The Greek Deal From Germany – Reading Between the Lines – Darkness Over the Earth

Guest Post by Jesse

Perhaps the Greeks made a mistake, and relied too much on rationality, on a belief in a Eurozone in which good sense and reason would prevail. As it was, the Germans were willing to ruthlessly crush the Greek banking system, while the ECB and IMF stood idly by, fomenting a financial panic and humanitarian disaster in order to displace a sovereign government and put an entire nation ‘in its place.’ We certainly have seen this kind of example made before.

This was an exercise in raw power. It was a financial blitzkrieg, an act of economic warfare and reckless destruction on a people that ought to be condemned by the free world. But this kind of ruthless abuse of financial systems seems to be the accepted thing now amongst the developed economies. And we might view Greece as a sort of an experiment in a new form of warfare and ruthlessness, as were Guernica, Warsaw, and Lidice.

It is a shame if the Greeks have not prepared for Grexit, although there are still clearly options despite the naysayers who see only difficulties in everything. Freedom is rarely the easier way.

The lesson that the countries of the Eurozone cannot trust Germany to act with wisdom and goodwill was known, but now we also see that restraint is also not in their repetoire. If one can read between the lines, it would be a pity if the rest of the European countries do not start planning now for their own active exit from such an failed concept as the European Monetary Union.

And it would be a tragedy if the rest of the world does not now see plainly where a single currency for the world would also take them, where it is already taking them. Modern theories about its benign utility to do only good aside, money is raw power. And one must be exceptionally careful of granting that power to create and distribute and manage money into the hands of vain and corruptible people without stringent transparency, checks and balances, and provisions for justice and individual freedom.

Are the lights going out all over Europe? Not yet, but there is a darkness casting its shadow over the earth. I fear that Greece is only the beginning of a new phase in the degradation of the human condition by the power of insatiable greed, and spiritual wickedness in high places.

“The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called ‘the dung of the devil’. An unfettered pursuit of money rules. The service of the common good is left behind.

Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home.”

Francis I

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Dutchman
Dutchman

I don’t see any problem with Germany. The problem is Greece where they have shown that socialism is great until the OPM (other peoples money) runs out. Over half the population working for the government, retirement at 55. 18% of the GDP spent on pensions.

Nobody should give these people a loan, cause they will never repay them.

I am Dutch. I’ve often heard my grandfather call Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece: “the warm countries” – they are the Neegrows of Europe. Everybody there knows it.

As for one currency – it’s a good idea. It was such a PITA to exchange currency (think about each state having its own currency) – and you had to pay a conversion fee. At home we had a drawer with a couple hunder dollars of half a dozen different currencies. Also the Euro eliminated currency speculation (ala George Soros).

Montefrío
Montefrío

Perhaps the the Great Unwashed (“descamisados”?) to whom the pope’s stirring words pander will now rise up as proud peoples, haul the bankers from their counting-house thrones and hang them from lampposts on their way to the halls of government to loot what little hasn’t been looted by politicians and the other non-productive parasites who make a mockery of governance, then loot the churches and shops while waving placards with the pope’s picture on them just before they discover that now nothing works anymore.

Don’t get me wrong: the bankers, the politicians and many bureaucrats are fair game, but this pope… bought and paid for with the mess of pottage that bought off his church fifty-odd (VERY odd!) years ago.

“one must be exceptionally careful of granting that power to create and distribute and manage money into the hands of vain and corruptible people without stringent transparency, checks and balances, and provisions for justice and individual freedom.”

Ya think? When and where, pray tell, has that ever been tried, never mind worked? Please, Mr. Pope, now that you’ve told us where you stand, tell us your plan for setting all things right! And Jesse, while you’re on the subject of “new forms of warfare and ruthlessness”, take a look at the doings of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and George Soros.

AC
AC

Didn’t most of the money loaned to Greece, mostly by German banks, get spent by well-bribed Greek politicians, mostly on unneeded military toys purchased from German arms companies?

Loans the German banks knew full well the Greeks could not possibly pay back?

German banks which have, rather cleverly, passed that bad Greek debt off onto (largely) the German public?

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

Dutch,

Nobody should give the Greeks a loan – but they did. Which was stupid. If the Greeks weren’t such pussies, they’d tell their creditors to fuck off. Entirely. But they’re wedded to the stupid idea that they need the Euro. Letting any other country (or collection of countries) control your currency is stupid. The whole idea of “the United States of Europe” was stupid. They are different countries, different cultures. If they had half a brain, they’d go back to the drachma, but they only have 1/4 of a brain.

Backtable
Backtable

“Nobody should give these people a loan, cause they will never repay them.”

