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FTR #855: Greek Tragedy, Part 3

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. [1] The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by late spring of 2015. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) con­tains FTR #850 [1].  (The pre­vi­ous flash dri­ve was cur­rent through the end of May of 2012 and con­tained FTR #748 [2].)

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE [3].

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You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself HERE [6].

This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [7].

 

Intro­duc­tion: Begin­ning with analy­sis from Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy, [8] we note the reac­tion in Europe and else­where to Ger­man eco­nom­ic dic­ta­tor­ship and hege­mo­ny as seen in prac­tice against Greece in the recent ref­er­en­dum. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the CV of Ger­man finance min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schauble. Among the fig­ures imple­ment­ing the insti­tu­tion of Ger­man eco­nom­ic dom­i­na­tion of Europe, Schauble employed Theodor Veit­er, a Third Reich vet­er­an and spe­cial­ist in cross-bor­der sub­ver­sion.

“. . . In the 1990s, Wolf­gang Schäu­ble, who, today, admin­is­ters the aus­ter­i­ty dic­tate as Ger­man Min­is­ter of Finances, had also played a role in cre­at­ing the Ger­man pow­er base, which has per­mit­ted Berlin’s con­sis­tent clean sweep. In the ear­ly 1980s, as Chair of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Euro­pean Bor­der Regions (AEBR), Schäu­ble had orga­nized the first eco­nom­ic ini­tia­tives [and not just] toward France. Theodor Veit­er [6] a for­mer Nazi spe­cial­ist for bor­der sub­ver­sion was one of Schäuble’s advi­sors as chair of the AEBR. . . .”

The infor­ma­tion here might be weighed against the mate­r­i­al pre­sent­ed in FTR #s 99 [9]802 [10].

A telling, accu­rate assess­ment of the nature of the Brus­sels Set­tle­ment was pre­sent­ed in an arti­cle in the Huff­in­g­ton Post [11]. [11]

” . . . . And on Sun­day night, it marched into Athens with an offer to Greece that would end the idea that cap­i­tal­ism and democ­racy can sur­vive togeth­er there. [Ital­ics mine–D.E.] Reads the offer, pro­vided by a source close to the talks [12], from the Euro­pean finan­cial elite, which call them­selves the insti­tu­tions: “The [Greek] gov­ern­ment needs to con­sult and agree with the insti­tu­tions on all draft leg­is­la­tion in rel­e­vant areas with ade­quate time before sub­mit­ting it for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion or to Par­lia­ment.” It would be a gov­ern­ment in name only. Not only would the Greek peo­ple be forced to accept the kind of deal they reject­ed over­whelm­ingly at the polls just a week ear­lier, but they’d be blocked from imple­ment­ing any future poli­cies Ger­many dis­ap­proved of. . . .”

Numer­ous observers [13] feel that the Ger­man goal is actu­al­ly the humiliation/subjugation/destruction of Greece.

” . . . . . The prob­lem is that Greece’s econ­omy is in so much worse shape now than it was even a few weeks ago that the tax hikes and spend­ing cuts, which would have pro­duced a 1 per­cent bud­get sur­plus before, won’t any­more. That’s what hap­pens , after all, when the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank pulls enough of the plug on your banks that they have to close their doors for now to avoid hav­ing to close their doors for good. Busi­nesses can’t get the cred­it they need to, well, stay in busi­ness, and will then default on the banks that are about to go out of busi­ness them­selves. The entire econ­omy, in oth­er words, shuts down. . . .”

Paul Krug­man’s obser­va­tions about the “coup” have been wide­ly quot­ed [14]“. . . . This goes beyond harsh into pure vin­dic­tive­ness, com­plete destruc­tion of nation­al sov­er­eignty, and no hope of relief. It is, pre­sum­ably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betray­al of every­thing the Euro­pean project was sup­posed to stand for,” he said.”

Over the years, we have been priv­i­leged to fea­ture Lucy Komis­ar as an expert com­men­ta­tor on mat­ters eco­nom­ic, “off­shore” busi­ness mat­ters, in par­tic­u­lar. At a recent address by Ger­man Finance Min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schauble (giv­en to the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions) Lucy braced the vet­er­an politi­cian over Ger­many’s hypocrisy con­cern­ing Greek debt.Schauble’s equiv­o­ca­tion on the issue did not shake Lucy’s efforts to pin him down. In the arti­cle below, do note the obser­va­tions of Albrecht Ritschl, pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ic his­to­ry at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.
” . . . .  Ritschl said, “If we accept that Germany’s nation­al prod­uct is some­where to the tune of over 2 tril­lion euros, which is beyond 2.5 tril­lion U.S. dol­lars, we would be talk­ing about a default and debt for­give­ness of some­where in the range of 10 tril­lion dol­lars. I would tend to think that this is prob­a­bly unri­valed in 20th cen­tu­ry his­to­ry. . . . .”

Some back­ground infor­ma­tion to flesh out lis­ten­ers’ under­stand­ing of these issues can be found in an intro­duc­tion to the anti-fas­cist books [15] avail­able for down­load on this web­site. Oth­er posts [16] and pro­grams [17] have dealt with the issue [18] of Ger­many, the EMU, Greece’s debt and the Third Reich’s eco­nom­ic exploita­tion of “the cra­dle of democ­ra­cy.” The polit­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dynam­ics under­ly­ing Greece’s per­ils exem­pli­fy why we so often cite the pri­ma­ry impor­tance of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work [19]. Be sure to click on the link below to hear Lucy’s ques­tion at the CFR talk, as well as links to an impor­tant inter­view [20] with Albrecht Ritschl.

Much of the pro­gram high­lights the con­ti­nu­ity of Ger­man, polit­i­cal, mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy through the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, the two World Wars and the “Post-wars” [18] that fol­lowed them.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: 

1. Begin­ning with analy­sis from Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy, we note the reac­tion in Europe and else­where to Ger­man eco­nom­ic dic­ta­tor­ship and hege­mo­ny as seen in prac­tice against Greece in the recent ref­er­en­dum. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the CV of Ger­man finance min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schauble [8]. Among the fig­ures imple­ment­ing the insti­tu­tion of Ger­man eco­nom­ic dom­i­na­tion of Europe, Schauble employed Theodor Veit­er, a Third Reich vet­er­an and spe­cial­ist in cross-bor­der sub­ver­sion.

“The Brus­sels Agree­ment”; german-foreign-policy.com; 7/15/2014. [8]

In sev­er­al west­ern and south­ern Euro­pean coun­tries, the agree­ment on Greece reached in Brus­sels sig­nals a loom­ing col­lapse of the con­ti­nen­tal post-war order and Ger­many’s revival as an osten­ta­tious dic­ta­to­r­i­al pow­er. Where­as social-demo­c­ra­t­ic observers do not exclude an atten­u­a­tion of the con­tra­dic­tions, south­ern Euro­pean con­ser­v­a­tive media are among those who speak of a revival of Ger­man hege­mon­ic ambi­tions, which had large­ly deter­mined or trig­gered the First and Sec­ond World Wars. The con­se­quences of the French-Ital­ian sub­mis­sion dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions in Brus­sels are gen­er­at­ing those fears, because Paris had not suc­ceed­ed to and Rome had not even seri­ous­ly attempt­ed to thwart the Ger­man dic­tates of sov­er­eign­ty over Greece. Both, Italy and France are aware of the dan­gers of becom­ing the next vic­tim of Ger­man finan­cial dic­ta­tor­ship. They are com­pet­ing for admis­sion in a north­ern Euro­pean core Europe, whose mem­ber­ship will be decid­ed by Berlin, in the case of a pos­si­ble col­lapse of the Euro­pean Union. Cur­rent events are direct­ly linked to Ger­man for­eign pol­i­cy endeav­ors in the 1990s and the ter­ri­to­r­i­al expan­sion of Ger­many’s eco­nom­ic basis through the so-called reuni­fi­ca­tion.

The Bur­den of His­to­ry

Com­men­ta­tors of diverse polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tions speak of a revival of Ger­man hege­mon­ic ambi­tions. In Italy, for exam­ple, fol­low­ing the nego­ti­a­tions in Brus­sels, the lib­er­al “La Repub­bli­ca” car­ried the head­line “Greece has its back to the wall” and not­ed, “the Eurogroup” is “in the hands of Ger­man hawks.” Athens is con­front­ed with “a series of dic­tates, one harsh­er then the oth­er.” “Hawks are tri­umphant­ly cir­cling in the Euro­pean skies,” the arti­cle con­tin­ues, “and impose an impos­si­ble ulti­ma­tum on Tsipras sim­i­lar to the one Aus­tria imposed on the Serbs, which trig­gered the First World War.”[1] “The end of inno­cence has been reached, because every­one [in the EU, gfp.com] knows, with­out a doubt, who the real ring mas­ter is,” the Ital­ian con­ser­v­a­tive “Il Mes­sag­gero” wrote. “The real ring mas­ter is Ger­many.” The paper con­tin­ues, “Sedan is return­ing, when Ger­many tram­pled on France in 1870” — and lat­er — “did not fol­low Bis­mar­ck­’s advice,” not to make ene­mies, both in the West and the East at the same time. In fact, Ger­many made “ene­mies every­where” after WW I, “Il Mes­sag­gero” recalled — except per­haps in north­ern Europe’s “vas­sal states” or in the 1930s, tem­porar­i­ly Poland, “which, because of its own painful his­to­ry, thought it could not act oth­er­wise than direct its hatred toward the Rus­sians.” The com­men­ta­tor con­clud­ed, “the bur­den of his­to­ry has returned and seems insurmountable.”[2]

The Same Arro­gance

Warn­ings, based on his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence, can also be heard in France. “Ger­many wants to smash Greece by forc­ing it, under threat of the Grex­it, to accept a dead­ly plan of total sub­mis­sion,” Jean-Luc Mélen­chon, the head of the Par­ti de Gauche, twit­tered on the weekend.[3] On TV, he had already expressed him­self in greater detail. “For the third time in his­to­ry, the stub­born­ness of a Ger­man gov­ern­ment is in the process of destroy­ing Europe.” Of course, one can­not insin­u­ate that today’s Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many is ide­o­log­i­cal­ly on the same lev­el as its pre­de­ces­sor regime. Still Berlin dis­plays “the same arro­gance, the same blind­ness” as in ear­li­er phas­es of its his­tor­i­cal reign.[4]

