Greeks should vote against Merkel tomorrow
I’ll vote against Angela Merkel
in the upcoming Greek elections, and I think it’s very important that all with
the right to vote in Greece do so. The choice is as follows:
If Antonis Samaras, the
conservative New Democracy party gets elected his government will implement the
austerity, deflation, and asset-stripping recipe/punishment prescribed by big
European Capital through the German government. The economy will continue to
deteriorate, a lot, until whatever is left of Greek capital (mostly small and
medium business) is destroyed and Greece becomes a cheap labour and no social
safety net state. There will be riots, fascism, and widespread hardship in
Greece especially amongst old people and the self/family employed. The
successful enforcement of austerity and de-capitalisation will be roundly seen
as a triumph by EU and international capital, and Spain and Italy will be next
in line for the same treatment. That is why the Greek press and even the German
edition of the FT are practically intimidating Greeks to accept it. Vote this
way or unspecified bad things will happen.
If Alexis Tsipras of the left
SYRIZA (means “from the root”) party wins, his government will reject the terms
of the austerity and impoverishment package and force a re-negotiation. He is
not especially anti-Euro and neither is Greek public opinion. A hard rejection
of the austerity terms by Greece will force the Eurozone, meaning the ECB and
Ms. Merkel, to shelve the “austerity for all the losers” doctrine and come up
with something else. There will be a period of frantic deliberation, whose
possible outcomes include: very optimistically reforming the Euro to a model
that works and is under political control like the US Fed; realistically some
form of flawed compromise with the Euro and ECB in the hands of private capital
but with a human face; and pessimistically and unlikely a breakup of the Euro.
In the latter case, Greek savers will lose another chunk of their savings
(unless they move them to other EU banks, in which case they may lose them
outright due to unpaid Target 2 balances). Germany will be stuck with a strong
currency and exposed banks, which will require inflation. More to the point,
the Merkel government will be seen to have presided over a colossal failure and
will likely lose power, perhaps prematurely.
