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This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Once again, we look at the ongoing political and social catastrophe unfolding in Greece, resulting directly from the twin demons of the European Monetary Union and the financial collapse of 2008.
Before examining recent developments in the Greek tragedy, we review some important Greek history.
The program begins with an excerpt from AFA #1, about the re-institution of fascist elements in Greece by the Allies at the end of World War II, deemed necessary to “fight communism.”
Liberated from Nazi occupation to a large extent by fierce guerilla warfare waged by a popular resistance front grouped around Marxist socialist guerillas, Greece was the scene of a fierce civil war in the postwar years resulting directly from the predetermined British military and political hostility toward the ELAS organization.
Next, we return to analysis of the present crisis, and how it resulted from the error and tragedy of the past.
In FTR #‘s 746, 788, 855, we looked at the Greek economic/political crisis against the background of long-term (two hundred years or so) German plans for the economic and political colonization of Europe as a vehicle to effect world domination. It is against that same background that we examine the purchase of Greek regional airports by a German company. (Never forget that, as seen in FTR #305, corporate Germany is controlled by the remarkable and deadly Bormann capital network.)
This is a very real form of forced occupation, using economic instead of military pressure.
The sale of Greece’s airports is just part of an enormous 50 billion Euro sell-off of Greek assets–assets which would be fundamental to the economic and social rehabilitation of that unfortunate nation.
Ravaged by what we called “Clausewitzian economics,” Greece has been crushed by the German austerity doctrine, echoed by the so-called “troika”–the European Commission (a German puppet organization at present), the European Central Bank (which has shown some signs of relenting) and the IMF (which has belatedly admitted the fundamental error of its ways).
A recent article in Forbes underscores the flawed accounting underlying the lethal fiscal policy imposed on the citizens of the “cradle of democracy.”
As discussed in a recent New York Times article, the Greek debt has been calculated using an unconventional accounting paradigm to arrive at the conclusion that Greek debt is “175%” of GDP. The Greeks are in need of adopting the “Ipsas” accounting standard.
In fact, it is 18%, when calculated using the standard “Ipsas” accounting method. Germany’s on the other hand, is 46%, when calculated under that standard!
In addition to Germany’s self-serving and capricious adherence to established EU and EMU accounting standards, Germany bears partial responsibility for the Greek crisis because of its aggressive, corrupt pursuit of sales to Greek buyers. German businessmen are avoiding criminal charges stemming from their conduct of business in Greece.
Ending with a speculative weighing of the future in the context of the past, we evaluate the concept of slavery in the context of what is taking place in Europe.
Program Highlights Include:
- Discussion of the concept of “voluntary slavery,” as minted by Ron Paul aide Walter Block.
- Discussion of how enthusiasm for slavery worked against the Southern white working class and for the “1 percenters” who owned the slaves.
- Review of a Greek proposal to address the problem of massive youth unemployment buy having young people work for free.
- Review of the EMU and EU as the culmination of German designs for imperialism dating back to the nineteenth century.
- Review of the theories of Carl von Clausewitz and how his theoretical constructs have played out in post-World War II Europe.
1. The program begins with an excerpt from AFA #1, about the re-institution of fascist elements in Greece by the Allies at the end of World War II, deemed necessary to “fight communism.”
2. In FTR #‘s 746, 788, 855, we looked at the Greek economic/political crisis against the background of long-term (two hundred years or so) German plans for the economic and political colonization of Europe as a vehicle to effect world domination. It is against that same background that we examine the purchase of Greek regional airports by a German company. (Never forget that, as seen in FTR #305, corporate Germany is controlled by the remarkable and deadly Bormann capital network.)
The Greek government has rowed back on a promise to halt the fire sales of the country’s strategic assets by approving the sale of its airports to a German company.
Operating rights to 14 regional airports, including those on popular holiday destinations such as Crete, will now fall under the control of Fraport AG, the operator of Frankfurt airport.
The €1.23bn deal represents a significant climbdown for Alexis Tsipras who had denounced attempts by the Troika to force various Greek governments to de-nationalise the country’s ports, electricity networks and airports.
But the embattled prime minister has been forced into a number of concessions in return for an €86bn aid package to keep the country in the euro for the next three years. The deal comes as Germany’s Bundestag prepares to vote on the package on Wednesday.
