Found in Pavlos's Thoughts

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.