Opinion – Auditamos Grecia

Daniel Munevar: “Why I’ve Changed My Mind About Grexit”

admin — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 08:27:42 +0000

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

Daniel Munevar is a 30-year-old post-Keynesian economist from Bogotá, Colombia. From March to July 2015 he worked as a close aide to former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, advising him on issues of fiscal policy and debt sustainability. He was previously fiscal advisor to the Ministry of Finance of Colombia and special advisor on Foreign Direct Investment for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador. He is considered to be one of the foremost figures in the study of Latin American public debt. Here he talks to Thomas Fazi about the latest bailout deal, explaining why the events of the past few weeks have made him change his mind about Grexit.

What do you make of the latest bailout agreed between Greece and its creditors?

Well, first of all it’s still not clear that there will be an actual agreement – there are several parliaments that need to approve their country’s participation in an ESM bailout. And even if they somehow reach an agreement, there is simply no way it can work. The economics of the program are just insane. They haven’t announced the precise fiscal targets yet, but if we look at the Debt Sustainability Analyses (DSAs) published by the IMF and the Commission, they both state that the target should be a 3.5% primary surplus in the medium term. But if you look at what has happened over the course of the past five years, Greece has managed to ‘improve’ its structural balance by 19 points of GDP. During that same time, GDP has collapsed by about 20% – that’s an almost one-to-one relation. So if you start from -1% – which is the general assumption for this year – to make it to 3.5 means you need an adjustment of over 4% of GDP, which means GDP will collapse by another 4 points between now and 2018.

This brings us to another point, which is that the current agreement is just a taste of things to come. The final Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is definitely going to contain much harsher austerity measure than the ones currently on the table, to offset the drop in GDP that we have witnessed in the past months as a result of the standoff with the creditors. The problem is that these Memorandums are turning Greece into a debt colony: you’re basically creating a set of rules which, as the government misses its fiscal targets – knowing for a fact that it will –, will force the government to keep retrenching even more, which will cause GDP to collapse even further, which will mean even more austerity, etc. It’s a never-ending vicious circle.

This underscores one of the core problems of this whole situation: i.e., that the institutions have always disentangled the fiscal targets from the debt sustainability analyses. The logic of having debt relief is that it allows you to basically have lower fiscal targets and distribute over time the impa

ct of fiscal consolidation. But in Greece’s case, even if there is debt relief on the scale that they are suggesting – which is unlikely – Greece will still have to implement massive consolidation, on top of everything that has been already done.

At least debt relief is being openly discussed now…

Yes, that’s a good thing. But the creditors have known all along what the IMF has only recently admitted: i.e., that Greece was/is insolvent and that its debt was/is unsustainable. The IMF’s latest DSA is very clear on that point. But previous non-published DSAs all said pretty much the same thing: Greek debt was/is fundamentally unsustainable. But the Europeans never agreed to that, even though it was clear to everyone that without debt restructuring – and, importantly, without tying this to lower fiscal targets – there was never going to be a sustainable deal. Only now is the issue starting to be openly debated and that is partly because the situation has gotten so bad that it can’t be ignored any more, and partly because, when the risk of Greece exiting the euro became evident, the US started putting pressure on the IMF to put pressure on Europe on the issue of debt restructuring.

Speaking of Grexit, isn’t it somewhat contradictory

that Germany opposes debt relief but is willing to contemplate a solution that would almost certainly cause Greece to default on its external debts – meaning that Germany would lose all the money it is owed?

If you look at this in purely economic terms, yes. It doesn’t make sense. But this whole drama was never about economics, or about Germany not losing any money. We are talking of a German exposure of about 80 billion euros, after all – peanuts, in the larger scheme of things. This is about making an example out of SYRIZA and setting an example for the rest of Europe. Everything that has happened over the past months was simply a way of telling the people of Europe: ‘Look, you shouldn’t vote for parties that have this type of agenda because we will crush you. This is what happens when someone doesn’t follow the rules or refuses to pay the bills. It’s either austerity or you’re out’. Tsipras said it clearly – that he signed the deal with a knife to his throat. This was Schäuble’s argument for Grexit: if the Greeks don’t want to pay, let’s kick them out, watch them suffer, and then use that as a catalyst to put the fear of God into all other indebted nations.

Was the Greek government aware right from the beginning that the creditors were not willing to budge on the issue of debt relief?

Yes, but Varoufakis’ position was that Greece should nonetheless fight to get a deal that made economic sense – i.e., one that included debt relief and sustainable fiscal targets. But, as he explained in his interview to the New Statesman, all along he was working under a collegial decision-making system where he was always in the minority. So his actual capacity to do things was quite limited. The point is that the majority of Tsipras’ inner circle sincerely believed that if Greece made concessions, it would be able to achieve a good deal. Which is why after the Riga Eurogroup, Tsipras essentially sidelined Varoufakis and decided to start making concessions to see if that would work. This has been the position of the government in the last months. If you compare the proposals from March with the ones that are now on the table, there has been a complete turnover for the worse. And that is because these people believed that through concessions they could get a good agreement – which is a

lso why, up until the referendum, debt relief wasn’t even on the table. But of course it didn’t work, because the creditors were not willing to give Greece anything that it could claim as a political victory.

Do you think it would have been better for the Greek government to stick to Varoufakis’ debt-relief-or-nothing strategy?

In all honesty, it’s hard to see how things could have gone differently. The Greeks had no money and no power. The only weapons they could bring to the negotiating table were reason, logic and European solidarity. But apparently we will live in a Europe were none of those things mean anything.

So both strategies – Varoufakis’ and Tsipras’ – were bound to fail from the start?

Yes, it was a trap. Every time the European institutions faced a challenge from a national government in the past they resorted to threats – raising the interest rates of government bonds, threatening to shut down the banking system, etc. – to bring it back into line. And in the past these threats had always worked: the governments always backed down. And they assumed that with SYRIZA it was going to b

e the same. But Greece didn’t back down. Which is why the institutions reacted in such a vicious manner.

