The
latest bailout has nothing to do with debt, but an experiment in
capitalism so extreme that no other EU state would even dare try it
by
Nick Dearden
Greece is heading towards its third "bailout".
This time €86 billion is on the table, which will be packaged up by
international lenders with a bundle of austerity and sent off to
Greece, only to return to those same lenders in the very near future.
We all know the spiralling debt cannot and will not be
repaid. We all know the austerity to which it is tied will make
Greece’s depression worse. Yet it continues.
If we look deeper, however, we find that Europe is not
led by the terminally confused. By taking those leaders at their
word, we’re missing what’s really going on in Europe. In a
nutshell, Greece is up for sale, and its workers, farmers and small
businesses will have to be cleared out of the way.
Under the eye-watering privatisation programme, Greece
is expected to hand over its €50 billion of its “valuable state
assets” to an independent body under the control of the European
institutions, who will proceed to sell them off. Airports, seaports,
energy systems, land and property – everything must go. Sell your
assets, their contrived argument goes, and you’ll be able to repay
your debt.
But even in the narrow terms of the debate, selling off
profitable or potentially profitable assets leaves a country less
able to repay its debts. Unsurprisingly the most profitable assets
are going under the hammer first. The country’s national lottery
has already been bought up. Airports serving Greece’s holiday islands look likely to be sold onlong-term lease to a German airport operator.
The port of Pireus looks likely to be sold to a Chinese
shipping company. Meanwhile, 490,000 square meters of Corfu
beachfront have been snapped up by a US private equity fund. It has a
99-year lease for the bargain price of €23million. According to
reporters, the privatisation fund is examining another 40 uninhabited
islands as well as a massive project on Rhodes which includes an
obligatory golf course.
Side-by-side with the privatisation is a very broad
programme of deregulation which declares war on workers, farmers and
small businesses. Greece's many laws that protect small business such
as pharmacies, bakeries, and bookshops from competition with
supermarkets and big businesses are to be swept away. These reforms
are so specific that the EU is writing laws on bread measurements and
milk expiry dates. Incredibly, Greece is even being told to make its
Sunday opening laws more liberal than Germany's. Truly a free market
experiment is being put into place.
On labour, pensions are to suffer rapid cuts, minimum
wages are to be reduced and collective bargaining is to be severely
curtailed while it is to become easier to sack staff. All of this is
far more extreme that many of Greece's "creditor" countries
have implemented themselves. Changes to tax includes a massive hike
to that most regressive of taxes VAT, on a wide range of products.
Of course, reforms in some areas of Greece's economy
might be a good idea, and indeed Syriza came to power promising to
make serious reforms in, for instance, taxation and pensions. But
what is being imposed by the lending institutions is not a series of
sensible "reforms", but the establishment and
micromanagement of radical 'free market' economics.
The privatisation and deregulation bonanza opens vast
new swathes of Greek society to areas where big business has never
been able to set foot before. The hope is that this will generate big
profits to keep big business growing, as well as providing an extreme
model of what might be possible throughout Europe. Although what's
even more distasteful than the hypocrisy of European leaders forcing
policies onto Greece that they themselves have not dared to argue for
in their own countries, is the cynicism of those same leaders
imposing policies that will benefit their own country's corporations.
The intensity of the restructuring programme currently
being agreed for Greece should dispel any lingering notion that this
is a well intentioned but misguided attempt to deal with a debt
crisis. It is a cynical attempt to set up a corporate paradise in the
Mediterranean, and must be resisted at all costs.
Source:
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At
the end of July, WikiLeaks released a secret letter from the
Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP or TPPA) Ministerial
Meeting in December 2013, along with a comprehensive expert
analysis of the document.
[...]
The
revelation shows that big private corporations attack on states.
The ruthless neoliberalism seeks to destroy the nation-states and
the small-medium businesses, to declare the final victory of
multinational big banks and monopolies.
It
also shows that the indebted countries are used as a pretext for
mass privatizations. The debt is not the problem, it is only the
tool through which neoliberalism is attacking to the workers and
people's rights, privatizing everything for the big capital. This
letter shows clearly that the war on state enterprises and
structures was planned methodically by the lobbyists who influence
anyone who holds a key position in the EU and the US.
The
latest "agreement" between Greece and the creditors aims
to dissolve what is left from labor rights, and privatize key
state enterprises for pennies.
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...
poor Mr. Schäuble, who recently surpassed Mrs. Merkel in
popularity in Germany, is under extreme pressure, mostly by the
German capital, to "restructure" the eurozone through
the Greek experiment. The German oligarchy is now in a cruel
competition mostly with the US companies to hyper-automate
production. It sends continuous signals that human labor will be
unnecessary for its big companies and presses the German
leadership to finish the experiment in Greece.
Poor
Mr. Schäuble must give "earth and water" to the German
oligarchs. He must organize a new Treuhand for the whole Europe to
sell-off public property, he must completely dissolve labor
rights, bring down pensions and wages, destroy the social state.
He must end quickly with Greece and pass all the "Greek
achievements" to the whole eurozone.
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I do so hope the historically proud and feisty Greek people rise up en masse in revolt against deeper measures of crippling austerity and privatization of their state assets agreed to recently by their newly elected Syriza government. After all, it was to prevent these very measures that Syriza was elected in the first place. I hope other anti-austerity left groups in southern Europe particularly and elsewhere have the Greeks back. For the EU generally, and Germany specifically to make these unsustainable demands is outrageous and highly hypocritical considering Germany’s history and their previous war debt forgiveness. The cannibalizing of the world’s wealth and resources by the most powerful elite is sickening and indicative of the disease of capitalism.
ReplyDeleteThank you friend. European people must react massively. It has been proved that SYRIZA and Greece can't do much alone. There is a need for a pan-European movement against catastrophic neoliberalism. What happens in Greece is the dark future for the Europeans which they must prevent.
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