Aggres­sive Finan­cial Pol­i­cy

How­ev­er, the fact that Berlin had not begun only in 2015 to threat­en with a fur­ther rad­i­cal­iza­tion of its aggres­sive eco­nom­ic and finan­cial pol­i­cy has remained large­ly in the back­ground. In fact, cur­rent events are direct­ly linked to Ger­man for­eign pol­i­cy endeav­ors in the 1990s and the ter­ri­to­r­i­al expan­sion of Ger­many’s eco­nom­ic basis through the so-called reuni­fi­ca­tion. Accord­ing to a pop­u­lar myth, the lat­ter was bought by Ger­man Chan­cel­lor at the time, Hel­mut Kohl’s con­sent to the intro­duc­tion of the uni­form EU cur­ren­cy — the Euro. In fact, Bonn had only con­sent­ed to the com­mon cur­ren­cy under the con­di­tion — as a con­tem­po­rary observ­er of the event remem­bers — that “the rules gov­ern­ing the mon­e­tary union and the Euro­pean cen­tral bank­ing sys­tem be pri­mar­i­ly ori­ent­ed on the mod­el of Ger­man rules and the Ger­man Fed­er­al Bank.” “The Euro speaks Ger­man,” declared the then Ger­man Min­is­ter of Finances, Theo Waigel in 1998.[5] Thanks to the Euro, with its specif­i­cal­ly Ger­man patent, the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many has been able to take full advan­tage of its eco­nom­ic strength in rela­tion­ship to the oth­er coun­tries in the Euro­zone and dri­ve many of them into a — debt induc­ing — exces­sive for­eign trade deficit. In 2014, approx­i­mate­ly 34.5 bil­lion Euros flowed from France to Ger­many, and Greece was still trans­fer­ring more than 3.2 bil­lion Euros. The Ger­man aus­ter­i­ty dic­tate, which ulti­mate­ly insures the flow of cur­ren­cy into the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many, are a result of the Ger­man patent on the Euro, imposed back in the 1990s.

Core Europe

In the 1990s, Wolf­gang Schäu­ble, who, today, admin­is­ters the aus­ter­i­ty dic­tate as Ger­man Min­is­ter of Finances, had also played a role in cre­at­ing the Ger­man pow­er base, which has per­mit­ted Berlin’s con­sis­tent clean sweep. In the ear­ly 1980s, as Chair of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Euro­pean Bor­der Regions (AEBR), Schäu­ble had orga­nized the first eco­nom­ic ini­tia­tives [and not just] toward France. Theodor Veit­er [6] a for­mer Nazi spe­cial­ist for bor­der sub­ver­sion was one of Schäuble’s advi­sors as chair of the AEBR. On the rein­forced basis fol­low­ing the col­lapse of Europe’s social­ist sys­tem and the annex­a­tion of the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic, Schäu­ble assist­ed in impos­ing the EU’s east­ward expansion.[7] This ini­tia­tive had placed Ger­many at a clear advan­tage over France, whose tra­di­tion­al zone of influ­ence, around the Mediter­ranean Basin and in Fran­coph­o­nie Africa can­not be com­pa­ra­bly affil­i­at­ed with the EU. It was also Schäu­ble, who, in the mid 1990s, devel­oped the “core Europe” con­cept, mean­ing “a strong focal point” with­in the EU cen­tered on Ger­many, which will form a tight-knit “core,” that will not only hold the EU togeth­er, but actu­al­ly should deter­mine EU policy.[8] Today, part of that core is rep­re­sent­ed by the Eurogroup, which Sun­day reached very sweep­ing deci­sions, on no less than the con­tin­u­a­tion of the EU in its cur­rent form. Nine EU mem­ber nations — includ­ing Great Britain, Swe­den, and Poland — could not par­tic­i­pate in these deci­sions. The Eurogroup core is one of the for­mats allow­ing Berlin to place its seal on this con­fed­er­a­tion.

Noth­ing Accom­plished

 The hopes of being able to have an impact on “Europe’s” his­to­ry, by being a mem­ber of the EU’s “core,” should there be a breach with indi­vid­ual or a group of Euro­zone mem­bers — for exam­ple, Greece or sev­er­al oth­er south­ern Euro­pean coun­tries — has char­ac­ter­ized the poli­cies of France and Italy to the present. Both coun­tries are eco­nom­i­cal­ly increas­ing­ly los­ing ground to Ger­many and must — par­tic­u­lar­ly in the case of Italy — fear being drawn fur­ther down­ward under aus­ter­i­ty con­di­tions — sim­i­lar to those in Greece. There­fore, France’s Pres­i­dent François Hol­lande had announced sev­er­al times pre­vi­ous to the Eurogroup Sum­mit, last Sun­day, that he would seek mit­i­ga­tions and a par­tial debt remis­sion for Greece. Italy’s Prime Min­is­ter Mat­teo Ren­zi had declared, “I say to Ger­many, enough is enough.”[9] Ulti­mate­ly, both had to sub­mit to Ger­man pres­sure. They accom­plished noth­ing. It is doubt­ful that their cav­ing in to Berlin will shore up their long-term posi­tions in light of the eco­nom­ic devel­op­ments of their coun­tries. This would also not be new in his­to­ry. Hopes of avoid­ing Ger­man aggres­sion had also been the moti­va­tion behind the Sep­tem­ber 1938 Munich Agree­ment, when Great Britain, France, and Italy, seek­ing to appease the Ger­man Reich, acqui­esced to the lat­ter’s occu­pa­tion of the “Sude­ten territories.”[10] It did not take long before they too were vic­tims of Ger­man aggres­sion.

With­out or Against the USA

“Il Mes­sag­gero” com­ment­ed on Italy’s per­spec­tive of the results. “Today, the loss of inno­cence was accom­pa­nied by [Italy’s] hor­rif­ic silence in the inter­na­tion­al are­na.” On the oth­er hand, Ger­many “believes it can assume the reign over Europe.” In ref­er­ence to Berlin’s glob­al polit­i­cal per­spec­tive, the com­men­ta­tor of “Mes­sag­gero” not­ed that this takes place, “with­out or against the USA.”[11]

Please read also The First Defeat [28] and Aus­ter­i­ty or Democ­ra­cy [29].

[1] Andrea Bonan­ni in: La Repub­bli­ca 13.07.2015.
[2] Giulio Sapel­li in: Il Mes­sag­gero 13.07.2015.
[3] Grèce: quand l’Alle­magne de Merkel est com­parée à celle d’Hitler. www.lefigaro.fr 13.07.2015.
[4] Mélen­chon: “Pour la 3e fois, un gou­verne­ment alle­mend est en train de détru­ire l’Eu­rope”. bfmbusiness.bfmtv.com 12.07.2015.
[5] Beat Gygi: Der Euro spricht neudeutsch. www.nzz.ch 28.09.2013.
[6] See Hin­ter­grund­bericht: Arbeits­ge­mein­schaft Europäis­ch­er Gren­zre­gio­nen (AGEG) [30].
[7] In a paper pub­lished on the 55th Anniver­sary of the Ger­man inva­sion of Poland, Wolf­gang Schäu­ble jus­ti­fied as fol­lows his demand that Ger­man con­cepts be applied: “With­out such a fur­ther devel­op­ment of (west) Euro­pean inte­gra­tion, Ger­many could be called upon or be tempt­ed, out of its own secu­ri­ty imper­a­tives, to under­take alone the sta­bi­liza­tion of east­ern Europe and do it in the tra­di­tion­al way.” Wolf­gang Schäu­ble, Karl Lamers: Über­legun­gen zur europäis­chen Poli­tik. 01.09.1994.
[8] Wolf­gang Schäu­ble, Karl Lamers: Über­legun­gen zur europäis­chen Poli­tik. 01.09.1994.
[9] See Die Poli­tik des Staatsstre­ichs [31].
[10] In reac­tion to the Munich Agree­ment, the Czechoslo­vak For­eign Min­is­ter at the time, Kamil Krof­ta, declared: “On behalf of the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic, as well as my gov­ern­ment, I declare that we sub­mit to the con­di­tions of the Munich Agree­ment which has come into being with­out Czecho­slo­va­kia and against her […] I do not want to crit­i­cize, but this is a cat­a­stro­phe, we do not deserve. We sub­mit and will endeav­our to secure our peo­ple a peace­ful life. I do not know if the deci­sions tak­en in Munich will be advan­ta­geous to your coun­tries. Besides, we are not the last ones, oth­ers will be affect­ed after us.” Quot­ed from Boris Celovsky: Das Münch­en­er Abkom­men 1938. Stuttgart 1958
[11] Giulio Sapel­li in: Il Mes­sag­gero 13.07.2015.

2.  Say hel­lo to the new meme that sym­bol­izes the state of affairs for one of the most impor­tant demo­c­ra­tic projects in his­tory: #Thi­sIsACoup:

“Ger­man-Led Eurogroup Launch­ing Coup Against Greek Gov­ern­ment” by Ryan Grim ;The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 7/12/2015. [11]

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union, Fran­cis Fukuya­ma famous­ly declared an end to his­tory. Things, of course, would con­tinue to hap­pen, he said, but the clash of rival ide­olo­gies was over with the “unabashed vic­tory of eco­nomic and polit­i­cal lib­er­al­ism.”

It was 1992, and it was a time to cel­e­brate. “What we may be wit­ness­ing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the pass­ing of a par­tic­u­lar peri­od of post­war his­tory, but the end of his­tory as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ide­o­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion and the uni­ver­sal­iza­tion of West­ern lib­eral democ­racy as the final form of human gov­ern­ment,” he wrote in his land­mark essay-turned-book. [32]

With Ger­many and its Euro­zone squeez­ing the life out of Greece on Sun­day night — and the hash­tag #Thi­sIsACoup [33] trend­ing — it became clear­er than ever that only one half of that bar­gain — the eco­nom­ics — remained alive.

With­in just a few years of Fukuyama’s pro­nounce­ment, pro­test­ers in West­ern nations, and gov­ern­ments and peo­ple in the glob­al South, began sug­gest­ing that the new demo­c­ra­tic sys­tem was, in the end, per­haps not so demo­c­ra­tic. The Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund and oth­er glob­al cred­i­tors began writ­ing laws, most­ly for Third World coun­tries, enforc­ing what they called “struc­tural adjust­ment” — which was blood­less bureau­cratic lan­guage refer­ring to the pil­lag­ing of a nation’s assets and resources, cou­pled with the gut­ting of its social ser­vices, pen­sions and oth­er advances that came in the 20th Cen­tury. The first major protest to cap­ture glob­al atten­tion was in Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton, in 1999, at a World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion meet­ing. The move­ment spread around the globe, with protests hit­ting cap­i­tal after cap­i­tal, wher­ever eco­nomic lead­ers gath­ered, until the attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. A planned protest in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., against the IMF and World Bank was sup­planted by a peace march.