If no one should give them a loan then why are you “okay with Germany”? Germany just brokered a deal that will have the EU giving Greece another $35 billion…and who is on the hook for this money? As a tax paying constituent of a member nation of the EU…YOU ARE.

Not the ECB, not the IMF, not the private banks, but you, the taxpayer. I agree with you, no one should lend another dime in the current circus called the EU. Deficit spending by several European governments propping up impossible social programs and retirement policies is bankrupting the entire system. Everybody wants something-for-nothing, it’s human nature, but it’s not realistic.

The same thing is occurring across the Western hemisphere, the US included. We’re deficit-spending our way into insolvency. It’s nuts and it’s being driven in a desperate measure to prop up those in a symbiotic relationship with the most to lose: private banking cartels and power-hungry delusional politicians.

Greece will go bust. Yeah, they’re pledging collateral but will anyone really be able to collect on it? No. As you allude, no one really believes they’ll be able to make good on their promises but the show must go on…the only alternative would be to face the reality that unless dramatic changes are enacted in a several countries, the entire system WILL GO bust. And so long as the bankers and pols run the show, they aren’t about to let that happen, even though the end game is already baked-in…kick the can and pass the buck, “Just don’t let it blow up on my watch.”

A single currency does eliminate many of the inconveniences of doing business in Europe, but I suspect you’re right, if it is to remain as one, it will probably have to include fewer nations.

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

Tsipiris should turn now to Putin and consider what the Ruskies can offer to snatch Greece from the clutches of NATO and the Troika. Otherwise if this deal goes down as announced I wouldn’t want to be his bodyguard.

kokoda
kokoda

AC….in 2010, you would be correct. Since then, the Bankster bad loans have been absorbed by the ECB (and IMF?). Thus, the EU taxpayers now own most of the debt, not just Germany.

Backtable
Backtable

Tsipras won’t last a month.

He took the weasel’s way out. He can return home saying he cut the best deal possible, knowing full-well the Greek populace won’t sit for it. When it all blows up he can tell himself he did what he could, when had he stuck to his guns, Greece would be out of the EU by now. A miserable prospect no doubt, but it’s going to happen anyway. Better to bite the bullet today than continue to rack up billions more in un-payable loans later.

Dutchman
Dutchman

@Backtable: Jesse is criticizing Germany for being too harsh. Germany is just stupid to give these people any money.

The EU should cut em’ lose.

Besides the Greeks invented ‘taking it up the ass’.

tbone
tbone

it is immoral to lend money to people that can’t possibly pay you back, especially at a profit. It is also immoral to charge usury rates to desperate people. Because they are stupid, unlucky or not born well makes it no less repugnant.
Pretty simple

Francis Marion

Who to blame….

Greedy politicians working for insolvent and corrupt banks and a population of indebted servants willing to sell their souls for pensions, houses, new cars, big screen TV’s, i-gadgets and exotic vacations.

No one shows self restraint, introspection, shame or more importantly – forgiveness.

Maybe I’ve read too much JC the past few months but the problem with the current state of the world (morally and financially) – as it appears to me – is always deeper and more complex than any one ‘side’ is willing to admit.

tbone
tbone

JC..is that Jimmy Carter?

Francis Marion

@ tbone

Sure why not….

tbone
tbone

thank God (literally) for a moment I thought you meant Jesus Christt

Billy
Billy

Good run-down of the whole Greece fiasco over on Taki’s Mag…

Demagogue Days

Bottom line? Greece’s problems are Greece’s doing. Their responsibility, going all the way back to 1967 – the year of my birth. Back then, they had olives, olive oil, shipping and tourism. And that’s about it.

Give it a read. It goes way further than most into Greece’s problems and “how they got there”…

Zarathustra

Greek military spending is the highest relative to GDP of any EU country. Are they still afraid of the Persians?

Gone West
Gone West

Until blood is spilled I fear we will not see any change to the status quo.

Stanley
Stanley

“Zarathustra says:

Greek military spending is the highest relative to GDP of any EU country. Are they still afraid of the Persians?”

Nope, their next door neighbors, the Turks. Previously known as Ottomans.
Muslim they are and heavily armed.

B
B

We can spend trillions to bail out the Bankers whose greed cause destruction around the globe, but an entire country of people who were indebted by their elites, we no can do. Fucking Evil

Llpoh

Billy – that sounds about right. The article seems accurate. This was always going to end in tears.

The Greek people – at least a large percentage of them – raked it in with both hands as long as they could. The music has now stopped.

The author suggests it will take three generations for Greece to recover. That is a long time. Growing olives will not be the answer.

EU or no EU, they dug themselves a very deep hole, and it will take a long, long time to dig out.

By he way, it still ain’t over. The measures may not pass legislative vote. And the people may, you know, riot.