Bidding for the airports was won by the German firm in November but the process was suspended by Syriza amid claims the tender broke competition rules. Fraport will operate the airports for the next 40 years under the licence agreement.
Former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has attacked the sales for entrenching the country’s oligarchic elites and hurting the government’s coffers through under-priced sales.
In a line-by-line critique of the demands, he dubbed the privatisations as “a major disaster in every conceivable way – from the prices fetched to the rate at which the privatisations that occurred were overturned by the European competition commission and the Greek Council of State”.
The sale comes as a host of eurozone parliaments are preparing to ratify the terms of the new rescue package — Greece’s third bail-out in five years.
Germany’s Angela Merkel is battling to fight down a rebellion in her ruling Christian Democrat party. As the eurozone’s largest creditor state, Germany holds a blocking minority vote on European Stability Mechanism loans.
Although the package is likely to gain the necessary votes, more than 60 of Ms Merkel’s parliamentarians voted to reject new bail-out talks in July. The rebellion is set to escalate to around 100 out of her 311 MPs.
The Chancellor has sought to convince sceptical lawmakers that Greece will be able to carry a the raft of onerous economic reforms in return for a first disbursement of €26bn due to be made by Thursday.
Disquiet in Berlin has also grown over the position of the International Monetary Fund, which is only likely to release its own funds to Greece in October.
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3. The fire-sale for Greek assets figures to total around 50 billion Euros and will make Greece subservient for some time to come, as the assets being sold are fundamental to the restoration of that country’s economic health.
“Greece Is for Sale – and Everything Must Go” by Nick Dearden; Global Justice; 8/19/2015.
I’ve just had sight of the latest privatisation plan for Greece. It’s been issued by something called the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund – the vehicle supervised by the European institutions, which has been tasked with selling off an eye-watering €50 billion of Greece’s ‘valuable assets’.
The fund was a real sticking point because the European institutions wanted to move it to Luxembourg, where they could keep a better eye on it. Anyhow, it’s still in Athens, and this document, dated 30 July, details the goodies on sale to international investors who fancy buying up some of the country.
We’ve attached it to this blog to give a flavour of what’s up for grabs at the moment. Fourteen regional airports, flying into top tourist hubs, have already gone to a German company, but don’t panic because stock in Athens airport is still on the table, as well as Athens’ old airport which is up for a 99 year lease for redevelopment as a tourism and business centre.
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Holdings in Thessaloniki and Athens water are both on sale – though public protest has ensured that 50% plus 1 share remains in state hands. Nonetheless, the sale will mean that market logic will dictate the future of these water and sewerage monopolies. Finally there are pockets of land, including tourist and sports developments, throughout Greece.
A second document, also attached, details the short-term work programme of various government ministers, detailing actions they must take in order to add value to these assets. This includes introducing toll booths on roads to licensing casino rights to declaring sites of archaeological interest. The document begs the question as to why government ministers are even needed, it would surely be easier to cut them out of the equation altogether and let EU institutions directly administer the country.
Why does this matter? First because makes no sense to sell off valuable assets in the middle of Europe’s worst depression in 70 years. Those industries could generate revenues to help the Greek government rebuild the economy. In fact, the vast majority of the funds raised will go back to the creditors in debt repayments, and to the recapitalisation of Greek banks.
So the privatisations aren’t to do with helping Greece. The beneficiaries are corporations from around the world, though eyebrows are particularly being raised at the number of European companies – from German airport operators and phone companies to French railways – who are getting their hands on Greece’s economy. Not to mention the European investment banks and legal firms who are making a fast buck along the way. The self-interest of European governments in forcing these policies on Greece leaves a particularly unpleasant flavour.
Most important is the inequality this will entrench in Greek society for decades to come. Of course the fact that the state currently holds these assets is no guarantee of democracy. Clientelism is rife in Greece. But the answer is transparency and democracy, just as German citizens are currently trying to take back energy companies into collective ownership because they see this as a prerequisite for fair pricing and supporting renewable energy.
What won’t help is flogging off monopolies to private corporations who have no interest in Greece’s people. Workers will be sacked and their conditions made worse, while the elite of Europe profits. Greece’s government will have lost the ability to make its society function in the interests of ordinary people.
