Posted  by CADTM on 24 July by Daniel Munevar , Thomas Fazi

By Julia, PACD collaborator

The Debt Audit gamble is key to understanding the outcome in Greece

The media, with their chauvinist and neoliberal stereotypes, have focused almost exclusively on Varoufakis to explain what was happening in Greece. It is always easier to build a myth than try to explain the complexities of the situation and this becomes even truer if they make things easy for you and choose a bloke with a reputation for being tough as their Finance Minister. And, despite the subversive situation where, for the first time ever in Europe, we are seeing a Prime Minister and a Minister stand up to the dictates of the troika, this is how the media have managed to create a picture that fits their dominant values. Here is a great man, a leading expert, and he alone will succeed in changing the situation. But should he fail, then there is nothing that anyone can do.

But the situation is obviously much more complex and the stance taken by Tsipras and Varoufakis cannot be explained without acknowledging the level of outcry and mobilization that Greece has seen in recent years as well as Syriza’s own evolution since previous elections. Continue reading

By Diego Borja Cornejo*

The Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, has called a referendum so that it will be up to the Greek people to decide if the austerity demanded by the Eurogroup is to continue.

Tsipras took this decision after several months of negotiating with a European Union, a European Central Bank and an International Monetary Fund which have, in recent months, rejected time and time again the Greek proposal to reach a compromise that is acceptable to a government that won the elections on a platform to limit austerity.

The Greek parliament has approved the call for a referendum and given the Prime Minister its backing and now Tsipras has turned to the Greek people so that they can decide if continuing austerity, which has been a noose strangling both the population’s welfare and economic growth, is an option they can accept.

The leaders of “democratic” Europe wasted no time in furiously criticising his decision. In a blatant contradiction, across Europe the governing establishment, whether conservative, liberal and “socialist”, spoke in the name of “democracy and responsibility” and launched an attack on Tsipras’s essentially democratic action of appealing to the people.

Europe’s democracy is being played out in Greece. The top bureaucrats at the institutions, with a stubbornness that can only come from clearly seeing themselves as guardians of power and financial capital, are not budging one inch in their demands regarding the tried-and-tested austerity, which has been a social and economic disaster for Greece. As stated in the Preliminary Report by the Greek Debt Truth Committee, set up by the speaker of the Greek parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou, the austerity policies have had a dramatic impact on investment. Gross capital formation fell by 65% in 2014 compared with 2008 and labour productivity by 7%. The capital capacity utilisation rate dropped from 75.5% in the period between 2006 and 2010 to 67.7% in 2014. Continue reading