The world’s rich nations assumed that what insti­tu­tions like the IMF did in the South wouldn’t hit the North. Cap­i­tal, how­ever, marched on. And on Sun­day night, it marched into Athens with an offer to Greece that would end the idea that cap­i­tal­ism and democ­racy can sur­vive togeth­er there. Reads the offer, pro­vided by a source close to the talks [12], from the Euro­pean finan­cial elite, which call them­selves the insti­tu­tions: “The [Greek] gov­ern­ment needs to con­sult and agree with the insti­tu­tions on all draft leg­is­la­tion in rel­e­vant areas with ade­quate time before sub­mit­ting it for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion or to Par­lia­ment.” It would be a gov­ern­ment in name only. Not only would the Greek peo­ple be forced to accept the kind of deal they reject­ed over­whelm­ingly at the polls just a week ear­lier, but they’d be blocked from imple­ment­ing any future poli­cies Ger­many dis­ap­proved of.

“The tri­umph of the West, of the West­ern idea, is evi­dent first of all in the total exhaus­tion of viable sys­tem­atic alter­na­tives to West­ern lib­er­al­ism,” Fukuya­ma wrote. But, instead, the absence of a viable alter­na­tive embold­ened cap­i­tal: with the threat of social­ism gone, there is less need for either half of what’s known in Europe as social democ­racy. In a pre­vi­ous inter­view with Huff­Post, French econ­o­mist Thomas Piket­ty high­lighted the inter­ac­tion. “The exis­tence of a counter mod­el was one of the rea­sons that a num­ber of reforms or poli­cies were accept­ed,” he said [34] argu­ing that peo­ple in cap­i­tal­ist coun­tries fared bet­ter thanks to the threat of com­mu­nism. “In France, it’s very strik­ing to see that in 1920, the polit­i­cal majori­ties adopt­ed steeply pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion. Exact­ly the same peo­ple refused the income tax in 1914 with a 2 per­cent tax rate. And in between, the Bol­she­vik rev­o­lu­tion made them feel, after all, that pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion is not so dan­ger­ous as rev­o­lu­tion.”

Dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions over the future of Greece, the Greek Syriza gov­ern­ment repeat­edly offered such pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion as a way of achiev­ing some of the bud­get sur­pluses the insti­tu­tions were demand­ing. The offer was reject­ed, how­ever, with the insti­tu­tions argu­ing that high­er tax­es on the rich might slow growth. With no fear of rev­o­lu­tion, the inter­est in pro­gres­sive tax­a­tion is gone.

Paul Krug­man, under the head­line “Killing the Euro­pean Project,” put the blame square­ly on Ger­many: [35]:

The trend­ing hash­tag Thi­sIsACoup is exact­ly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vin­dic­tive­ness, com­plete destruc­tion of nation­al sov­er­eignty, and no hope of relief. It is, pre­sum­ably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betray­al of every­thing the Euro­pean project was sup­posed to stand for.

Rena Dourou, a mem­ber of Syriza, wrote for Huff­Post Greece [34]t hat the next few days and hours “will either meet the goals of its founders — Democ­racy and Sol­i­dar­ity for the pros­per­ity of the peo­ple of Europe — or enter on a path of decay.”

Yanis Varo­ufakis, the econ­o­mist who was until recent­ly Greece’s finance min­is­ter, said in a blog post Sun­day that his Ger­man coun­ter­part, Wolf­gang Schäu­ble, flat-out told him that his end goal was to ease Greece out of the Euro­zone in order to teach a les­son to oth­er nations that might want to pur­sue polit­i­cal paths at odds with his vision. Fox Busi­ness report­ed Sun­day that the IMF was demand­ing Greek Prime Min­is­ter Alex­is Tsipras resign, a claim the bank lat­er denied. [36]..

Italy’s Prime Min­is­ter, mean­while, begged Ger­many to call off the dogs. “Now com­mon sense must pre­vail and an agree­ment must be reached. Italy does not want Greece to exit the euro and to Ger­many I say: enough is enough,” Ital­ian Prime Min­is­ter Mat­teo Ren­zi said. [37]“Now that Tsipras has made pro­pos­als in line with the Euro­pean demands, we must absolute­ly sign a deal. Humil­i­at­ing a Euro­pean part­ner after Greece has giv­en up on just about every­thing is unthink­able.”

The Unit­ed States has done pre­cious lit­tle to sup­port Greece or the prin­ci­ple of democ­racy in Europe. The Sovi­et Union may be gone, but the U.S. reluc­tance to inter­venecomes large­ly from the desire to [38]keep Ger­many as a strong ally while the U.S. wages a proxy war against Rus­sia in the Ukraine.

If Euro­pean his­tory is any guide, the too-clever cal­cu­la­tions and the pet­ty vin­dic­tive­ness will back­fire in a bad way.

...

3. It’s cer­tainly look­ing like Wolf­gang Schaeuble’s plan will indeed end up being the plan guid­ing the fate of the Euro­pean project dur­ing the crit­i­cal junc­ture. But what we’ve seen so far doesn’t make Greece’s time in the euro­zone seem like it can go on for much longer because, as Matt O’Brien points out, the offer Ger­many wants to impose on Greece is so bad for Greece that it’s an offer it can’t pos­si­bly accept.
“Ger­many Does­n’t Want to Save Greece. It Seems to Want to Humil­i­ate Greece; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 7/12/2015. [13]

Greece has offered an almost uncon­di­tional sur­ren­der on its bailout, but Ger­many might not accept any­thing less than a Carthagin­ian peace. In oth­er words, a deal that not only forces Athens to sub­mit, but also humil­i­ates it in the process.

This lat­est melo­drama, play­ing out in Brus­sels [39]as Euro­pean finance min­is­ters meet to dis­cuss whether or not to approve a new Greek bailout, appears so non­sen­si­cal that it can be hard to believe these peo­ple are decid­ing the future of Europe. Although you wouldn’t know it from the head­lines, the truth is that Greece and Europe have been close to a deal for awhile now. Both sides agreed about how much aus­ter­ity Athens should do, but dis­agreed about how Athens should do it—at least until last Thurs­day. That’s when Greece came up with an offer that was not only near­ly iden­ti­cal [40]to Europe’s, but also to the one its peo­ple had just reject­ed in a ref­er­en­dum. French Pres­i­dent François Hol­lande, whose gov­ern­ment helped [41] put the pro­posal toge­hter, called [42] it a “seri­ous” and “cred­i­ble” one. At the very least, it seemed like the basis for new nego­ti­a­tions.

But maybe not. The prob­lem is that Greece’s econ­omy is in so much worse shape now than it was even a few weeks ago that the tax hikes and spend­ing cuts, which would have pro­duced a 1 per­cent bud­get sur­plus before, won’t any­more. That’s what hap­pens , after all, when the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank pulls enough of the plug on your banks that they have to close their doors for now to avoid hav­ing to close their doors for good. Busi­nesses can’t get the cred­it they need to, well, stay in busi­ness, and will then default on the banks that are about to go out of busi­ness them­selves. The entire econ­omy, in oth­er words, shuts down. And that’s why Europe esti­mates that Greece would actu­ally need an 82 bil­lion euro bailout [43]—with 25 bil­lion of that going to its banks—instead of the 53.5 bil­lion euros Athens is ask­ing for. So Greece would have to do more aus­ter­ity than Europe want­ed before to get more mon­ey than Europe was offer­ing before.

If, that is, Europe is even offer­ing Greece any mon­ey any­more. It might not be. The sim­ple sto­ry is that Ger­many and the oth­er hard­line coun­tries don’t trust Greece’s anti-aus­ter­i­ty Syriza par­ty to actu­ally imple­ment, well, aus­ter­ity. And so rather than cough­ing up anoth­er 60 or 70 or 80 bil­lion euros, they seem to want to push to kick Greece out of the com­mon cur­rency instead. That, at least, was the plan that leaked on Sat­ur­day. And now it’s part of the actu­al plan on Sun­day. Indeed, it’s ten­ta­tively been includ­ed [44]in the Euro­pean finance min­is­ters’ lat­est joint state­ment. This isn’t just what Ger­many is con­sid­er­ing. It’s what Ger­many is try­ing to get the rest of Europe to go along with.

Under the plan, the only way Ger­many would let Greece stay in the euro now is if it sells 50 bil­lion euros of “very valu­able Greek assets,” allows inter­na­tional observers to mon­i­tor its bailout, and puts auto­matic spend­ing cuts in place in case it miss­es its deficit tar­gets. Oth­er­wise, Ger­many wants Greece to take at least a five year “time­out” from the euro, dur­ing which time its debts could be restruc­tured and it could receive human­i­tar­ian aid. The entire pro­posal [45]was less than a page long.

In case there was any doubt, this is an offer Greece can’t accept. Sure, sell­ing assets would low­er Greece’s debt today, but it would make the rest of Greece’s debt hard­er to pay back tomorrow—which, accord­ing to the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund, is already unpayable [46]. It’s the kind of thing you ask for if you want Athens to say no.

But does that mean Ger­many real­ly wants to get rid of Greece or is this just a ploy to get more con­ces­sions out of Greece? Yes. The prob­lem is it’s hard to know what Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel real­ly wants. Up till now, she’s been will­ing to do what­ever the least is to keep Greece in the euro, but her finance min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schäu­ble has been push­ing [47]her to give them the boot. That’s let them play a pret­ty effec­tive good-cop, bad-cop to get the most out of Athens, but this time that’s turned into bad-cop, worse-cop. Schäuble’s plan—and it is his plan—for Greece to “tem­porar­ily” exit the euro report­edly has Merkel’s back­ing [48]. There are even rumors [49]it has Fin­land, the Nether­lands, Esto­nia, Lithua­nia, Slo­va­kia, and Slovenia’s sup­port as well.

If Greece does leave the euro, though, it will only be tem­po­rary in the sense that all life is tem­po­rary. Bring­ing back the drach­ma would either be such a boon to Greece’s econ­omy that it’d nev­er want to go back to the euro, or be such a dis­as­ter that Europe would nev­er want to invite it back. But in either case, Greece and Europe’s tri­al sep­a­ra­tion would turn into a divorce. That might actu­ally be bet­ter for Greece now that it’s already gone through a lot of the pain of ditch­ing the euro—like a finan­cial crisis—but it could be a cat­a­stro­phe for Europe. It wouldn’t just show that coun­tries can leave the euro, but maybe that coun­tries have to leave the euro to recov­er. So the next time an anti-aus­ter­i­ty par­ty wins pow­er, it might decide to do the same, at which point the euro zone would be more like a north­ern euro zone, if that. Espe­cially if France decides that this makes the euro not worth sav­ing any­more.