Do you think the introduction of IOUs – as suggested both by Varoufakis and by Schäuble – was a viable alternative for Greece?

The problem is that once you start introducing IOUs to pay salaries and pensions, you end up going down a slippery slope, because people are going to assume that this is the first step towards actually leaving the euro, so they will adjust accordingly and hoard available euros. As a consequence, economic activity would decline even further and a higher share of tax revenues would need to be denominated in IOUs. This in turn would force the government to issue even more IOUs to cover its funding. So you would basically find yourself in a self-fulfilling cycle, which would eventually lead to a de facto exit.

This is why the Greek government refused to use this financing method, because the risk of starting a process from which you cannot come back is real. Look at what is alread

y happening now, with Greek banking deposits: in a sense Greece is already one step out of the euro, because it’s in a situation in which the deposits in the bank accounts are not trading at par, meaning that one euro in the banking system is effectively worth less than a euro in cash. This is because the simple talk of exit has created a risk differential between cash and deposits, since it’s the deposits that would get converted into drachmas in the case of an exit. This is why a lot of businesses in Athens are not willing to accept electronic transactions. With IOUs it would very likely be the same: you would put in motion a self-fulfilling mechanism that could easily lead to an exit, regardless of whether the government wants it or not.

Which is probably exactly what Schäuble was hoping for…

Exactly. And in the end he will probably get what he wants – i.e., a Grexit –, because this deal doesn’t solve anything. Not for Greece, not for the eurozone. It actually makes the underlying problems even worse. As I said earlier, even if you provide all the debt relief that is on the table, if that’s not connected to lower fiscal targets you’re still going down the path of contraction. Which means that it’s only a m

atter of time before the Greek economy goes off the rails and the whole discussion about Grexit comes back to the fore.

Do you think that Greece should opt out of the euro?

Look, I’ve always been against Grexit – like Varoufakis. But now, as a result of the bailout agreement, Greece is a situation where the costs of staying in the euro have gone up so much that it’s possible to establish that there is a trade-off between going out – and facing all of the short-term costs of leaving the euro – versus staying in a circumstance where you are forced to renounce your sovereignty without getting any economic relief in exchange. I think that Tsipras has made up his mind on this issue and has concluded that the best thing for Greece is to stay in the euro, regardless of the costs. And it’s a respectable decision. But once you start assessing the economic logic and everything that has happened, you can’t but conclude that Greece has no future in the euro.

So this deal simply

postpones the inevitable. Because it’s clear at this point that there is not enough political will in the eurozone to fix the structural problems of the euro. Which, interestingly, is exactly what the IMF is implying in its latest DSA, which essentially states: either you do a haircut or you establish a system of transfers for Greece – in other words, you create a federal Europe. We all know that this is the original sin of the euro: to have established a common currency without a system of common transfers. But there is no will to fix it. So we might as well accept that it doesn’t work. This shouldn’t be a taboo in Europe anymore after what happened in Greece.

Where does Varoufakis go from here?

Well, based on his ‘no’ vote in the parliament, it would seem that he is de facto positioning himself to the left of Tsipras, which could eventually translate into an actual political alternative. So look out for that.

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How would Varoufakis’s negotiations have turned out without Zoe Konstantopoulou?

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 05:04:50 +0000

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. Moreover, there are nuances within the Syriza government itself, with various actors playing distinct roles. Against this backdrop it was no accident that whilst the Eurogroup was delivering its ultimatum in Brussels, Athens was issuing the Truth Committee’s preliminary report on Greek public debt.

The truth committee, headed by Éric Toussaint, came to the firm conclusion that “Greece should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate and odious”

The truth committee, headed by Éric Toussaint, came to the firm conclusion that “Greece should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate and odious”. The report also condemned the structural adjustment plans for causing a debt which is a “direct infringement on the fundamental human rights of the residents of Greece”. The report was, therefore, clear in its assessment that those responsible for the situation in Greece are not its residents but certain politically-motivated economic measures for the benefit big business. It also made clear that the Greek debt is unpayable and that the consequences of continuing to apply austerity could be disastrous. With this report on the table, it became increasingly difficult for the Greek government to give in.

We can, therefore, say that the strategic move by Zoe Kostantopoulou, speaker of the Greek parliament, in establishing the truth committee was key in the way events unfolded. Diego Borja, a member of that committee and former Ecuadorian minister, has pointed out that the international media have not given the report much attention but even so, its publication has influenced negotiations in so far as it has ensured that the condemnation of the debt mechanisms, the consequences of austerity and the need to default on the debt, all of which had been swept under the carpet during negotiations, once again took center stage.

The Greek example shows us yet again the clout that debt audits can have

The Greek example shows us yet again the clout that debt audits can have – as was the case in Ecuador, where the debt audit legitimized relief of 70% of the debt, allowing resources to be freed up for basic services like education and health. Establishing the illegitimacy or illegality of the debt through an audit, therefore, enables you to deal with your creditors from a position of strength, shift the role of victim and condemn those responsible. At the same time, debt audits act as a political and economic educational tool as they provide the whole population with information about the criticisms of the neoliberal economic system and its consequences, thereby turning the neoliberal debate that seeks to create personal responsibility for structural inequalities on its head.

We advocate citizen audits at the Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD). Citizen audits can have an even greater impact given their potential to empower citizens, legitimize the process and dismantle the neoliberal economic model at a grassroots level.

In this regard, it is important to acknowledge that a debt audit will have much greater impact if it is undertaken by a large proportion of the population and this is the reason why we advocate citizen audits at the Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD). Citizen audits can have an even greater impact given their potential to empower citizens, legitimize the process and dismantle the neoliberal economic model at a grassroots level. It is always easier to mobilize against consequences than causes and this makes building a powerful anti-debt movement difficult but the example of Greece shows us how necessary it is to build a strong movement in the face of debt. A movement which condemns debt’s causes and consequences and which strongly defends the need for “non-payment” as a crucial element in regaining national sovereignty and rights.

