Greece

So we reach the end. Good. Let democracy and popular government prevail. The entire Euro project was conceived by a small group of elitist technocrats, then foisted on national peoples often without any ability on the part of the people to veto it.

The crisis in Europe is an echo of the crisis here in the US. America’s banks went on an unsustainable binge of greedy excess. They generated, accumulated, mixed, and then sold mortgages in an ever increasing frenzy driven by the knowledge that as long as they moved the pile fast enough they could reward themselves handsomely and not suffer the consequences of their descent into the depths of outright fraud.

And it was a fraud.

Maybe not in the narrow and legally provable sense, but in the broader and more applicable ethical sense. The banks sought to rip us off to enrich themselves. They knew how compliant our governments all were. They knew that, in the end, they would be bailed out. So there was never a brake on their acceleration over the edge.

This we all know. All except, apparently, for those few who cling to the delusion that it was the US government’s fault for “forcing” the banks to lend to marginally creditworthy borrowers in the name of some equality program. This trope still pops up now and again. It is utter rubbish, but serves to fog up the post-crisis debate just enough that we have never sought proper compensation from the banks. They still exist, absent one or two of the real fringe players, and are bigger and more dangerous than ever.

So the sudden realization that all that highly rated paper spewing from the Wall Street spigot, was just toxic junk, overturned the world’s finances. The Euro zone immediately fell into disarray. Its banks had gathered debts with reckless abandon and needed help. That help took the form, by and large, of moving the debts from private balance sheets onto public balance sheets. Meaning the taxpayers and not shareholders were now responsible for piles of useless assets that they had no responsibility for creating.

Add in the burden of providing support to those thrown into unemployment by the inevitable recession the bank crisis gave life to and government budgets everywhere were thrown into disarray. Debt piled up.

So governments suddenly faced their own debt management crises. And true to the immutable laws of capitalism, the bankers began to decry the increasing piles of debt accumulated from their own vice. Those bankers and their friends in orthodox economics began to talk ominously of impending confidence crises wherein nations would be unable to access the credit markets and so continue to fund the recovery from the bank induced horror.

The ratio of debt to GDP, we were told, had risen to crisis levels and needed to be reduced. Instead of increasing GDP the advocated approach was to reduce debt.

Now any fool with even a modest education could have understood that reducing debt ratios by cutting spending would also cut GDP meaning that the risk was high that the ratio might never fall even with substantial cuts. Worse: the risk was higher that cuts would actually reduce GDP faster than it would allow debt to be reduced, thus the ratio would deteriorate.

But that doesn’t happen in orthodox textbooks. And it doesn’t fit the banker’s narrative.

So austerity was invented and doomed to fail from the beginning.

You and I told them so, but you and I don’t count. The voice of democracy has been stifled. Popular government has been subverted and re-tooled as government for the benefit of a few.

And they want to be repaid. Despite having started the crisis. Despite having made bad decision after bad decision. Despite being so-called “experts” at risk assessment. Despite the 25% unemployment. Despite the 25% decline in GDP. And despite the humanitarian catastrophe that their greed unleashed on perfectly innocent people.

That a whole slew of north European politicians have cast their lot with the bankers is testimony to the grip that plutocracy and economic orthodoxy have combined to exert. It is an insanity. It is a delirium from which Europe, or rather the Euro project, probably will not recover.

Deservedly so.

When you ask an orthodox economist what a market is comprised of they rarely mention people. When you ask a banker what constitutes a debtor nation they will not talk about human beings. They do not care about real lives. Or real consequences. Reality in all its manifest aspects is expunged from their respective analyses. Instead they speak in a language specifically constructed to dehumanize their thoughts. This is to protect them from the ethical responsibility for their ideas and actions.

Well no more. Maybe.

Democracy has spoken up.

Let us not rejoice just yet though. There is work to do.

The Greeks have resisted more plunder. But can they rebuild?

I hope so.