...

4.  Big news for Europe and the world today: The euro­zone lost a mem­ber state but gained a brand new vas­sal state! Yes, instead of head­ing out the ‘Grex­it’, the Greek gov­ern­ment chose to accept a set of terms that were not only much worse than the aus­ter­ity pack­age Greek vot­ers reject­ed last week, but basi­cally end the notion of Greece as a nation. But the deal has been reached! Greece gets to stay in the euro­zone. All it needs to do is give up it’s sov­er­eignty and let its new troikan tech­nocrats impose an unstop­pable aus­ter­ity regime that’s worse than any­thing the Greeks have expe­ri­enced thus far. That’s seri­ously the deal.

Note this key point in the new terms that make Greece new troikan-straigh­jack­et so much more dan­ger­ous than the one it’s cur­rently wear­ing: Under the new terms, if Greece’s manda­tory sur­prluses ever fall behind and pre­vent it from ful­ly mak­ing the sched­uled debt repay­ments, a qua­si-auto­mat­ic mech­a­nism will step in to force addi­tional spend­ing cuts...and since those repay­ment short­falls are most like­ly to hap­pen dur­ing an eco­nomic down­turn, those auto-cuts are like­ly going to just lead to more auto-cuts!

“Greece Is Being Treat­ed like a Hos­tile Occu­pied State” by Ambrose Evans-PritchardThe Tele­graph; 7/13/2015. [14]

A new deal for Athens is the worst of all worlds and solves noth­ing

Like the Neapoli­tan Bour­bons – benign by com­par­i­son – the lead­ers of the euro­zone have learned noth­ing, and for­got­ten noth­ing.

The cru­el capit­u­la­tion forced upon Greece after 31 hours on the diplo­matic rack [50] offers no con­ceiv­able way out the country’s per­pet­ual cri­sis. The terms are harsh­er by a full order of mag­ni­tude than those reject­ed by Greek vot­ers in a land­slide ref­er­en­dum a week ago, and there­fore can nev­er com­mand demo­c­ra­tic assent.

They must be car­ried through by a Greek par­lia­ment still dom­i­nated by MPs from Left and Right who loathe every line of the sum­mit state­ment, the infa­mous SN 4070/15, and have only agreed – if they have agreed – with a knife to their throats.

EMU inspec­tors can veto leg­is­la­tion. The emas­cu­la­tion of the Greek par­lia­ment has been slipped into the text. All that is miss­ing is a unit of EMU gen­darmes.

Such terms are unen­force­able. The cred­i­tors have sought to nail down the new mem­o­ran­dum by trans­fer­ring €50bn of Greek assets to “an inde­pen­dent fund that will mon­e­tise the assets through pri­vati­sa­tions and oth­er means”. It will be used in part to pay off debts.

This fund will be under EU “super­vi­sion”. The cos­metic niceties of sov­er­eignty will be pre­served by let­ting the Greek author­i­ties man­age its day to day affairs. Nobody is fooled.

In oth­er words, they are seiz­ing Greece’s few remain­ing jew­els at source. This is not real­ly dif­fer­ent from the Inter­na­tional Com­mit­tee for Greek Debt Man­age­ment in 1898 imposed on Greece after the coun­try went bank­rupt fol­low­ing a dis­as­trous Balkan war.

A six-pow­er league of bond­hold­ers, led by British bankers, impound­ed cus­toms duties in the Port of Piraeus, and seized rev­enues from stamp duty, tobac­co, salt, kerosene, all the way down to play­ing cards. But at least there was no hum­bug about sol­i­dar­ity and help­ing Greece on that occa­sion.

“It is the Ver­sailles Treaty for the present age,” said Mr Varo­ufakis this morn­ing, talk­ing to me from from his island home in Aegi­na.

Under the new terms, Greece must tight­en fis­cal pol­icy by rough­ly 2pc of GDP by next year, push­ing the coun­try fur­ther into a debt-defla­tion spi­ral and into the next down­wards leg of its six-year depres­sion.

This will cause the gov­ern­ment to miss the bud­get tar­gets yet again – prob­a­bly by a large mar­gin – in an exact repeat of the self-defeat­ing pol­icy that caused Greek debt dynam­ics to spin out of con­trol in the last two Troi­ka loan pack­ages.

As the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund acknowl­edged in its famous mea cul­pa, if you mis­judge the fis­cal mul­ti­plier and force aus­ter­ity beyond the ther­a­peu­tic dose, you make mat­ters worse. The debt to GDP ratio ris­es despite the cuts.

EMU lead­ers have an answer to this. Like Canute’s courtiers, they will sim­ply com­mand the waves to retreat. The text states that on top of pen­sion cuts and tax increas­es there should be “qua­si-auto­mat­ic spend­ing cuts in case of devi­a­tions from ambi­tious pri­mary sur­plus tar­gets”,.

In oth­er words, they will be forced to imple­ment pro-cycli­cal con­trac­tionary poli­cies. The fis­cal slip­page that act­ed as a slight cush­ion over the last five years will be not be tol­er­ated this time.

And let us not for­get that these pri­mary sur­pluses nev­er made any sense in the first place. They were not drawn up on the basis of macro-eco­nom­ic analy­sis. They were writ­ten into pri­or agree­ments because that is what would be need­ed – ceteris paribus – to pre­tend that debt is sus­tain­able, and there­fore that the IMF could sign off on the accords. What a cha­rade.

Nobel econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man says the EMU demands are “mad­ness” on every lev­el [51]. “What we’ve learned these past cou­ple of weeks is that being a mem­ber of the euro­zone means that the cred­i­tors can destroy your econ­omy if you step out of line. This has no bear­ing at all on the under­ly­ing eco­nom­ics of aus­ter­ity,” he said.

“This goes beyond harsh into pure vin­dic­tive­ness, com­plete destruc­tion of nation­al sov­er­eignty, and no hope of relief. It is, pre­sum­ably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betray­al of every­thing the Euro­pean project was sup­posed to stand for,” he said.

Yes, Syriza has blinked, though there are many chap­ters in this sor­ry saga yet to come.

The Greek banks are on the verge of col­lapse. There is not enough cash left to cov­er ATM with­drawals of €60bn each day through this week, or to cov­er week­ly pay­ments of €120 to pen­sion­ers and the unem­ployed – that is the to say, the tiny frac­tion of the job­less who receive any­thing at all.

Cap­i­tal con­trols have led to an eco­nomic stand-still. Almost noth­ing is com­ing into the coun­try. Firms are run­ning down their last stocks of raw mate­ri­als and vital imports. Hun­dreds of fac­to­ries, mills, and pro­cess­ing plants have already cut shifts and are prepar­ing to shut down oper­a­tions as soon as this week.

Late tourist book­ings have crashed by 30pc. Syriza faced a seri­ous risk that the coun­try would run out of import­ed food stocks by end of this month, with calami­tous con­se­quences at the peak of the tourist sea­son. So yes, faced with the full hor­ror of what is hap­pen­ing, they recoiled.

There is no doubt that Syriza sold the Greek peo­ple a false prospec­tus with its incom­pat­i­ble promis­es both to tear up the Troi­ka Mem­o­ran­dum and to keep Greece in the euro. They have learned a hor­ri­ble les­son.

Yet that is only half the sto­ry. We have also watched the EMU cred­i­tor pow­ers bring a coun­try to knees by cut­ting off the emer­gency liq­uid­ity (ELA) to the bank­ing sys­tem.

Let there be no doubt, it was the deci­sion by the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank to freeze ELA at €89bn two weeks ago that pre­cip­i­tated the final cri­sis and broke Syriza’s will to resist. The lines of author­ity on this episode are blurred. Per­son­ally, I do not blame the ECB’s Mario Draghi for this abuse of pow­er. It was in essence a polit­i­cal deci­sion by the Eurogroup [52].

But how­ever you dress it up, the fact remains that the ECB is by its acts dic­tat­ing a polit­i­cal set­tle­ment, and serv­ing as the enforce­ment arm of the cred­i­tors rather than uphold­ing EU treaty law.

It took a stand that fur­ther desta­bilised the finan­cial sys­tem of an EMU mem­ber state that was already in grave trou­ble, and arguably did so in breach of its pri­mary treaty duty to uphold finan­cial sta­bil­ity. It is a water­shed moment.

What we have all seen with great clar­ity is that the EMU cred­i­tor pow­ers can sub­ju­gate an unruly state – pro­vided it is small — by shut­ting down its bank­ing sys­tem. We have seen too that a small coun­try has no defences what­so­ever. This is mon­e­tary pow­er run amok.

To make mat­ters worse Greek pre­mier Alex­is Tsipras can­not make a plau­si­ble case to his own peo­ple that he has secured debt relief, the one prize that could have saved him. Ger­many blocked even this.

It did so despite mas­sive pres­sure from the Oba­ma White House and the IMF, and even though France, Italy, and the lead­ers of the EU Com­mis­sion and Coun­cil accept that a hair­cut of some sort is nec­es­sary.

The IMF says debt relief must be at least 30pc of GDP. Even this is too low. Giv­en the dam­age done by six years of eco­nomic implo­sion, a lost decade of invest­ment, chron­ic hys­tere­sis, youth unem­ploy­ment of 50pc or high­er, a brain drain of the edu­cated, and a ruined bank­ing sys­tem, it would still be inad­e­quate even if the entire debt was writ­ten off. That is what this EMU exper­i­ment has done to the coun­try.

Yet all the Greeks get is vague talk of a “pos­si­ble” exten­sion of matu­ri­ties, at some point in the future, once they have jumped through umpteen hoops and passed their exams. This is what they were promised in 2012. It nev­er hap­pened.

“If the specifics of debt relief are not writ­ten clear­ly into the over­all pack­age, this is not worth any­thing,” said Mr Varo­ufakis.

The sum­mit doc­u­ment asserts with self-serv­ing dis­hon­esty that Greece’s debt has come off the rails due to the fail­ure of Greek gov­ern­ments to stick to the Mem­o­ran­dum over the last year. Had this not occurred, the debt would still be sus­tain­able.

This is a lie. Pub­lic debt bal­looned to 180pc late last year – long before Syriza was elect­ed – and even though the New Democ­racy gov­ern­ment had com­plied with most Troi­ka demands.

The truth is that Greece was already bank­rupt in 2010. EMU cred­i­tors refused to allow a nor­mal debt restruc­tur­ing to take place because it would have led to instant con­ta­gion to Por­tu­gal, Spain, and Italy at a time when the euro­zone had no lender-of-last resort or defences.