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European democracy is being played out in Greece

admin — Thu, 09 Jul 2015 18:29:09 +0000

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.

Gross Domestic Product has fallen by 27% in the last 5 years. Workers’ real salaries were 17.2% lower in 2014 compared with 2009. The wage share in income fell from 60.1% in 2010 to 55.1% in 2013. Between 2008 and 2013, unemployment rose from 7.3% to 27.9%. Youth unemployment reached the scary figure of 64.9% in May 2013. Currently, 23.1% of the population live below the poverty line and 63.3% have become poorer as a result of the austerity policies. In 2013, 34% of children were at risk of poverty or social exclusion. The poorest 10% of the population lost 56.6% of their income. Pensions for retired workers fell by 40% on average, with the result that 45% of pensioners now live below the poverty line.

Nobel economics prize winner Paul Krugman clearly stated that “what we have heard about Greek profligacy and irresponsibility is false. Yes, the Greek government was spending beyond its means in the late 2000s. But since then it has repeatedly slashed spending and raised taxes.”[1] All this would have been enough to meet the rigid IMF demand to run a large fiscal surplus.[2] However, this simply has not happened because austerity was dragging down revenues at the same time as it was dragging down the economy.

It is obvious that austerity is not an option for Greece and it is, therefore, becoming increasingly clear that what is actually happening in these negotiations has little to do with the economy and the debt but a great deal to do with power and politics.

The pressure being placed on Greece by the Eurogroup and the institutions is looking more like a war on the Syriza government. To wage this war, they are using all the weapons they have at their disposal, such as the ECB’s decision not to increase emergency credit to Greek banks through the ELA mechanism. This decision runs counter to the very nature of the ECB as its statutes explicitly state that its job is to contribute to the financial stability of the EU member states. Alongside the propaganda of fear, which is trying to position the idea that there is no life outside the euro into the consciousness of European citizens, it is this ECB decision which has contributed to the massive wave of deposit withdrawals by bank account holders in Greece in recent days. And onto this fire of fear, which has already become ingrained in the public consciousness, the media powers are pouring fuel by reporting news stories like those saying that on Saturday 27 June alone, more than 500 million euros were withdrawn from the Greek financial system. And that is on top of the capital flight being led by the big money holders.

Despite the same old story coming out of the European establishment about the Greek government’s lack of responsibility, the authorities, in a show of considerable pragmatism and responsibility, imposed capital controls in Greece on Sunday 28 June.

The media channels in Europe immediately started to talk about a Greek “bank freeze”. However, unlike the freezing of bank accounts in Ecuador in 1999 and in Argentina in 2001, the Greek measure is not geared to protecting the bankers’ wealth but rather to avoiding a bank run, which was already being celebrated by certain conservative voices in Europe. Moreover, this measure allows a daily withdrawal of 60 euros per individual bank account, the unrestricted use of credit cards and any electronic payments within Greece. What it does restrict is the capital flight via foreign transfers, which would have led to a bank run and a monetary crisis had this measure not been taken.

Moreover, this is a measure that has been put in place on a temporary basis until 6 July, one day after the decision that the Greek people will be making in the 5 July Referendum.

However, the fears caused by people not being able to access, even temporarily, the money they have in the banks are being amplified by the voices in the media, who are trying to show that it is all due to the incompetence of the Syriza “populists”. Spain’s conservative Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has pointed out in his various TV addresses to Spanish viewers that “here you have the evidence for the proposals of people like Podemos and Syriza”. Rajoy did not hesitate to convey what lies at the heart of the Eurogroup’s “stubbornness” that Greece should keep austerity in place, namely the desire to punish Syriza and its voters and to intimidate those, like Podemos in Spain, who might think that there are any democratic political alternatives in Europe. To this end, the establishment is doing all that it can to drive Greek voters towards suicide, which is what a yes to austerity vote would be.

“A yes vote would mean depression almost without end,” the Nobel economics prize winner Joseph Stiglitz said. By contrast, a no vote “would at least open the possibility that Greece, with its strong democratic tradition, might grasp its destiny in its own hands. Greeks might gain the opportunity to shape a future that, although perhaps not as prosperous as the past, is far more hopeful than the unconscionable torture of the present,” the economist added, almost poetically.[3]

The Preliminary Report by the Greek Debt Truth Committee has shown quite clearly the illegal, illegitimate and odious nature of Greek debt. It has shown that the debt was essentially used to transfer the high-risk Greek debt from the banks – with most of the debt being held by French and German banks – over to the public institutions, i.e. the European Financial Stability Facility and the European Central Bank. It has shown that the Greek Budget only received 10% of the loans received between 2010 and 2015 whilst the remaining funds were used for buybacks and capitalisations, which benefited the private creditors from 2010 and 2012. It has highlighted the fact that the IMF “misjudgements” in its predictions and calculations were convenient and opportune for these transactions, which benefited financial capital at the expense of millions of citizens. It has revealed the illegality of several of the mechanisms used, as not only did they violate Greek laws and regulations but also those of the European Union and other participant countries.

There is enough support to ensure that that Tsipras’s brave decision to call for the people to decide the future of the negotiations in a referendum is being backed up by legal action. Such a move could see those very authorities, which are currently driving Greeks to suicide by calling for a yes vote and threatening that “otherwise they’ll be thrown out of the euro”, being put in the dock at the European Courts, where they would be confronted by their own regulations.

These are crucial days for Europe. When the Spanish people went to war to fight for democracy and freedom between 1936 and 1939, western democracies turned a blind eye and the price that Europe then paid was Nazism and fascism, with the war and oppression that followed. Times are different now but history is condensed today into events in Greece. The battle for social justice and democracy that is being waged there is the battle for an integrated Europe that is based on these premises and not on the neoliberal doctrine and the interests of financial capital.

