Germany's Carthaginian terms for Greece … The last time Germany needed a bail-out from world creditors, it secured better terms than shattered Greece last week … The austerity policy being forced on Greece by Germany and the eurozone cannot command democratic consent over time. – UK Telegraph/Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Dominant Social Theme: Greece has got to pay.
Free-Market Analysis: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard makes good points in this article on Germany's attack on Greece, but to us it's a kind of elite dominant social theme. The idea is to blame Germany's leaders for intolerable austerity, and Chancelor Angela Merkel in particular. But from our point of view, Merkel is merely working for larger powers-that-be.
It is the Anglosphere power elite that seeks to build up the EU as part of its focus on creating worldwide governance. And it is this same elite that is causing economic chaos in order to further its plans. Out of chaos … order.
For one reason or another, the powerful families that apparently control central banks around the world (and the trillions they throw off) have decided to turn Greece into a fiery battleground. One can see this policy proceeding deliberately. Evans-Pritchard notes it:
The US, Canada, Britain, France, Greece, and other signatories at the London Debt Agreement of 1953 granted Chancellor Konrad Adenauer a 50pc haircut on all German debt, worth 70pc in relief with stretched maturities. There was a five-year moratorium on interest payments. The express purpose was to give Germany enough oxygen to rebuild its economy, and to help hold the line against Soviet overreach …
Greece has less strategic relevance, and must comply with tougher terms … Some 60,000 small firms and family businesses have gone bankrupt since the summer, the chief reason why VAT revenues dropped 18.7pc in January. The violence of the slump is overwhelming the effects of fiscal retrenchment. So much Sisyphean effort for so little gain.
The policy cannot command democratic consent over time. The once dominant Pasok party has collapsed to 8pc in the polls. Support is splintering to the far Left and far Right, just like Weimar Germany under the Bruning deflation.
The next Greek parliament will be packed with "anti-Memorandum" fire-breathers, and any attempt by Greek elites to prevent elections taking place must push street protests towards revolution. In a sign of things to come, the Hellenic Police Federation has called for the arrest of Troika officials on Greek soil for attacks on "democracy and national sovereignty".
Evans-Pritchard believes that Germany's pols are driving Greece to ruin for internal political reasons. He even writes that Germany's finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble wants to push Greece out of the EU.
He believes that Greece is being sacrificed on the altar of German public opinion. His perspective seems to be that the sacrifice of Greece will then allow Germany and Brussels to deal more gently with Spain, Portugal and other countries that are in a position similar to Greece's.
But in an apparent contradiction to his own theorizing, Evans-Pritchard admits that Germany's stance has created a new tone in Europe, one that presents the EU as an all powerful and merciless arbiter of national finances. Greece in this sense is a sacrificial lamb.
By demanding a budget viceroy for Greece, and now an escrow account to seize Greek revenues at source, the Merkel-Schäuble government has crossed a diplomatic line and brutalised EU politics. “Memorandum Macht Frei”, as one Greek newspaper splashed.
It is not, in fact, work that shall set the Greeks free but removal from the EU, even if not all Greeks have reached this conclusion yet. As we've pointed out many times, the way that Brussels snared Southern Europe was via a kind of trap.
The top men of the EU offered Southern European countries billions to "balance the books" preparatory to joining the EU. The leaders of Ireland, Greece, Spain, etc. did exactly what pols would do in this case. They squandered the money and distributed it to cronies.
Then these political elites made sure that their countries joined the EU – the quid pro quo. Finally, these elites left power, having enriched themselves enormously. Now the PIGS must pay, but it is not the fault of the citizens. It was a cleverly laid trap, or seems to be.
This is the part of the European crisis that is never discussed. The Greeks weren't necessarily profligate. Their government leaders were rash, but it was probably part of a larger plan. The top men in Brussels have been blunt in private conversations. They have intended to create a crisis in order to increase the power that Brussels has over member states.
We've pointed out that the EU and its strategies of empire were created prior to the Internet. We also tend to believe that what we call the Internet Reformation is making it increasingly difficult for the powers-that-be to exercise the apparently seamless control that they did in the 20th century.
We believe the Anglosphere made a tactical decision to further sever the link between Britain and the EU to strengthen the EU. The elites didn't WANT for this to occur, in our view, but the growing resentment in Britain forced their hand.
Likewise, it may be that the furor inflamed German public. It is hard to say at this point what is being done on purpose and what is taking place as a result of an unprecedented pushback against the EU itself.
We think the Internet's information and organizational characteristics have made it more difficult for the power elites to pursue their world-spanning plans. We notice their discomfort and the efforts they are making to shut down the 'Net.
We also believe that the ejection of even one country from the EU will be a significant setback to the plans of the power elite, just as Britain's public leave-taking was a setback. The elites need to project a sense of invulnerability in order to pursue their one-world project.
Thus, even though a potential Greece defection may be seen as necessary sacrifice that strengthens the whole, we'd be apt to see it as a further problem for the elites. Time will tell.