Tag: Greece

Global Finance and Greece

Banks want money. Debts are assets, but only when they are repaid, or at least repayable. That is why international banking hates Greece. They don’t want to come to an agreed to reduce debt, because it would stop being an asset. They need to see the money coming in, they need to destroy an economy in order to prevent other countries from daring to ask questions.

Surely its their money? If I had 100 million pounds and I leant people a billion, by creating money to lend out, would I be justified in chasing down these debts because its “my money”? Surely 1) it would be seen as bloody stupid on my behalf to lend money to people who haven’t got any to pay back, and 2) if I lend more than I actually have, what the Hell is going on?

But they need their money “back”! Those they lent this level of debt to obviously did not, and will not, and do not, have the money to pay it back – or else they would not have needed such a massive sum!

Syriza have shown that they understand international finance better than bankers do. They understand that Greece is not, and never will be, in a position to pay what they owe. They understand that austerity demands cuts to pay, to pensions and to benefits, but it does not tackle international corporations, and does not look to the dysfunction of a crony capitalism economy. What the ECB demands is cuts to what the state can affect and what the state can affect is not a fucked-up economy, made worse by international banks, but just benefits, pensions and pay. Bankers think this is fine, they can get money this way, but Syriza has fought to show that demands on the ordinary person do not, cannot and should never be the way to repay national debt.

But banks want money. One cannot even say they want “their” money. They want money they made up so as loan to people who did not have the ability to repay and they are ruthless and uncaring. As far as bankers are concerned, the people of Greece can be plunged into poverty, have their lives ruined, thier futures eradicated, as long as the banks get the money they want.

Global international finance is absolutely screwed. It no longer has a relationship to realities and is chasing money in a collapsing system, determined to hoover up as much as it can in a world where its logic no longer works.

 

Winds of Change
29th June 2015

The Wasteland of Austerity

Austerity, the ECB, bail outs, all of these are symptoms of an anti-civilisation agenda. Its about money, its about corporations, its about profit. Its anti-people, anti-progress, anti-civilisation. The ruling agenda is all about self at the ultimate expense of everyone else. It is the Tory end-game, the Thatcher endgame. It is way beyond Maggie’s wet dream. It is using the collapse of the industrial age to make massive profits for the few, to plunge the rest into hardship, to roll back a century and a half of reforms, to seize the assets of the world whilst they are vulnerable.

Globalisation is not bringing global prosperity, it is creating a chase game for the cheapest semi-developed production economy, abandoning those which get more developed in the chase to the bottom. China’s dominance is due to its fascist political structure (its hardly Communist now!), where the state holds down wages, provides incentives, and swallows up income to invest in raw materials overseas. Without this, China would be abandoned for even cheaper producers, but their leadership is canny, knows that by keeping the global production base it keeps its income, and that by state control it can win an international capitalist game.

Whilst global trade collapses into state monopolies, modern day carpet baggers move in to sweep up the remnants of the old system. State enterprises are sold off to the private sector, national industries are sold to overseas companies, which in turn sell shares to the nouveau rich, the Russians, the Chinese, the Arabs.

What is left behind is a wasteland of austerity.

 

Winds of Change
29th June 2015