* Ecuadorian economist, Masters in Economics from Leuven University (Belgium), Ex-Finance Minister, Ex-Minister for Economic Policy, Ex-President of the Central Bank of Ecuador, Ex-Economic Secretary at ALBA, Montecristi Constituent Assembly member, President of the Citizen Power Movement. Member of the Greek debt truth committee, established by Hellenic Parliament Speaker, Zoe Konstantopoulou, on 7 April 2015.

[1] http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2015/06/29/actualidad/1435594467_652647.html (English original: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/29/opinion/paul-krugman-greece-over-the-brink.html)

[2] The troika continues to demand that Greece achieve a primary fiscal surplus (excluding debt interest payments) of 3.5% of GDP by 2018.

[3] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/29/joseph-stiglitz-how-i-would-vote-in-the-greek-referendum

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Eric Toussaint’s statement on the beautiful historic victory of the No in Greece

admin — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 09:38:59 +0000

The beautiful historic victory of the No shows again that the Greek citizens refuse to accept the creditors’ blackmail. As shown in the preliminary report by the Truth Committee on Public Debt created by the Hellenic parliament, there are several legal arguments that permit a State to unilaterally suspend or repudiate its illegal, odious, and illegitimate debt.

In the Greek case, such a unilateral act may be based on the following arguments:

the bad faith of the creditors that pushed Greece to violate national law and international obligations related to human rights;
preeminence of human rights over agreements such as those signed by previous governments with creditors or the Troika;
coercion; unfair terms flagrantly violating Greek sovereignty and violating the Constitution;
and finally, the right recognized in international law for a State to take countermeasures against illegal acts by its creditors, which purposefully damage its fiscal sovereignty, oblige it to assume odious, illegal and illegitimate debt, violate economic self-determination and fundamental human rights.

As far as unsustainable debt is concerned, every state is legally entitled to invoke necessity in exceptional situations in order to safeguard those essential interests threatened by a grave and imminent peril.

In such a situation, the State may be dispensed from the fulfilment of those international obligations that increase the peril, as is the case with outstanding loan contracts. Finally, states have the right to declare themselves unilaterally insolvent when the servicing of their debt is unsustainable, in which case they commit no wrongful act and hence bear no liability.

People’s dignity is worth more than illegal, illegitimate, odious and unsustainable debt.

Eric Toussaint

Scientific coordinator of the Truth Committee on Public Debt (Greece)
Vocal of the CADTM international network www.cadtm.org

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Support for the resisting Greek people. For the people’s right to audit public debt

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2015 10:50:52 +0000

APPEAL TO SUPPORT THE RESISTING GREEK PEOPLE and its TRUTH COMMISSION ON PUBLIC DEBT FOR THE PEOPLES’ RIGHT TO AUDIT PUBLIC DEBT

Click here GreekDebtTruthCommission.org to sign this Appeal

Indicative list of 800 personalities supporting Greece

To the people of Europe and the whole world!

To all the men and women who reject the politics of austerity and are not willing to pay a public debt which is strangling us and which was agreed to behind our backs and against our interests.

We signatories to this appeal stand by the Greek people who, through their vote at the election of 25th January 2015, became the first population in Europe and in the Northern hemisphere to have rejected the politics of austerity imposed to pay an alleged public debt which was negotiated by those on top without the people and against the people. At the same time we consider that the setting up of the Greek Public Debt Truth Commission at the initiative of the president of the Greek Parliament constitutes a historic event, of crucial importance not only for the Greek people but also for the people of Europe and the whole world!

Indeed, the Truth Commission of the Greek Parliament, composed of volunteer citizens from across the globe, is destined to be emulated in other countries. First, because the debt problem is a scourge that plagues most of Europe and the world, and secondly because there are millions and millions of citizens who are rightly posing basic and fundamental questions about this debt:

What happened to the money that made up this loan? What were the conditions attached to it? How much interest has been paid, at what rate? How much capital has been repaid? How was the debt allowed to accumulate without benefiting the people? Where did the capital go? What was it used for? How much was diverted, by whom, and how was this done?

And also: Who took out this loan and in whose name? Who granted the loan and what was their role? How did the state become involved? By what decision, taken with what authorisation? How did private debts become ‘public’? Who set up such inappropriate schemes, who pushed in this direction, who profited from them? Were offences or crimes committed with this money? Why has penal civil, criminal and administrative responsibility not been established?

All these questions will be subjected to rigorous analysis by the commission, which has an official mandate to “gather all information relevant to the emergence and disproportionate increase in public debt, and to subject the data to scientific scrutiny in order to determine what part of that debt can be identified as illegitimate and illegal, odious or unsustainable, during the period of the Memoranda, from May 2010 to January 2015 as well as in the preceding years. It must also publish precise information – which must be accessible to all citizens, provide the evidence to back up public declarations, raise awareness among the Greek population, the international community and international public opinion, and finally draw up arguments and demands calling for cancellation of the debt.

We consider that it is the most basic democratic right of every citizen to demand clear and precise answers to these questions. We also consider that refusal to reply constitutes a denial of democracy and transparency on the part of those at the top who invented and use the “debt-system” to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. And even worse: we consider that by jealously keeping for themselves the monopoly right to decide the fate of society, those at the top deprive the overwhelming majority of citizens not only of their right to make decisions but above all of the right to take their destiny and the fate of humanity into their hands!

This is why we are launching the following urgent appeal to all citizens, social movements, ecological and feminist networks and movements, trade unions and political organizations that reject this ever less democratic and humane neo-liberal Europe: Show your solidarity with the Greek resistance by supporting in action the Greek Public Debt Truth Commission and its work in identifying that part of the Greek public debt which is illegal, illegitimate, odious and/or unsustainable.