Leaked doc­u­ments from the IMF leave no doubt that the res­cue was intend­ed to save the euro and Euro­pean banks, not Greece. More debt was shov­eled onto the Greek tax­pay­ers in order to buy time, both in 2010 and again in 2012, stor­ing up the cri­sis that Europe faces today.

In an odd way, the only Euro­pean politi­cian who was real­ly offer­ing Greece a way out of the impasse was Wolf­gang Schauble, the Ger­man finance min­is­ter, even if his offer was made in a grace­less fash­ion, almost in the form of dik­tat.

His plan for a five-year vel­vet with­drawal from EMU – a euphemism, since he real­ly meant Grex­it – with Paris Club debt relief, human­i­tar­ian help, and a pack­age of growth mea­sures, might allow Greece to regain com­pet­i­tive­ness under the drach­ma in an order­ly way.

Such a for­mula would imply inter­ven­tion by the ECB to sta­bilise the drach­ma, pre­vent­ing an over­shoot and dan­ger­ous down­ward spi­ral. It would cer­tainly have been bet­ter than the atro­cious doc­u­ment that Mr Tsipras must now take back to Athens.

The crushed Syriza leader must sell a set­tle­ment that leaves Greece in a per­ma­nent debt trap [53], under neo-colo­nial con­trol, and so eco­nom­i­cally frag­ile that it is almost guar­an­teed to crash into a fresh cri­sis in the next glob­al down­turn or Euro­pean reces­sion.

At that point, every­body will blame the Greeks again, unfair­ly, and we will go through yet anoth­er round of bit­ter nego­ti­a­tions, until some­thing final­ly breaks this grim cycle of fail­ure and recrim­i­na­tion.

For the euro­zone this “deal” is the worst of all worlds. They have solved noth­ing. Ger­many and its allies have for the first time attempt­ed to eject a coun­try from the euro, and by doing so have vio­lated the sanc­tity of mon­e­tary union.

...

I will return to the behav­iour of Ger­many and the diplo­matic dis­as­ter that has unfold­ed over com­ing days. For now let me just quote the ver­dict of his­to­rian Simon Schama.

“If Tsipras was wear­ing the crown of King Pyrrhus this time last week, Merkel is wear­ing it now. Her ulti­ma­tum the begin­ning of the end of the EU,” he said. Exact­ly.

...

Under the new terms, Greece must tight­en fis­cal pol­icy by rough­ly 2pc of GDP by next year, push­ing the coun­try fur­ther into a debt-defla­tion spi­ral and into the next down­wards leg of its six-year depres­sion.

This will cause the gov­ern­ment to miss the bud­get tar­gets yet again – prob­a­bly by a large mar­gin – in an exact repeat of the self-defeat­ing pol­icy that caused Greek debt dynam­ics to spin out of con­trol in the last two Troi­ka loan pack­ages.

As the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund acknowl­edged in its famous mea cul­pa, if you mis­judge the fis­cal mul­ti­plier and force aus­ter­ity beyond the ther­a­peu­tic dose, you make mat­ters worse. The debt to GDP ratio ris­es despite the cuts.

EMU lead­ers have an answer to this. Like Canute’s courtiers, they will sim­ply com­mand the waves to retreat. The text states that on top of pen­sion cuts and tax increas­es there should be “qua­si-auto­mat­ic spend­ing cuts in case of devi­a­tions from ambi­tious pri­mary sur­plus tar­gets”,.

In oth­er words, they will be forced to imple­ment pro-cycli­cal con­trac­tionary poli­cies. The fis­cal slip­page that act­ed as a slight cush­ion over the last five years will be not be tol­er­ated this time.

...

5. Far too lit­tle, much too late. The IMF has relent­ed on aus­ter­i­ty for Greece, much too late.
“For Hard-Hit Greeks, IMF Mea Cul­pa Comes too Late” by Lef­t­eris Papadi­mas and Renee Mal­te­zou; Reuters; 6/6/2013. [54]

Greeks react­ed with an air of vin­di­ca­tion and out­rage at the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund’s admis­sion it erred in its han­dling of the country’s bailout, berat­ing an apol­ogy that comes too late to sal­vage an econ­omy and count­less lives in ruins.

Anger was pal­pa­ble on the streets of Athens, where the EU-IMF aus­ter­ity recipe that the Wash­ing­ton-based fund says it sharply mis­judged has left rows of shut­tered stores and many scroung­ing for scraps of food in trash cans.

“Real­ly? Thanks for let­ting us know but we can’t for­give you,” said Apos­to­los Trikali­nos, a 59-year old garbage col­lec­tor and a father of two.

“Let’s not fool our­selves. They’ll nev­er give us any­thing back. I’m sor­ry for all the peo­ple who killed them­selves because of aus­ter­ity. How are we going to bring them back? How?”

The IMF acknowl­edged on Wednes­day that it under­es­ti­mated the dam­age done to Greece’s econ­omy from spend­ing cuts and tax hikes imposed in a bailout, which was accom­pa­nied by one of the worst eco­nomic col­lapses ever expe­ri­enced by a coun­try in peace­time.

A report look­ing back on the bailout said the Fund veered from its own stan­dards to over­es­ti­mate how much debt Greece could bear, and should have pushed hard­er and soon­er for pri­vate lenders to take a “hair­cut” to reduce Greece’s debt bur­den.

Prime Min­is­ter Anto­nis Sama­ras told reporters the acknowl­edg­ment jus­ti­fied his posi­tions. He had crit­i­cized from the out­set “what the IMF has called mis­takes”.

“And we have been cor­rect­ing those mis­takes over the past year,” Sama­ras told reporters dur­ing a vis­it to Helsin­ki.

Greeks have seen their incomes plunge by about a third since the debt cri­sis erupt­ed in 2009 and prompt­ed Greece to seek two bailouts from the EU and the IMF. The unem­ploy­ment rate has hit near­ly 27 per­cent and sui­cide rates have soared. Worst hit have been the youth, near­ly 60 per­cent of whom are unem­ployed.

“The IMF admits to the crime,” the left­ist Avgi news­pa­per declared on its front page. Top sell­ing news­pa­per Ta Nea brand­ed it an “admis­sion of fail­ure”.

In the cor­ri­dors of pow­er, some offi­cials sug­gested the admis­sion could strength­en their hand in future talks with the IMF, Euro­pean Union and Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank, col­lec­tively known as the troi­ka, on debt relief or new aus­ter­ity mea­sures.

“It is pos­i­tive that the report rec­og­nizes that there were mis­takes in Greece’s pro­gram in the past and we hope that they will not be repeat­ed in the future and then cre­ate the need for cor­rec­tive action,” a senior gov­ern­ment offi­cial told Reuters.

...

The crushed Syriza leader must sell a set­tle­ment that leaves Greece in a per­ma­nent debt trap [53], under neo-colo­nial con­trol, and so eco­nom­i­cally frag­ile that it is almost guar­an­teed to crash into a fresh cri­sis in the next glob­al down­turn or Euro­pean reces­sion.

At that point, every­body will blame the Greeks again, unfair­ly, and we will go through yet anoth­er round of bit­ter nego­ti­a­tions, until some­thing final­ly breaks this grim cycle of fail­ure and recrim­i­na­tion.

For the euro­zone this “deal” is the worst of all worlds. They have solved noth­ing. Ger­many and its allies have for the first time attempt­ed to eject a coun­try from the euro, and by doing so have vio­lated the sanc­tity of mon­e­tary union.
...

6. Over the years, we have been priv­i­leged to fea­ture Lucy Komis­ar as an expert com­men­ta­tor on mat­ters eco­nom­ic, “off­shore” busi­ness mat­ters, in par­tic­u­lar. At a recent address by Ger­man Finance Min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schauble (giv­en to the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions) Lucy braced the vet­er­an politi­cian over Ger­many’s hypocrisy con­cern­ing Greek debt. Schauble’s equiv­o­ca­tion on the issue did not shake Lucy’s efforts to pin him down. In the arti­cle below, do note the obser­va­tions of Albrecht Ritschl, pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ic his­to­ry at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.” . . . .  Ritschl said, “If we accept that Germany’s nation­al prod­uct is some­where to the tune of over 2 tril­lion euros, which is beyond 2.5 tril­lion U.S. dol­lars, we would be talk­ing about a default and debt for­give­ness of some­where in the range of 10 tril­lion dol­lars. I would tend to think that this is prob­a­bly unri­valed in 20th cen­tu­ry his­to­ry. . . . .” Some back­ground infor­ma­tion to flesh out lis­ten­ers’ under­stand­ing of these issues can be found in an intro­duc­tion to the anti-fas­cist books [15] avail­able for down­load on this web­site. Oth­er posts [16] and pro­grams [17] have dealt with the issue [18] of Ger­many, the EMU, Greece’s debt and the Third Reich’s eco­nom­ic exploita­tion of “the cra­dle of democracy.“The polit­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dynam­ics under­ly­ing Greece’s per­ils exem­pli­fy why we so often cite the pri­ma­ry impor­tance of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work [19]. Be sure to click on the link below to hear Lucy’s ques­tion at the CFR talk, as well as links to an impor­tant inter­view [20]with Albrecht Ritschl.
“Ger­man Finance Min­is­ter Schauble Spins Why Greeks Have to Pay Back Loans and Ger­many Does­n’t” by Lucy Komis­ar; The Komis­ar Scoop; 4/18/2015. [55]

Ger­man Finance Min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schäu­ble spoke at the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions on Wednes­day. With a politician’s prac­ticed spin, he declared that Ger­many didn’t owe any mon­ey from bil­lions it had extort­ed from Greece dur­ing its World War II occu­pa­tion, because for a peri­od after the war, it had no sov­er­eign gov­ern­ment. WHAT!

Lucy asks Schäu­ble to explain dif­fer­ence in moral­i­ty of Ger­mans and Greeks repay­ing debts.

Accord­ing to Forbes, the amount owed to Greece, with­out inter­est, in today’s mon­ey, would amount to $14 bil­lion. With inter­est at 3% over 66 years, that would come to at least $95 bil­lion.
The Greek debt is $341 bil­lion. The lat­est cliff-hang­er debt repay­ment to the IMF was $486 mil­lion. Done with mon­ey that could have gone to health care, pen­sions, jobs. Do the math.
I asked Schäu­ble: “What is the moral dis­tinc­tion between the oblig­a­tion of Greece to pay back loans that were nego­ti­at­ed by pre­vi­ous cor­rupt gov­ern­ments and Germany’s oblig­a­tion to pay back the loan that the Nazi gov­ern­ment extort­ed from Greece?”