Russia Is Strong
Russia Is Strong

Here’s MY personal take on what’s currently occurring on the world scene: The U.S. financial markets, led by Goldman Sachs, first coopted the American political scene through an orchestrated campaign combining both bribery & blackmail -applied as necessary- exerted upon individual local politicians of any significant relevance. This process took decades. Then once captured they used the newly-gained might of the American empire to further extend their (i.e. Goldman Sachs’ & Friends) control overseas onto foreign political leaders of relevance as well. Rinse, lather, repeat. This latter task took decades too and was probably run almost concurrently with the former.

Once Goldman & Co through such methods achieved control surreptitiously of the entire world economic system, they proceeded to use their unfettered access of the market in order A) Take control of it and B) SWAMP it with bogus financial derivatives. A derivative is a very simple concept to explain: Say you have one can of Coca Cola. Well, I take that can, put it in my pocket and write “This Certificate Is Officially Worth 1 Can Of Coca Cola!” onto a piece of paper, then I print out 798,567,978 copies of these “certificates”, …and back them all with my WORD OF HONOR AND MY *ONE* FREAKING *REAL* CAN OF COCA COLA !! (Which by the way I found to be deliciously refreshing! BURP!)

What we have here is a really, really, really, REALLY bad case of What Goes Up Must Come Down.

bb

Russia , did you take a lot of drugs in the 60s?Or have you always been a paranoid schizophrenic?

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

“Perhaps the Greeks made a mistake, and relied too much on rationality, on a belief in a Eurozone in which good sense and reason would prevail.”

Har. If “good sense and reason” had ever prevailed, the European Union would never have existed to begin with. I remember having a friendly dispute with my boyfriend, an Eastern European, at the time of its inception in the 90s. I had expressed deep misgivings, and my doubts were based on the idea that you cannot achieve prosperity and financial stability by merging disparate economies and attempting to “equalize” them by uniting them under a common currency and monetary regime, because doing that short- circuits the “feedback” that, in the form of a weak currency and low buying power, signals that a particular economy needs to become more productive, and have “import substitution” in the form of goods made at home for lower cost than that at which they can be purchased abroad. My boyfriend, however, was, like most people, obsessed with “bigness” and “greatness”, and thought, as we have here, that uniting these widely disparate economies, fiscal regimes, and cultures under one umbrella would make Europe “equal” to the U.S. behemoth, never mind that the U.S. had long been displaying symptoms of the inertia and malaise that comes of being too big, having too many layers of bureaucracy, and uniting too many different economies under the same monetary straight-jacket.

But even I did not grasp that what it was REALLY all about was enabling the central banks and their client TBTF European financial houses to skim, impoverish and enslave the entire European continent, and enabling the creation of epic amounts of fake money in the form of layers of debt far exceeding the combined GDPs of the member nations.

On another subject, regarding Dutchman’s jibe that the southern European nations- Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece- are the “neegrows” of Europe: Italy and Greece gave us Western Civilization. Greece gave us the modes of thought on which rest the prodigious scientific achievements and the built world they made possible, and the cultural contributions of Italy, from the time of Romulus to the 18th century, are too numerous to catalog in 100 volumes, let alone one blog comment. Everything the northern Europeans have in the way of knowledge and culture, they owe to the legacy of Greece and Rome. Rome was a magnificent place of incredible advancement and staggering built beauty while the northern European tribes were still wearing uncured animal skins and eating with their fingers.

llpoh
llpoh

Chicago – I know what they gave us – hell the Egyptians built the damn pyramids.

But those Eyeties and Greeks and Spanish and Portuguese are long gone. The current population of those countries could not figure out how to use fire if it were not already discovered.

Seriously, walking around Rome recently, I turned to my wife, in front of the Coliseum, and said “Can you believe these people (waving my arms to indicate the hoards around us) built this (pointing to the Coliseum). She was in full agreement.

That civilization was incredible and competent. The current one – not so much.

Russia Is Strong
Russia Is Strong

@bb: I’ll take C) all of the above!

flash
flash

moar Democracy!

overthecliff

Banks- loan sharks who plunder stupid people who think they can not pay back what borrow. Loan sharks will break your legs if you don’t pay. Ironically the banks don’t have money they just make it up.

Greeks-(insert any other name here) con artist welfare queens who think they can screw the banks without consequences.

Both deserve what they get. I don’t think this would happen sans the fractional banking system. Debt is not wealth.

Bob
Bob

Creditors will not take nothing for an answer. There will be persistent attempts to extract 16 ounces of flesh per pound owed, plus accrued interest. Power struggles will ensue, and force will be applied. Very few will emerge unscathed on either side…

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