Defend it against the outrageous attacks it has been subjected to from all those forces in Greece and the rest of the world who have an interest in keeping the truth about the “debt-system” hidden from view.

Actively take part in the citizen debt audits that are being developed throughout Europe and elsewhere.

Share your support and solidarity on your social networks, since this support and international solidarity is the only way to thwart the ruling powers’ plan to suffocate Greece and the people who are fighting against our common enemy: the politics of austerity and the debt that is strangling us!

We are confronted by an experienced adversary, united, well coordinated, armed with extraordinary powers and absolutely determined to pursue its offensive against every one of us to the bitter end: we who constitute the overwhelming majority of our societies. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of resisting separately, each in his own corner. So let us unite our forces in a vast movement of solidarity with the Greek resistance and support for the Truth Commission of the Greek Parliament, multiplying such debt audit commissions everywhere where that is possible. Because the struggle of the Greek people is our struggle and their victory will be our victory.

Our unity is our only strength United we stand; divided we fall!

Click here GreekDebtTruthCommission.org to sign this Appeal

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Appeal to support the resisting Greek people and the Truth Committee on Public Debt

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 18:00:35 +0000

To the people of Europe and the whole world!
To all the men and women who reject the politics of austerity and are not willing to pay a public debt which is strangling us and which was agreed to behind our backs and against our interests.

We signatories to this appeal stand by the Greek people who, through their vote at the election of 25^th January 2015, became the first population in Europe and in the Northern hemisphere to have rejected the politics of austerity imposed to pay an alleged public debt which was negotiated by those on top without the people and against the people. At the same time we consider that the setting up of the Greek Public Debt Truth Commission at the initiative of the president of the Greek Parliament constitutes a historic event, of crucial importance not only for the Greek people but also for the people of Europe and the whole world!

“What happened to the money that made up this loan? What were the conditions attached to it? How much interest has been paid, at what rate? How much capital has been repaid? How was the debt allowed to accumulate without benefiting the people? Where did the capital go? What was it used for? How much was diverted, by whom, and how was this done?

“And also: Who took out this loan and in whose name? Who granted the loan and what was their role? How did the state become involved? By what decision, taken with what authorisation? How did private debts become ‘public’? Who set up such inappropriate schemes, who pushed in this direction, who profited from them? Were offences or crimes committed with this money? Why has penal civil, criminal and administrative responsibility not been established?“

All these questions will be subjected to rigorous analysis by the commission, which has an official mandate to“gather all information relevant to the emergence and disproportionate increase in public debt, and to subject the data to scientific scrutiny in order to determine what part of that debt can be identified as illegitimate and illegal, odious or unsustainable, during the period of the Memoranda, from May 2010 to January 2015 as well as in the preceding years. It must also publish precise information – which must be accessible to all citizens, provide the evidence to back up public declarations, raise awareness among the Greek population, the international community and international public opinion, and finally draw up arguments and demands calling for cancellation of the debt.”

We consider that it is the most basic democratic right of every citizen to demand clear and precise answers to these questions. We also consider that refusal to reply constitutes a denial of democracy and transparency on the part of those at the top who invented and use the”debt-system” to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. And even worse: we consider that by jealously keeping for themselves the monopoly right to decide the fate of society, those at the top deprive the overwhelming majority of citizens not only of their right to make decisions but above all of the right to take their destiny and the fate of humanity into their hands!

Actively take part in the citizen debt audits that are being developed throughout Europe and elsewhere.

We are confronted by an experienced adversary, united, well-coordinated, armed with extraordinary powers and absolutely determined to pursue its offensive against every one of us to the bitter end: we who constitute the overwhelming majority of our societies. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of resisting separately, each in his own corner. So let us unite our forces in a vast movement of solidarity with the Greek resistance and support for the Truth Commission of the Greek Parliament, multiplying such debt audit commissions everywhere where that is possible. Because the struggle of the Greek people is our struggle and their victory will be our victory. Our unity is our only strength.

United we stand; divided we fall!

Click here GreekDebtTruthCommission.org to sign this Appeal

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Greek crisis: “Human rights should not stop at doors of international institutions”

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 17:00:33 +0000

Originally Published by Hellenic Parliament Press Office

GENEVA (2 June 2015) – The United Nations Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, has urged European institutions, the International Monetary Fund and Greece to show courage and reach a deal on the Greek debt crisis that respects human rights. In a statement, Mr. Bohoslavsky stressed that human rights should not stop at the doors of international organizations and international financial institutions.

“If there is no compromise, Greece may sooner or later default, making the crisis in Greece even worse. Economic and social rights could be further undermined in Greece by lack of flexibility and courage to find a mutually benefiting deal that respects human rights. At stake are not only debt repayment obligations, but as well the very foundations on which the European Union is built: a union of nations that has respect for human rights, human dignity, equality and solidarity at its core.

The harsh conditionalities of the Greek adjustment programme have resulted in severe cut-backs in social spending, health care and education, raising concerns about the ability of the Greek government to ensure basic economic and social rights. The austerity and reform policies implemented since 2010 have so far not been able to bring Greece back on track. They have rather deepened the social crisis in Greece, and clearly not stimulated the national economy to the benefit of the Greek population.

Unemployment has remained at 25 percent, affecting disproportionately women and young jobseekers. According to latest available data, one out of two young adults is jobless. The number of people at risk of poverty and social exclusion has increased to 35.7 per cent, the highest percentage in the Eurozone. In essence many human rights issues identified by my predecessor during his visit to Greece two years ago have remained if not worsened.
I welcome that the Greek Parliament established a debt audit commission. It is necessary to shed light on who benefited, and to what extent, from the reckless lending and borrowing and from the bail outs, and who is responsible for the current financial situation.