GOVTS HAVE TO PAY PAST GOVT DEBTS, EXCEPT IF THEY ARE NAZIS

On Greece pay­ing its debts, he said: “The prob­lem of Greece is not the prob­lem of whether for­mer Greek gov­ern­ments have been a bet­ter legit­imiza­tion than the giv­en gov­ern­ment. That is always in democ­ra­cies. The peo­ple elect in a par­lia­ment or a pres­i­dent and then this is a giv­en gov­ern­ment, and the next gov­ern­ment has to take lia­bil­i­ty from the for­mer gov­ern­ment. Oth­er­wise, you can’t—it’s dif­fi­cult to get the world in a—in a civilized—(inaudible).

“Whether Greek gov­ern­ments have been cor­rupt or not, it’s not the sub­ject to be judged by oth­ers. And of course, we know fight­ing cor­rup­tion is not only in Greece a prob­lem, but in a lot of mem­ber states.

“But hav­ing said this, the prob­lem of Greek is not the loans giv­en. The prob­lem of Greece is the lack of com­pet­i­tive­ness. And the prob­lem of Greece is that Greece has enjoyed, since hav­ing joined the Euro­zone, low inter­est rates. And they didn’t use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to increase their com­pet­i­tive­ness, what has been the assump­tion in join­ing the Euro­zone.”

Wolf­gang Schäu­ble answers Lucy’s ques­tion.

But on Ger­many pay­ing its debts, every­thing was reversed. “So what is the Ger­man, you can’t—would you real­ly com­pare a for­mer Greek gov­ern­ment with the Nazi—with the Nazi times? It makes no sense.”

Does he mean that if a gov­ern­ment is real­ly bad, crim­i­nal, mur­der­ous, geno­ci­dal, it doesn’t have to pay its debts?

Schäu­ble: “And hav­ing said, I would like—I have been born in 1942. I have the mem­o­ry that in—since 1945, Ger­many had not any sov­er­eign­ty. We had—it was—in some way it was some­thing like—(chuckles)—the end of Ger­man his­to­ry as a state. And we only regained our full sov­er­eign­ty in 1990—in 1990—on the start of Octo­ber, 1990.

“And what we have to—what we have—how we had to deal with our ongo­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for our past. And I feel strong­ly respon­si­ble for the her­itage of Ger­man his­to­ry, to be very clear. But you can’t mix it, the one with the oth­er. And we have inter­na­tion­al rules. We have inter­na­tion­al law. We have inter­na­tion­al courts. We accept all deci­sions of inter­na­tion­al courts, even the crim­i­nal court.

“Not any well-admired mem­ber state does accept mem­ber­ship in the Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court, by the way. For exam­ple, we do—of course, we do, Ger­man. But hav­ing said this, it’s noth­ing to be com­pared. I’m sor­ry. I have no idea to com­pare this.”

I have been read­ing and reread­ing his answer. And I am dizzy. Are you dizzy yet?

The idea is that because Ger­many was defeat­ed in 1945 and was no longer a state, its debts until 1990 don’t count. So what hap­pened about the part that a gov­ern­ment takes lia­bil­i­ty from the for­mer gov­ern­ment? Except for Ger­many? Remem­ber that the Nazis were elect­ed. Not to men­tion that now the Ger­mans are very rich and one of its vic­tim coun­tries, which suf­fered mas­sive destruc­tion by the Nazis, is very poor.

GET OUT OF DEBT FREE CARD

And there are “inter­na­tion­al law” and “inter­na­tion­al courts” — which have con­ve­nient­ly been used to absolve Ger­many of its debts. The best expla­na­tion of the “get out of debt free” card I’ve seen is by Albrecht Ritschl, pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ic his­to­ry at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics. He says this in an inter­view with Michael Nevradakis, a U.S. Ful­bright Schol­ar in Athens.

Albrecht Ritschl, pro­fes­sor of eco­nom­ic his­to­ry at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.

After WWII: “The first thing the occu­pa­tion author­i­ties did was to block all kinds of claims by and against the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, under the legal fic­tion that that the Ger­man gov­ern­ment and the Ger­man state didn’t exist any­more.”

The U.S. blocked claims on the Ger­man war debt “through an inge­nious and slight­ly mali­cious device: Whichev­er coun­try want­ed to receive Mar­shall aid from the Amer­i­cans under the Mar­shall Plan had to sign a waiv­er waiv­ing all kinds of finan­cial claims against Ger­many from World War II against Mar­shall aid.

“This means that it would not be entire­ly blocked, but it would have to [be] put on hold until post­war Ger­many had paid off its Mar­shall aid from the Unit­ed States.

“In tech­ni­cal terms what that did was to make repa­ra­tion and cred­it claims against Ger­many from World War II junior, sec­ond rank, low­er in rank to Mar­shall assis­tance to Ger­many. And since every­body want­ed to get Mar­shall aid from Amer­i­ca, every­body grudg­ing­ly signed these waivers. So the sit­u­a­tion dur­ing the Mar­shall Plan peri­od was that all these debts still exist­ed on paper, but they were worth­less in the sense that the debt was blocked.”

The Lon­don Agree­ment on Ger­man Debt con­tin­ued to block claims. “In the ear­ly 1950s, nego­ti­a­tions were start­ed between West Ger­many and the cred­i­tor coun­tries about what to do with all of this. A solu­tion was found – basi­cal­ly imposed again by the Amer­i­cans and to some extent by the British – that did two things. First, it lumped togeth­er the war debts with the repa­ra­tions – which is not an innocu­ous step to take. Sec­ond, it used slight­ly fuzzy lan­guage, which is open to inter­pre­ta­tions, which said that set­tle­ment of these issues would be post­poned until after future Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion.”

Reuni­fi­ca­tion hap­pened in 1990. But still no pay­ment. Cir­cle back to the first point. The Ger­many that incurred the debt no longer exist­ed. And for­get the part about coun­tries being liable for the debts of for­mer gov­ern­ments.

The mon­ey Ger­many would owe is huge. Ritschl said, “If we accept that Germany’s nation­al prod­uct is some­where to the tune of over 2 tril­lion euros, which is beyond 2.5 tril­lion U.S. dol­lars, we would be talk­ing about a default and debt for­give­ness of some­where in the range of 10 tril­lion dol­lars. I would tend to think that this is prob­a­bly unri­valed in 20th cen­tu­ry his­to­ry.”

GOVTS HAVE TO PAY PAST GOVT DEBTS, EXCEPT IF THEY WERE NAZIS

At reuni­fi­ca­tion, Ger­many got anoth­er “get out of debt free” card. Ritschl says, “In 1990. Ger­many received this kind of bap­tism cer­tifi­cate for a uni­fied Ger­many which is incred­i­bly sub­tly word­ed and whose only pur­pose was, appar­ent­ly, to pre­vent repa­ra­tion or resti­tu­tion claims against uni­fied Ger­many being raised on the grounds of the fact that there is a uni­fied Ger­man state now and that some­thing like arti­cle 5 of the Lon­don debt agree­ment could all of a sud­den be reac­ti­vat­ed.
“The Ger­man point of view is essen­tial­ly that the so-called 2+4 treaty of 1990 is not mak­ing any men­tion of any repa­ra­tions or wartime debts of Nazi Ger­many, and giv­en the fact that this issue is not cov­ered by the treaty, the issue is essen­tial­ly dead. This has con­sis­tent­ly been the posi­tion of the Ger­man gov­ern­ment. The Ger­man posi­tion has so far been quite suc­cess­ful . . . sev­er­al attempts to chal­lenge it in the Euro­pean court have been unsuc­cess­ful, and it seems to me that from a legal stand­point, there is rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle chance that this will be suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged.”
Pow­er trumps moral­i­ty every time.

7. The rest of this pro­gram descrip­tion presents infor­ma­tion set forth in pre­vi­ous broad­casts about the Greek tragedy. As not­ed in FTR #788 [17], in late 2011, the Troi­ka (the IMF, Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and ECB–read “Ger­many”) imposed the inclu­sion of an out­right fas­cist par­ty head­ed by a Holo­caust denier as part of the impo­si­tion of EU/EMU “Clause­witz­ian eco­nom­ics” on Greece.

“Europe Adrift (1)”; german-foreign-policy.com; 12/21/2011. [25]

. . . Recent­ly, a rightwing extrem­ist par­ty was again made a direct coali­tion part­ner in a country’s gov­ern­ment — in Greece. The new­ly installed tran­si­tional gov­ern­ment — imposed under the super­vi­sion of Berlin and Brus­sels — includes not only the con­ser­v­a­tive and social demo­c­ra­tic par­ties but also the LAOS Par­ty (Laikós Orthó­doxos Synager­més, “Ortho­dox People’s Alarm”). The LAOS Par­ty musters also par­ti­sans of the for­mer mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship and is known for its racist and anti-Semit­ic invec­tives. Gior­gos Karatzaferis [56], LAOS Par­ty Chair­per­son, is quot­ed to have pro­claimed that he is proud “not to be Jew­ish, homo­sex­ual and com­mu­nist,” which “only few can claim.“[5] He is said to have called out to the Israeli ambas­sador: “Jew ambas­sador, watch out where you tread! Let’s dis­cuss the Holo­caust, let’s talk about all the fairy tales about Auschwitz and Dachau.“[6] Makis Voridis [57], a mem­ber of the LAOS Par­ty and min­is­ter of trans­porta­tion in the Greek gov­ern­ment, imposed by Berlin and Brus­sels, began his polit­i­cal career as the leader of a youth orga­ni­za­tion of the par­ty presided over by Geor­gios Papadopou­los. Papadopou­los had been the mil­i­tary com­man­der of the jun­ta. He found­ed that par­ty after he had been released from prison, in the after­math of the over­throw of his dic­ta­tor­ship. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment evi­dently con­sid­ers the LAOS Par­ty help­ful for imple­ment­ing its aus­ter­ity dic­tate. . . .

8. “The Ham­mer” [57] is back. Makis “The Ham­mer” Voridis is Greece’s new Health Min­is­ter [26].

In FTR #788 [17], we not­ed the joint progress of Ger­man/EU-imposed “aus­ter­i­ty” and fas­cism in Greece.

With the coun­try’s pover­ty-dri­ven health care approx­i­mat­ing a lethal, slow-motion eugen­ics pro­gram, Greece’s “Clause­witz­ian Eco­nom­ics” fig­ures to accel­er­ate with the appoint­ment of Makis Voridis, a doc­tri­naire Nazi, to admin­is­ter the Greek Health Min­istry.

As the Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed EMU and EU “bring the ham­mer down” on the Euro­pean econ­o­my and cit­i­zen­ry, it is grim­ly fas­ci­nat­ing to watch this hands-on appli­ca­tion of Von Clause­witz’s the­o­ret­i­cal prin­ci­ples [27].

Gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered in the con­text of mil­i­tary strat­e­gy and tac­tics, Von Clause­witz’s con­cept of Total War lends itself read­i­ly to eco­nom­ics and social pol­i­cy.

Hav­ing Voridis as Greece’s Health Min­is­ter reminds us of Josef Men­gele, select­ing those fit for work from those des­ig­nat­ed for imme­di­ate gassing at Auschwitz.

“Yacht Apps and Anti-Semit­ic Min­is­ters in the Birth­place of Democ­ra­cy” by Mark Ames; Pan­do Dai­ly; 6/15/2014. [26]

Good and bad eco­nom­ics news out of the birth­place of democ­ra­cy.

The good news: Accord­ing to the Wall Street Jour­nal, Greece is see­ing a boom in tech star­tups. Of course, that boom starts from a very low num­ber, as the Jour­nal reports [58]:

“there were 144 star­tups in Greece in 2013, up from just 16 in 2010. The mon­ey invest­ed in them has climbed to €42 mil­lion ($57 mil­lion), com­pared with just €500,000 three years ago.”

Most of the fund­ing is geared towards ser­vic­ing the sec­tor of Greece that hasn’t been ruined by the past few years of EU-imposed aus­ter­ity, which rules out a large per­cent­age of under-35s, the pre­sumed Inter­net gen­er­a­tion. The unem­ploy­ment rate for young Greeks aged 15–24 is 58.3%, while for 25–34 year old Greeks, the unem­ploy­ment rate is 35.5%. Excit­ing new Greek star­tups attract­ing out­side VC cap­i­tal, like incred­i­blue [59]— an online yacht book­ing ser­vice — and Tax­ibeat [60], a mobile taxi­cab hail­ing app — aren’t going to be much use to them.

Still, Greece’s “boom­ing” tech sec­tor is the good news.

Now, the bad news: Greece’s pro-EU rul­ing con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty, the New Democ­rats, just named an actu­al neo-Nazi [61], Makis “The Ham­mer” Voridis, as Greece’s new Health Min­is­ter [61]Jew­ish groups are out­raged [62] over the news that Voridis—a long­time neo-fas­cist [63] activist and anti-Semi­te [61] who has pub­licly pro­moted the Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion as wor­thy of schol­ar­ship, and doubt­ed the authen­tic­ity of the Diary of Anne Frank—is serv­ing as a promi­nent min­is­ter in the rul­ing party’s cab­i­net, in charge of an impor­tant min­istry at a time when Greece has been gut­ting [64] its health care bud­gets, caus­ing wide­spread mis­ery.

I wrote about Voridis in Novem­ber 2011 [65], because I was shocked that a gov­ern­ment coali­tion essen­tially imposed on Greece by the EU and West­ern cred­i­tors would demand that the alleged­ly tech­no­cratic [66] “aus­ter­ity coali­tion” includ­ed mem­bers of Greece’s anti-Semit­ic, neo-fas­cist LAOS par­ty [67]Includ­ing Makis “The Ham­mer” Voridis [68], who served as min­is­ter of infra­struc­ture and trans­port [69].

I call him “The Ham­mer” because pho­tographs [70] sur­faced show­ing Voridis as a Uni­ver­sity of Athens law stu­dent, car­ry­ing a makeshift stone ham­mer in hand which he used to bash sus­pected left­wing stu­dents with. That was in 1985, when Voridis was in a fas­cist group called “Stu­dent Alter­na­tive” which sup­ported Greece’s bloody mil­i­tary coup [71] and mil­i­tary jun­ta that ruled from 1967–1974 [71].

Voridis was expelled from law school for club­bing left­ist stu­dents, and went on to Big Things in the world of neo-fas­cist Greek pol­i­tics. In 1994, he found­ed the far-right Hel­lenic Front, which in 2004 formed a coali­tion with a self-described Nazi, Kon­stan­ti­nos Plevris [72], who open­ly advo­cated for the exter­mi­na­tion of Greece’s remain­ing Jews. In 2005, Voridis merged his par­ty into the LAOS par­ty, whose leader, Geor­gios Karatzaferis, pub­licly mocked Auschwitz and Dachau death camps as “myths,” blamed Jews for 9/11 dur­ing a speech in par­lia­ment, and said “the Jews have no legit­i­macy to speak in Greece.”

In late 2011, as Greece pol­i­tics col­lapsed under the weight of its debts and the harsh EU-imposed aus­ter­ity mea­sures, the EU imposed a new “aus­ter­ity” gov­ern­ment that includ­ed “The Ham­mer” Voridis and oth­er mem­bers of the neo-fas­cist LAOS par­ty. The aus­ter­ity gov­ern­ment ran Greece until new elec­tions were called in mid-2012. In those inter­im months, the aus­ter­ity coali­tion pushed through rad­i­cal aus­ter­ity mea­sures that caused LAOS’ fas­cist vot­ers to desert them for an even more vio­lent, more extreme neo-Nazi par­ty, the Gold­en Dawn Par­ty. One would’ve thought that’d be the end of Makis Voridis.

But Voridis is one of the sly­er fas­cists. He joined the aus­ter­ity cab­i­net and served from Novem­ber 2011 through June 2012. In the June 2012 elec­tions, after LAOS was oblit­er­ated for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the aus­ter­ity gov­ern­ment, Voridis aban­doned LAOS and joined the new rul­ing par­ty that won the elec­tions, the respectable right-wing New Democ­racy par­ty.

And now New Democ­racy is pay­ing back the favor to their favorite aus­ter­ity fas­cist.

...

9. The pro­gram reviews the Euro­pean Mon­e­tary Union as the real­iza­tion of the the­o­ries of Pan-Ger­man the­o­reti­cian Friedrich List.

Writ­ing in 1943, Paul Win­kler fore­saw that the Prus­so-Teu­ton­ics would real­ize their goals through the cre­ation of a Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed cen­tral Euro­pean eco­nom­ic union (bear­ing a strik­ing resem­blance to today’s Euro­pean Mon­e­tary Union.) One of the prin­ci­pal influ­ences on List’s think­ing was the “con­ti­nen­tal” con­cept of Napoleon, who attempt­ed to eco­nom­i­cal­ly unite Europe under French influ­ence.

The Thou­sand-Year Con­spir­a­cy; by Paul Win­kler; Charles Scribner’s Sons [HC]; 1943; pp. 15–16. [21]

Charles Andler, a French author, summed up cer­tain ideas of List in his work, The Ori­gins of Pan-Ger­man­ism, (pub­lished in 1915.) ‘It is nec­es­sary to orga­nize con­ti­nen­tal Europe against Eng­land. Napoleon I, a great strate­gist, also knew the meth­ods of eco­nom­ic hege­mo­ny. His con­ti­nen­tal sys­tem, which met with oppo­si­tion even from coun­tries which might have prof­it­ed from such an arrange­ment should be revived, but, this time, not as an instru­ment of Napoleon­ic dom­i­na­tion. The idea of unit­ed Europe in a closed trade bloc is no longer shock­ing if Ger­many assumes dom­i­na­tion over such a bloc—and not France. [Empha­sis added.] Bel­gium, Hol­land, Switzer­land, will­ing­ly or by force, will enter this ‘Cus­toms Fed­er­a­tion.’ Aus­tria is assumed to be won over at the out­set. Even France, if she gets rid of her notions of mil­i­tary con­quest, will not be exclud­ed. The first steps the Con­fed­er­a­tion would take to assure uni­ty of thought and action would be to estab­lish a joint rep­re­sen­ta­tive body, as well as to orga­nize a com­mon fleet. But of course, both the head­quar­ters of the Fed­er­a­tion and its par­lia­men­tary seat would be in Ger­many. [Empha­sis added.]”

10. List’s doc­trine was in full swing dur­ing Ger­many’s pros­e­cu­tion of the First World War:

“WW1 Cen­te­nary — His­tor­i­cal Revi­sion In British Gov­ern­ment Cir­cles”; Ger­many Watch; 6/11/2013. [22]

. . . . This is a direct trans­la­tion of [Ger­man Chan­cel­lor] Bethman-Hollweg’s inter­nal memo on Germany’s war aims, from Sep­tem­ber 1914. . . .

“. . . . We must cre­ate a cen­tral Euro­pean eco­nomic asso­ci­a­tion through com­mon cus­toms treaties, to include France, Bel­gium, Hol­land, Den­mark, Aus­tria-Hun­gary, Poland and per­haps Italy, Swe­den and Nor­way. This asso­ci­a­tion will not have any com­mon con­sti­tu­tional supreme author­ity and all its mem­bers will be for­mally equal, but in prac­tice will be under Ger­man lead­er­ship and must sta­bi­lize Germany’s eco­nomic dom­i­nance over ‘Mid­dle Europe’ . . .”

11. The Lis­t­ian mod­el was put into effect by the Third Reich, as can be gleaned by read­ing Dorothy Thompson’s analy­sis of Germany’s plans for world dom­i­nance by a cen­tral­ized Euro­pean eco­nomic union. Ms. Thomp­son was writ­ing in The New York Her­ald Tri­bune [73] on May 31, 1940! Her com­ments are repro­duced by Tetens on page 92.

Ger­many Plots with the Krem­lin; T.H. Tetens; Hen­ry Schu­man [HC]; 1953; p. 92. [23]

. . . . The Ger­mans have a clear plan of what they intend to do in case of vic­tory. I believe that I know the essen­tial details of that plan. I have heard it from a suf­fi­cient num­ber of impor­tant Ger­mans to cred­it its authen­tic­ity . . . Germany’s plan is to make a cus­toms union of Europe, with com­plete finan­cial and eco­nomic con­trol cen­tered in Berlin. This will cre­ate at once the largest free trade area and the largest planned econ­omy in the world. In West­ern Europe alone . . . there will be an eco­nomic uni­ty of 400 mil­lion per­sons . . . To these will be added the resources of the British, French, Dutch and Bel­gian empires. These will be pooled in the name of Europa Ger­man­i­ca . . .