But then, I suspect that’s the point.
4. Ravaged by what we called “Clausewitzian economics,” Greece has been crushed by the German austerity doctrine, echoed by the so-called “troika”–the European Commission (a German puppet organization at present), the European Central Bank (which has shown some signs of relenting) and the IMF (which has belatedly admitted the fundamental error of its ways).
A recent article in Forbes underscores the flawed accounting underlying the lethal fiscal policy imposed on the citizens of the “cradle of democracy.”
As discussed in a recent New York Times article, the Greek debt has been calculated using an unconventional accounting paradigm to arrive at the conclusion that Greek debt is “175%” of GDP. The Greeks are in need of adopting the “Ipsas” accounting standard.
In fact, it is 18%, when calculated using the standard “Ipsas” accounting method. Germany’s on the other hand, is 46%, when calculated under that standard!
It is going to be more than a little interesting to see how Deutschland, major EU financial institutions and the Greek citizenry square off over this.
Before imposing another round of austerity on Greece, Germany should fix its own accounting problem — by calculating Greek debt, and its own, with accepted international standards.
As Greek citizens head to the polls this Sunday, German officials have not missed the chance to remind Greece that it must fulfill its debt obligations. This means adhering to an unprecedented austerity which has depressed the Greek economy.
The trouble is that Germany has been overestimating Greece’s debt by failing to follow the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (Ipsas),which measure liabilities and assets over time.
Ipsas standards are similar to those used by leading governments, businesses, banks and investors at all levels, according to Professor Jacob Soll. “In fact, the debt has been calculated to be larger than it actually is, or would be if one used Ipsas,”writes Soll in a recent New York Times op-ed.
Just how much is Greek debt overestimated?
The answer is to be found in www.freegreece.info. If you apply Ipsas to calculate Greek debt, the Net Debt is 18%, not 175% of GDP.
What about Germany’s Net Debt under Ipsas? 46% of GDP.
That means that Greece’s debt situation is better than that of Germany’s!
So why doesn’t Germany use Ipsas to calculate the Greek debt? For two reasons, according Professor Soll. First, they don’t apply Ipsas in their own House.“A little-known fact is that the Germans also do not use Ipsas and have notably opaque public finance standards,” he writes.
Second, by steering away from Ipsas, Germany can keep Greece on the leash while conveniently keeping Greek debt off its own books.
“One reason might be that the Germans have refused to price the debt fairly, or properly report its value, which means in the short run that they extract more austerity from the Greeks than they should, and that they also keep this loan off the budget balance sheets because it would come up as a loss under any legitimate accounting standard,” writes Soll.
In our opinion, there’s a third reason. Overestimating sovereign debt for Southern European countries stirs anxiety in foreign currency markets, depressing the Euro, and firing up Germany’s export engine.
5. With Greece still forced to privatized its top state assets, here’s a reminder of that the lovely private sector that’s supposed to magically rid Greece of all its inefficiencies and corruption has been contributing to and profiting from Greece’s inefficiencies and corruption for years. And those lovely private entities weren’t just Greek:
Siemens, Daimler, Rheinmetall — the cream of German industry — have been mired in cases of alleged corruption in Greece, the country that Berlin has repeatedly admonished for the parlous state of its economy.No date has been set yet for 19 former executives of German engineering group Siemens to appear in Greek court, but it is expected to be one of the biggest financial trials of the decade in Greece.
More than 60 people in total are being investigated for corruption in the case that US watchdog CorpWatch has labelled “the greatest corporate scandal in Greece’s postwar history.”
Bavaria-based Siemens, whose links to Greece go back to the 19th century, is suspected of having greased the palms of various officials to clinch one of the country’s most lucrative contracts — the vast upgrade of the Greek telephone network in the late 1990s.
Overall, Siemens allegedly spent 70 million euros ($78 million) on bribes in Greece, according to Greek judicial sources.
The investigation is now in its ninth year with a case brief over 2,300 pages long.
Contacted by AFP, a Siemens spokesman at company headquarters in Munich said: “We don’t comment on that case.”
Among those suspected of corruption is the group’s former point man in Greece, Michalis Christoforakos.
But the 62-year-old, who holds dual Greek and German citizenship and at the height of his influence rubbed elbows with the ensemble of Greece’s political elite, is unlikely to face trial.