In April 2015, a law was passed to provide some relief for persons living in extreme poverty, including housing allowances, food coupons and restoring limited access to electricity; yet it is an initiative that does not go far enough. A more holistic approach to address economic and social rights issues in Greece is necessary. Priority should be given to use limited available resources to bolster the real economy and close holes in the social security net and in the system of public health care. A comprehensive job creation programme should be considered.

The burden of adjustment must be shared in a fair manner, compliant with the obligations Greece and creditor States have assumed under the International Covenant of Social and Economic Rights, the European Social Charter and other international human rights standards. This should include tax measures to support social transfers to mitigate inequalities, combatting tax evasion, establishing a tax on abroad financial assets of Greek residents and increasing taxes for luxury goods and highly valuable real estate. It also means implementing necessary institutional reforms in order to prevent over-borrowing.

At a regional level, EU capital requirements directives need to be improved in order to avoid over-lending. And the “no bail out clause” of the Lisbon Treaty would function best in combination with a human rights based sovereign insolvency mechanism.

Public debt is predicted to reach this year 180 per cent of GDP, indicating that the past debt relief was insufficient to ensure long term debt sustainability. This relation was about 120 per cent when the crisis started. It is perhaps time to acknowledge that further debt relief will sooner or later be necessary, instead of Greece remaining over several decades in an economically and politically unhealthy dependence on creditor institutions.

Human rights should not stop at the doors of international organizations and international financial institutions. They have to be respected when responsibilities are delegated by States to international bodies, such as the European Stability Mechanism.

I welcome that the European Parliament has published a comprehensive study on the impact of the financial crisis on fundamental rights, and recently passed a resolution stressing that sustainable debt solutions, including standards for responsible lending and borrowing, must be facilitated through a multilateral legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring processes. The same resolution called upon the EU to engage constructively in the UN negotiations on this framework.

I hope European institutions and governments will act accordingly and also draw the necessary consequences for adjustment policies implemented within the EU.

I am looking forward to visiting Greece in the near future to receive updates about the situation on the ground and have also requested official meetings with relevant European institutions.

We need to find better solutions to prevent economic reform policies undermining the enjoyment of human rights. This is not an easy task, but feasible, as Iceland’s response to its banking crisis has shown.

(*) See the report of my predecessor, Cephas Lumina, on his visit to Greece, www.undocs.org/A/HRC/25/50/Add.1
ENDS
Mr. Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky (Argentina) was appointed as Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and human rights by the UN Human Rights Council on 8 May 2014. Before, he worked as a Sovereign Debt Expert for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) where he coordinated an Expert Group on Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing. Learn more, log on to: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Development/IEDebt/Pages/IEDebtIndex.aspx
The Independent Experts are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.
Read the report of the Independent Expert’s visit to Iceland:
www.undocs.org/A/HRC/28/59/Add.1
Study of the European Parliament: The Impact of the crisis on fundamental rights across Member States of the EU. Comparative analysis
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=IPOL_STU(2015)510021
Resolution of the European Parliament on Financing for Development
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P8-TA-2015-0196
UN Guiding Principles on Foreign Debt and Human Rights:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Development/IEDebt/Pages/GuidingPrinciples.aspx
For more information and media requests, please contact Gunnar Theissen ( / gtheissen@ohchr.org) or write to ieforeigndebt@ohchr.org
For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts: Xabier Celaya, UN Human Rights – Media Unit ( / xcelaya@ohchr.org)
– See more at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16032&LangID=E#sthash.mwYJ2J4q.dpuf

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Why it would be good for the IMF if Greece stopped repaying the IMF loans

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 16:00:19 +0000

Entry Originally Published by Eurodad by Bodo Ellmers

The creditor community has another shock and awe moment this week, as more and more influential actors argue that Greece should stop repaying the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and instead use scarce public resources to tackle its economic and humanitarian crisis. While Prime Minister Tsipras still tries to ease the creditors, the idea is here to stay. And it is a good one: Greece should not just postpone loan repayments but default on them – stopping payments to the IMF for good. This would help to finally reform the IMF from the political puppet that it is now into a real and effective crisis response instrument.

Risk-free lending can quickly become irresponsible lending

Whoever loses in a debt crisis – and usually there are many losers – the IMF is always off the hook. It is common practice that borrowers grant preferred creditor status to the IMF, and pay off the IMF loans in full and in a timely manner. While it isn’t written down anywhere in international law that there’s such a thing as an IMF preferred creditor status – not even in the IMF’s own Articles of Agreements – all countries traditionally stick to this practice. This even goes for countries such as Argentina, which have been branded recalcitrant debtors by US judges and have no intention of maintaining good relations with the IMF.

Repaying the IMF often comes at high opportunity costs for borrower countries’ development, and for the other creditors who do have to take a haircut, and a larger one if the IMF does not participate in a debt restructuring. The fact that everyone’s repaying the IMF means that lending is essentially risk-free for them. And as in all other cases when lending is considered risk-free, the lender is encouraged to act irresponsibly, and to do really stupid things.

IMF’s track record is disastrous

Just one of these things has been the IMF’s participation in the Troika bailout operations to the benefit of Greece’s private creditors, which started in 2010. It was clear from the start that Greece was insolvent, that the bailout loans were not going to put the country back on a debt sustainability track, but that they would just refinance payments to private creditors who would leave the country. It was also clear that Greece would never be able to repay the bail-out loans, as these measures did not solve or even begin to address the insolvency problem, but simply changed the creditor structure from bondholders to Troika. Ninety percent of the loans went straight to creditors. Actually, the IMF’s own rules of the game forbade such stupidity, as they require a country with an unsustainable debt burden to restructure and reduce its private debt burden first, before it can access IMF loans.

However, some of the IMF’s ‘major shareholders’ were interested in the bailout of their own banks and investors who had lent recklessly and were overexposed in Greece. As a result, the IMF Executive Board quickly passed the ‘systemic exemption clause’, which legalised the bailout loans to Greece, in spite of the fact that these loans violated the rule that the IMF cannot lend into a clear situation of unsustainable debt (i.e. to an insolvent state).

