukidanje memoranduma i Trojke i svih zakona štednje; da ćemo nakon izbora jednim zakonom ukinuti i Trojku i njene posledice.

Prošlo je mesec dana i to obećanje i dalje nije ispunjeno.

Nema veće štete.

S moje strane, molim grčki narod da mi oprosti što sam doprineo ovoj iluziji.

Ali, pre nego što bude kasno da se vratimo sa ovog puta, pre nego što bude prekasno, reagujmo.

Pre svega, svi članovi, prijatelji i simpatizeri Sirize moraju na hitnim sastancima, na svim nivoima organizacije, odlučiti da li prihvataju ovu situaciju.

Neki tvrde da, kako bi se sporazum postigao, treba znati popustiti. Pre svega, između tlačitelja i tlačenog nema ni govora o kompromisu, sve nalik tome nemoguće je između okupatora i okupiranog. Jedino rešenje je sloboda.

Ali čak i da prihvatimo ovaj apsurd, ono što je prethodna vlada podržavajući memorandume uradila po pitanju nezaposlenosti, štednje, siromaštva i samoubistava, prevazilazi sve granice za ustupke.

[Ariel]

Bole dedu dlake u ušima, on može da traži sve ili ništa kad nema šta da izgubi u svojoj devedesinekoj. .:D