Christoforakos fled Greece for Germany in 2009, and German justice has refused to extradite him, arguing that the statute of limitations covering his alleged activities has lapsed.
Relations between Athens and Berlin — already tested by the Greek economic crisis and Germany’s insistence on painful austerity to bail out the debt-wracked country — have not been helped by the Siemens case.
Earlier this year, Greece’s combative parliament speaker Zoe Constantopoulou said the affair smacked of double standards on the part of Berlin.
“This is a question of justice that shows there is doublespeak by Germany,” she told France’s Liberation newspaper in a recent interview.
“German companies have notoriously engaged in corrupt practices in Greece but such cases are only occasionally investigated,” the German Foreign Policy think-tank said in a recent report.
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In 2011, at the height of the Greek economic crisis, a parliamentary inquiry estimated the damage to public coffers at two billion euros from inflated contract costs ultimately borne by taxpayers.
Lucrative military deals
Arms procurement has been another lucrative field for German companies, with Greece for years spending the most money proportionately on defence — 2.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014 — among EU members, Sahra Wangenknecht, a lawmaker of Germany’s leftist party Die Linke, told AFP.
“German companies have reaped considerable profit from Greece’s colossal arms purchases,” Wangenknecht said.
For automaker Daimler, Greek justice opened an investigation earlier this year on suspicion of bribery in the award of an 100-million-euro military vehicle contract.
Krauss Maffei Wegmann, the makers of the German Leopard tank, was also placed under investigation in Munich.
Meanwhile, fellow defence contractor Rheinmetall in 2012 was fined 37 million euros by a court in Bremen, Germany, over a bribery case involving the sale of its anti-aircraft defence system for 150 million euros.
And two former managers at industrial services provider Ferrostaal were also convicted in Munich of shady payments to clinch a Greek submarine order, with the company fined 140 million euros.
But observers note that the fines are usually nowhere near the value of the government contracts in question, effectively rendering them useless as a deterrent.
6. A very ominous proposal has been floated by the Greek government. (See text excerpts below.) Not only does it suggest the possibility that the staggering unemployment rate among Greek youth be solved by “unpaid” employment, but floats the possibility that jobless young people be shipped abroad!
We wonder to where they will be shipped? What are they supposed to do when they get there?
All is not well in the “Cradle of Democracy!”
Having spent weeks talking amongst themselves about the chronic and dangerous rise of youth unemployment in Europe (as we warned here), the Center of Planning and Economic Research in Greece has proposed a controversial measure. As GreekReporter reports, the measure includes unpaid work for the young and unemployed up to 24 years old, so that companies would have a strong motive to hire young employees.
“Unpaid” work sounds a lot like slavery to us... but it gets better; the report also suggested “exporting young unemployed persons.”
“Centre of Planning and Economic Research in Greece has proposed a controversial measure in order to deal with the problem of increasing unemployment in the country.
The measure includes unpaid work for the young and unemployed up to 24 years old, so that companies would have a strong motive to hire young employees. Practically, what is proposed is the abolition of the basic salary for a year. At the same time the “export” of young unemployed persons was also proposed to other countries abroad, as Greek businesses do not appear able to hire new personnel.“
***Whether it’s Europe in the 1930’s or the US during the same period (conflicts between strikers, the National Guard and armed militias), unemployment can create a powerful cocktail of unrest. But turning your nation’s young into slaves does not seem like a good solution to us. . . .
7. More about the proposal for de facto slavery for Greek youth:
Centre of Planning and Economic Research in Greece has proposed a controversial measure in order to deal with the problem of increasing unemployment in the country.
The measure includes unpaid work for the young and unemployed up to 24 years old, so that companies would have a strong motive to hire young employees. Practically, what is proposed is the abolition of the basic salary for a year. At the same time the “export” of young unemployed persons was also proposed to other countries abroad, as Greek businesses do not appear able to hire new personnel.
According to the National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce, unemployment especially hits the ages between 15–24. The unemployment rate in Greece stands at 24.6% while 57.2% of young people are without a job. The majority of the unemployed (71%) have had no work for 12 months or more, while 23.3 % of the total have never worked. There were 3,635,905 people employed and 1,345,387 unemployed. . . .