Support from IMF’s management was not hard to get, as then Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was still considering running for the French presidency, and French banks were the number one profiteer of the bailout operation among the foreign banks. As German and British banks were second and third on the bailout list, the coalition of ‘major shareholders’ in favour of a bailout was quickly growing strong enough to overcome resistance by more prudent voices.

Safeguards against political hijacking badly needed

This Greek tragedy is just one of many irresponsible lending cases that the IMF has had to conduct due to political pressure by the ‘major shareholders’, which tend to hijack this international institution with its nearly universal membership of 188 countries for their vested economic and geostrategic interests. Earlier examples include IMF support for pro-Western military dictatorships all over the world. A more recent example is the generous IMF lending to belligerent Ukraine, which is clearly beyond any debt sustainability considerations.

Often it is the smaller IMF members that try to prevent the IMF from engaging in irresponsible lending operations. Paulo Batista, for instance, who represents Brazil and other Latin American countries at the IMF argued that the Fund “gave money to save German and French banks, not Greece … [and] put too much of a burden on Greece and not enough of a burden on Greece’s creditors”. Their position is weak, however. On the one hand because the IMF’s “one dollar – one vote” voting system gives small economies little influence. But also because, under the current system, the IMF always gets its money back. No matter how irresponsible the lending act was in the first place, third parties are still paying the price. So it is all too easy to convince the IMF’s Board to sign off on politically motivated lending operations that make no sense from an economic point of view.

IMF reform: from political puppet to crisis management tool

The most effective way to prevent irresponsible lending is to make it clear to lenders that they won’t see their money back if they lend irresponsibly. This is why Greece should default on the IMF loans and force the IMF to write them off. This would substantially strengthen the more prudent voices in the IMF decision-making processes.

Only introducing a default-risk can turn the IMF into a responsible lending institution. Only bailing-in the IMF in sovereign debt restructurings when these are needed can ensure that IMF resources are not used in future to bailout private creditors. Greece now has the chance to trigger an overdue IMF reform process, or better an accountability process: This is to make the IMF stick to its core business, to refrain from political lending on behalf of ‘major shareholders’, and to provide emergency liquidity to countries in exceptional situations of liquidity squeeze, according to clear and just rules.

Of course, great powers will continue to engage in political and geostrategic lending, even if they can’t continue to instrumentalise the IMF for it. And in any case, someone will need to replenish the IMF for losses incurred through past irresponsible lending operations. However, paraphrasing Yanis Varoufakis, the wider IMF membership might want to stick two fingers up at the ‘major shareholders’ and tell them: you now solve these problems by yourselves.

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Transforming crisis to Krisis

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 14:00:54 +0000

Originally Published by International Citizen Audit Network

By Insurgenta Iskra

Crisis. Originally, the word derives from the ancient Greek verb “krinein”, meaning to judge in order to take a decision and its noun, “krisis”, meaning judgment, decision. According to Steven James Venette^[1] “crisis is a process of transformation where the old system can no longer be maintained.”

In Greece, the obsessive persistence of the ruling elites in rescuing by any means the current socioeconomic system, even during its long phase of death rattle, has fuelled a significant social mobilisation towards the Alternative Route, striving to transform crisis to krisis.

Several citizen initiatives and grassroots groups organise, since 2012, the Festival for Solidarity and Cooperative Economy (#Festival4sce) seeking to build the foundations of another world that is not only possible, but already growing.

Following the links between the social impacts of the austerity imposed during the last four years in Greece and the alternatives proposed by citizens themselves, this series of articles is structured around four main axes:

^{^[1]} Venette, S. J. (2003), “Risk communication in a High Reliability Organization: APHIS PPQ’s inclusion of risk in decision making”, North Dakota State University.

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Smiling in Greece

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 18:15:02 +0000

Jezabel Goudinoff; Member of the PACD, Barcelona’s 15M and the citizen journalism group Peoplewitness.

Entry originally published in the blog ‘Living in Debtocracy’, the public blog of the PACD.

Back in November 2014, the major Greek cities experienced a day of the largest demonstrations that can be recalled in recent years. All this was preceded by student demonstrations during the previous days in which intense clashes with police occurred.

On 17th November 1973, tanks of the colonels’ military regime demolished the gates of Athens Polytechnic University, where a group of students shouting “Bread, Education and Freedom” had locked themselves in striking since the previous 14th. The junta’s regime would fall a few months later, and on that same date the following year the first democratic elections would be called. Today, 41 years after the crush of this insurrection, there is no doubt that those three demands continue to be as valid as ever and that austerity, the trademark imposed by the Troika, is adding more areas to include in that claim on a daily basis. After a period of protests totally ignored by the government and by Europe, everything appeared to have calmed down in Greece, but it is the calm experienced in the eye of the storm.

If you were a Greek citizen, you would have a 27% chance of being on the lists of the unemployment office although it is estimated that you would have a real probability of 35% of being unemployed. Even if you were employed, you could only collect your salary since an average of 3 months ago. If you were a teacher, you could access the new plan, which involves the hiring of 1,100 teachers on a ‘voluntary work’ basis. Anyway slavery is not as bad as they paint it to be. Your children would have a 27% possibility of being malnourished and fainting in a ransacked public school, practically devoid of resources. Your labour rights would now be a dream of a past life and depending on the sector in which you work, would be under the regime of forced requisition, i.e. without the right to strike. You would also have more than a 35% chance of being excluded from healthcare coverage even if you were a minor as only children of insured parents enjoy that ‘privilege’. Even with that right in your back pocket, you could not be treated in a CAP for flu, as they were all closed overnight last February. You would have to wait in queues kilometres long at an overburdened hospital or dip into your little savings and go to a private clinic, assuming that you have them or you don’t need them to pay for food or energy bills to heat your home. After visiting the clinic, perhaps you would go looking for wood to burn and heat your home, which would produce, let’s say in Athens, more than alarming levels of pollution. It could also cause your death in an ‘accidental’ fire. Your government would then blame you for trying to keep yourself warm and Europe would say you had lived beyond your means and from what your laziness allowed. Although that does sound familiar, maybe.