“The Ger­mans count upon polit­i­cal pow­er fol­low­ing eco­nomic pow­er, and not vice ver­sa. Ter­ri­to­r­ial changes do not con­cern them, because there will be no ‘France’ or ‘Eng­land,’ except as lan­guage groups. Lit­tle imme­di­ate con­cern is felt regard­ing polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions . . . . No nation will have the con­trol of its own finan­cial or eco­nomic sys­tem or of its cus­toms. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.] The Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of all coun­tries will be accom­plished by eco­nomic pres­sure. In all coun­tries, con­tacts have been estab­lished long ago with sym­pa­thetic busi­ness­men and indus­tri­al­ists . . . . As far as the Unit­ed States is con­cerned, the plan­ners of the World Ger­man­ica laugh off the idea of any armed inva­sion. They say that it will be com­pletely unnec­es­sary to take mil­i­tary action against the Unit­ed States to force it to play ball with this sys­tem. . . . Here, as in every oth­er coun­try, they have estab­lished rela­tions with numer­ous indus­tries and com­mer­cial orga­ni­za­tions, to whom they will offer advan­tages in co-oper­a­tion with Ger­many. . . .

12. The Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty was for­mal­ly artic­u­lat­ed by Reich offi­cials dur­ing the war, with the clear design to extend and ampli­fy the arrange­ment after the war. Below, we quote Gus­tave Koenigs, Sec­re­tary of State at a 1942 con­fer­ence about the Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty.

Europais­che Wirtschafts Gemein­schaft (Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Community–translation). [24]

. . . At the moment the so-called “Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty” is not yet fact; there is no pact, no organ­i­sa­tion, no coun­cil and no Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary. How­ev­er, it is not just a part of our imag­i­na­tion or some dream by a politi­cian — it is very real. . . .

. . .  Its roots are in the eco­nom­ic co-oper­a­tion of the Euro­pean nations and it will devel­op after the war into a per­ma­nent Euro­pean eco­nom­ic com­mu­ni­ty. . . .

13. A  cap­tured Ger­man doc­u­ment from April of 1945–a few weeks before the end of World War II–that very suc­cinct­ly lays out the plans for post­war Europe.

Ger­many Plots with the Krem­lin; T.H. Tetens; Hen­ry Schu­man [HC]; 1953; p. 240. [23]

Doc­u­ment II

THE EUROPEAN PEACE-ORDER

1. Lib­er­a­tion of the Ger­man peo­ple from sup­pres­sion and occu­pa­tion.

2. Repa­tra­tion of the expellees (Heimhol­ung der Ver­schleppten) [These are the ver­triebene groups and the Ger­man min­istry for Expellees–D.E.]

3. An inte­gral Ger­man racial com­mu­ni­ty.

4. Elim­i­na­tion of all arbi­trary acts by the ene­my.

5. Euro­pean Union on a fed­er­al­is­tic basis. [That IS the EU–D.E.]

6. Right to racial auton­o­my. [Note that, in the most recent Ger­man elec­tion, Pol­ish cit­i­zens of Ger­man extrac­tion were allowed to vote–D.E..]

7. Euro­pean Com­mon-Weal (“Gemein­nutz”).

8. Euro­pean Court of Arbi­tra­tion [The ICC is fund­ed by Ger­many and is essen­tial­ly a real­iza­tion of this!–D.E.]

9. Com­mu­ni­ty of relat­ed peo­ples with the final aim to cre­ate a Ger­man­ic Reich.

10. Com­mon-wealth between Ger­many and Bohemia and Moravia.

11. Guar­an­teed pro­tec­tion of racial groups (“Volks­grup­pen-recht”).

12. Eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion of Europe. [That is the EMU–D.E.]

13.  Under­ly­ing Ger­many’s dom­i­nance of Europe is well over a cen­tu­ry of applied Von Clause­witz­ian ecnomics.

Authors Borkin and Welsh ana­lyze how the Nazis took advan­tage of the bud­ding glob­al­ized econ­o­my to restrict both their ene­mies’ strate­gic pro­duc­tion and their access to crit­i­cal raw mate­ri­als. The same car­tel agree­ments gave the Ger­man war econ­o­my access to tech­no­log­i­cal know-how and raw mate­ri­als vital to the suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of mod­ern indus­tri­al war­fare. Learn­ing the lessons of defeat from World War I, the Ger­man mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex also sought to use tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion to make up for key areas of short­fall. Uti­liz­ing lead­ing-edge tech­nol­o­gy to great advan­tage, com­pa­nies such as I.G. Far­ben devel­oped process­es to syn­the­size oil, rub­ber, nar­cotics to treat casu­al­ties and oth­er inno­va­tions that great­ly aid­ed the Ger­man wartime econ­o­my.

Key to the Ger­man indus­tri­al offen­sive was the doc­trine of the famous Pruss­ian mil­i­tary philoso­pher Karl von Clausewitz—the first strate­gic thinker to for­mal­ize the con­cept of “Total War.” On pages 16 and 17, Borkin and Welsh dis­cuss von Clausewitz’s analy­sis of the rela­tion­ship between war and peace, essen­tial to under­stand­ing the con­cept of Total War.

By con­trast, the Ger­man firms’ for­eign car­tel part­ners looked on these rela­tion­ships as mere vehi­cles to max­i­mize prof­its by elim­i­nat­ing com­pe­ti­tion and lim­it­ing pro­duc­tion.

Ger­many’s Mas­ter Plan–The Sto­ry of An Indus­tri­al Offen­sive by Joseph Borkin and Charles A. Welsh; Duell, Sloan and Pierce 1944 [HC]; pp. 16–17. [27]

 . . . . Ger­many has long under­stood this strat­e­gy of total war. Karl von Clause­witz, the father of mod­ern Ger­man mil­i­tarism, set out its major premise when he said, ‘War is no inde­pen­dent thing; the main lin­ea­ments of all great strate­gic plans are of a polit­i­cal nature, the more so the more they include the total­i­ty of War and the State.’ To von Clause­witz, peace was a con­tin­u­a­tion of war by oth­er means. In effect, he said to Ger­many, ‘Dis­arm your ene­my in peace by diplo­ma­cy and trade if you would con­quer him more read­i­ly on the field of bat­tle.’ This phi­los­o­phy of war-in-peace became the keynote of Ger­many’s polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic inter­course with oth­er nations. These tenets explain why, twice with­in a gen­er­a­tion, we have entered war not only fac­ing the might of Ger­man armies, but shack­led by eco­nom­ic bondage to Ger­man indus­try. Ger­man-con­trolled car­tels were at all times the ser­vants of Ger­man inter­est. That their loy­al­ty to Ger­many was undi­vid­ed explains the uni­for­mi­ty of the agree­ments which they made. Germany’s indus­tri­al attack had as its car­di­nal pur­pose the rever­sal of block­ade. Patents and secret ‘know-how’ were used to bar our access to our own tech­nol­o­gy. . . .

. . . To busi­ness­men in the Unit­ed States, Eng­land, and France, inter­na­tion­al car­tels were an effi­cient means of guar­an­tee­ing monop­oly. Indus­tri­al­ists out­side of Ger­many thought in terms of low out­put, high prices, and max­i­mum prof­its. They regard­ed divi­sions of both ter­ri­to­ry and fields of pro­duc­tion as com­fort­able and eas­i­ly policed meth­ods by which they could free them­selves from com­pe­ti­tion and cre­ate spheres of monop­oly. . . .

15. As a result of this sharp dis­par­i­ty in the view­points of the Ger­man and Allied indus­tri­al­ists, the armies fac­ing the Third Reich’s sol­diers on the field of bat­tle were placed at a fun­da­men­tal dis­ad­van­tage. On pages 13 and 14, Borkin and Welsh high­light the mil­i­tary results of the car­tel agree­ments:

Ger­many’s Mas­ter Plan–The Sto­ry of An Indus­tri­al Offen­sive by Joseph Borkin and Charles A. Welsh; Duell, Sloan and Pierce 1944 [HC]; pp. 13–14. [27]

 . . . Wher­ev­er there was a car­tel before, in 1942, there was a mil­i­tary short­age. The Army and Navy peti­tioned civil­ians to turn in binoc­u­lars and lens­es. The Baruch Com­mit­tee report­ed that if we do not solve the syn­thet­ic rub­ber prob­lem, we face a ‘civil­ian and mil­i­tary col­lapse.’ The gal­lant stand of MacArthur’s men on Bataan became more des­per­ate because they found them­selves with­out qui­nine. The grow­ing pri­or­i­ty lists of chem­i­cals and plas­tics were an inven­to­ry of car­tels. When we tried to tool up our new fac­to­ries, with every sec­ond of pass­ing time work­ing against us, the lack of tung­sten car­bide blunt­ed the edge of our effort. This ros­ter of scarce mate­ri­als and the absence of sub­sti­tutes have a com­mon cause.”

These short­ages speak vol­umes for the bril­liant plan­ning of the Ger­man offen­sive. The first ‘Report to the Nation,’ issued Jan­u­ary 14, 1942, by the Office of Facts and Fig­ures, says: ‘[The ene­my] has worked for many years to weak­en our mil­i­tary poten­tial. Through patent con­trols and car­tel agree­ments he suc­ceed­ed in lim­it­ing Amer­i­can pro­duc­tion and export of many vital mate­ri­als. He kept the prices of these mate­ri­als up and the out­put down. He was wag­ing war, and he did his work well, decoy­ing impor­tant Amer­i­can com­pa­nies into agree­ments, the pur­pose of which they did not sense. . . . The list of mate­ri­als affect­ed is long—beryllium, opti­cal instru­ments, mag­ne­sium, tung­sten car­bide, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, hor­mones, dyes, and many more. When you match each prod­uct with its mil­i­tary use, the sig­nif­i­cance of the attack becomes clear. Beryl­li­um is a vital ele­ment for alloys that make shell springs; mag­ne­sium makes air­planes and incen­di­ary bombs; tung­sten car­bide is essen­tial for pre­ci­sion machine tools. Con­cealed behind dum­my cor­po­ra­tions, the ene­my went unchecked for years, using our own legal machin­ery to ham­string us. [Ital­ics added.]’ Dur­ing the past twen­ty years, this car­tel device has been the first line of Ger­man assault. . . .

15. Actu­al­iz­ing the von Clause­witz doc­trine that “war is a con­tin­u­a­tion of pol­i­cy by oth­er means,” the Third Reich and its Axis allies used their mil­i­tary onslaught to dras­ti­cal­ly exac­er­bate the imbal­ance in strate­gic indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion. On pages 15 and 16, the authors write: “The effect of Axis vic­to­ries, in Europe and in the Pacif­ic, give them an advan­tage which we will spend many thou­sands of lives to over­come. The rever­sal of posi­tion is stark­ly evi­dent in the fol­low­ing fig­ures on some of the major resources: ”

Ger­many’s Mas­ter Plan–The Sto­ry of An Indus­tri­al Offen­sive by Joseph Borkin and Charles A. Welsh; Duell, Sloan and Pierce 1944 [HC]; pp. 15–16. [27]

 

PERCENTAGE OF AXIS CONTROL OF WORLD PRODUCTION