8. Next, the program reviews the concept of “voluntary slavery,” minted by Ludwig von Mises Institute fellow Walter Block, a top aide to Ron Paul, Edward Snowden’s political idol.
. . . . Sill another board member [of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity] is Walter Block, a fellow at the Mises Institute, who, The Daily Beast said, “believes the wrong side won the ‘war against Southern secession’ and blames most of America’s problems on ‘the monster Lincoln.’ ” . . . .
. . . . Walter believes voluntary slavery contracts ought to be enforceable in a private law society, and in this I believe he is in the minority of libertarians. . . .
9. New interpretations like how the Confederate flag represents a giant socioeconomic con-job that was perpetrated by the aristocrats and ruined the lives of against not just the slaves but also 99% of the rest of the Southern whites who saw their socioeconomic prospects undermined and destroyed by slavery to such an extent that the damage is still felt to this day:
I’ve lived 55 years in the South and I grew up liking the Confederate flag. I haven’t flown one for many decades — but for a reason that might surprise you.
I know the South well. We lived wherever the Marine Corps stationed my father: Georgia, Virginia, the Carolinas. My favorite uncle wasn’t in the military, but he did pack a .45-caliber Thompson submachine gun in his trunk. He was a leader in the Ku Klux Klan. Despite my role models, I was an inept racist as a kid. I got into trouble once in the first grade for calling a classmate the N‑word. But he was Hispanic.
As I grew up and acquired empathy, I learned that for black folks the flutter of the Confederate flag felt like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. And for the most prideful flag-wavers, clearly that response was the point. I mean, come on. It’s a battle flag.
What the flag symbolizes for blacks is enough reason to take it down. But there’s another reason white Southerners shouldn’t fly it. Or sport it on our state-issued license plates, as some do here in North Carolina. The Confederacy — and the slavery that spawned it — was also one big con job on the Southern white working class. A con job funded by some of the antebellum one-percenters, and one that continues today in a similar form.
You don’t have to be an economist to see that forcing blacks — a third of the South’s laborers — to work without pay drove down wages for everyone else. And not just in agriculture. A quarter of enslaved blacks worked in the construction, manufacturing and lumbering trades, cutting wages even for skilled white workers.
Thanks to the profitability of this no-wage/low-wage combination, a majority of American one-percenters were Southerners. Slavery made Southern states the richest in the country. The South was richer than any other country except England. But that vast wealth was invisible outside the plantation ballrooms. With low wages and few schools, Southern whites suffered a much lower land ownership rate and a far lower literacy rate than Northern whites.
My ancestor, Canna Hyman, and his two sons did own land and fought under that flag. A note from our family history says: “Someone came for them while they were plowing one day. They put their horses up and all three went away to the War and only one son, William, came back.”
Like Canna, most Southerners didn’t own slaves. But they were persuaded to risk their lives and limbs for the right of a few to get rich as Croesus from slavery. For their sacrifices and their votes, they earned two things before and after the Civil War. First, a very skinny slice of the immense Southern pie. And second, the thing that made those slim rations palatable then and now: the shallow satisfaction of knowing blacks had no slice at all.
How did the plantation-owning one-percenters mislead so many Southern whites?
They managed this con job partly with a propaganda technique that will be familiar to modern Americans. Starting in the 1840s, wealthy Southerners supported more than 30 regional pro-slavery magazines, along with many pamphlets and novels that falsely touted slave ownership as having benefits that would — in today’s lingo — trickle down to benefit non-slave-owning whites and even blacks. The flip side of the coin of this propaganda is the mistaken notion that any gain by blacks comes at the expense of the white working class.
Today’s version of this con job no longer supports slavery, but still works in the South and thrives in pro-trickle-down think tanks, magazines, newspapers, talk radio and TV news shows such as the Cato Foundation, Reason magazine, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. These sources are often underwritten by pro-trickle-down one-percenters like the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch.
For example, a map of states that didn’t expand Medicaid — which would actually be a boon mostly to poor whites — resembles a map of the old Confederacy with a few other poor, rural states thrown in. Another indication that this divisive propaganda works on Southern whites came in 2012. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama evenly split the white working class in the West, Midwest and Northeast. But in the South, we went 2–1 for Romney.
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The Future: Technology, Theocracy and the Thousand Year Reich
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