Nobody would talk about the more than 100 deaths due to avian flu last winter.

As for the macroeconomic figures, austerity, for which the IMF itself has apologised without a hint of an intention to alleviate it, would have caused a 26% contraction of the GDP of the country, the bankruptcy of thousands of small businesses and traders and the collapse of large corporations, the mass dismissal of public officials and the destruction of the social fabric. Public debt would have increased by 170% of its GDP – which technically makes it unpayable – and they would pressure you with new taxes on your home (an increase of 514% in comparison with 2009, if that seems little), your food, your energy and VAT at 23%. That would be accompanied by a wave of privatisations of public companies that would make services like transport or water inaccessible, as well as degradation of existing public services such as education or healthcare. But yes, your government would have promised free WIFI for everyone.

For if you were one of those people that complains a lot and gets organised, you should prepare yourself for repression, ranging from the massive use of gas to dissolve even small sectorial protests, using strong violence and police presence on the streets, even police assemblies that would mean you end up in prison in solitary confinement. And if you were a migrant, the ordeal that could be described here would give way to a whole other article, still unfinished in an Immigrant Detention Centre.

The electoral option wouldn’t provide you with too much hope. Syriza leads against Nea Democratia (your PP, so we understand each other), by 11 points. But distant is that radicalism which publicised the leftist coalition beyond the borders of your country. The discourse has evolved from not paying the debt to recapitalising banks to revitalise (rather, resurrect) the battered Greek economy. Syriza has learned from the elections of 2012, in which the counter-campaign to which everyone else submitted to by force and neoliberal Europe, mobilised enough votes of fear to make it lose the election. Its radicalisation has led it not only to talk about recapitalising banks, also to open up to business sectors (including the Bilderberg group) and the Church, which has brought it far from little criticism. Its positions are more like those of PASOK of a few years ago (your Socialist Party, so to speak, in a total decline after its government pact with ND, with less than 5% in the polls) than its own from a couple of years ago. Sure, they would be better than those who govern now, or at least more sensitive to social problems, but can that awareness overcome the blackmail of 170% of public debt without considering the non-payment? Can you have enough room and sovereignty to reverse austerity and structural measures imposed by the Troika on the MDEs and substitutes in the form of multi-laws? Almost nobody believes it, but it can ease the climate of political repression and social defeat and breath some fresh air into social movements.

The failure of economic policies implemented by previous governments and the destruction of the social fabric have fertilised the ground for right-wing formation, Golden Dawn, has an electoral support of 7.5% according to recent polls and the majority of its members in prison for belonging to criminal gangs – all this happening after the murder of antifascist singer Pavlos Fyssas in September 2013 – after years of operating with impunity and with the collaboration, in many cases, of the police, has 60% of voters (and many militants). They also represent the crude nationalism that fuels Europe with the loss of sovereignty of the states in favour of European mechanisms, principally economic, of unelected representatives and of lack of transparency, the Europe of the markets. The principal objective of the formation, to blame the situation on the migrants, for parasatising the country. And against that objective, although not the only one, they protest in the streets. There have now been more than 200 reported attacks in Athens alone since November 2009. The magnitude of unreported attacks is unknown. Their strategy, copies by other European extreme right groups, consists in giving false help in the form of welfare, only to Greek families.

In the face of that Europe of the Markets stands another Greece, which rethinks economic relations between people, and moves away from the model of ultra-consumerism and waste. It’s the Greece of supportive and cooperative economy networks, an economy of humane dimension that has seen rapid growth and that every day is consolidating itself: they haven’t come to patch things up, but to stay. Although it extends through citizens’ assemblies born from plazas to collectively meet local needs, these self-managed structures are realising they have created a path that leads them to rethink the way we live and there is no turning back. Its principles are based on direct democracy, on horizontal and participatory decision making, and the transformation of plurality in collective intelligence. They foster creativity, communication, mutual support and sustainability.

After a year of living those experiences directly, we have been able to see how many different initiatives work: Time banks to reduce dependence on money; bazaars for the exchange of unused items; markets without intermediaries and social currencies; Self-managed Social Clinics giving basic health coverage to the excluded, and getting attention for cases that require intervention, making noise in the media; eco-communities that have decided to return to the countryside to live a simpler but freer life; cooperatives of various types and self-managed spaces; initiatives against the privatization of water that they even talk about collectivisation; citizen initiatives against the construction of a gold mine in the open air in Chalkidiki; public universities and schools for auto-managed education… And it is impossible to forget the workers of VioMe who occupied the factory after its closure and went from claiming their compensation to redirecting production towards the production of natural soaps. Today they continue to fight for their dignity and their right to work. Some of these experiences have been collected in this computer generated graph.

Events such as the Festival of Direct Democracy in Thessaloniki, the Festival of Supportive and Cooperative Economy in Athens or the CommonsFest in Crete help bring coherence and visibility to those alternatives and, little by little, create bonds between them and others beyond the Greek borders. Greece was turned into a test laboratory for neoliberalism, but that has also awakened creativity to rethink the world and relationships that are produced within it. Amid the feeling of the fall of society, hope is a more than precious commodity and that is precisely what these initiatives bring to their participants.

And, you know what? If you lived in Greece and participated in one of those initiatives, you would smile.

Note:
The data and news for this article have been extracted from the websites of the Festival for Solidarity, Cooperative and Economy, Keep Talking Greece, X-Pressed, Info Grecia, Autonomias o The City at Time of Crisis. Parts of those experiences narrated have been extracted from the blog On The Road of 15MBcn Internacional.

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