Greece Will Not Win No Matter What Happens

Eurogroup president Jena-Claude Juncker was in Greece this week to hold his first meetings with the Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras, who was named after the June 17 elections.
Mr. Juncker told Mr. Samaras that he thinks it is vital for Greece to honor its commitments and stay in the Eurozone and added that he is “on Greece’s side” and is sure she will re-establish her fiscal credibility.
He said that the troika of financial representatives of the parties that are lending money to Greece to keep it afloat will finish their work in September and only then will Juncker and his other Eurozone partners be ready to discuss the most important item on the Greek prime minister’s agenda -- getting a two-year extension of its austerity program. The extension, until 2016, would give Greece extra time to get its public budget back into balance.
Without such an extension, it is possible that Greece will have to go into bankruptcy and leave the Euro behind.
Prime minister Samaras said that Greece is only asking for a little more “breathing room” and that granting it would not automatically mean that Europe would have to lend additional sums to Greece.
Mr. Juncker replied that the ball is now in Greece’s court and that it must adopt a “robust and credible” strategy for recovering its fiscal balance.
Juncker also called for the restart of the Greek privatization program for divesting government properties and businesses. This is a very sore point for the Greek people, who see it as a demand for the oldest nation in western culture to sell off its national treasures, both of antiquity and of present times. The Greeks are smarting because they have the sense that Germany, and some other European countries, are using Greece’s catastrophe to buy up her treasures and businesses, especially land, tourism sites and energy, at bargain basement prices because Greece has had no choice but to sell in order to meet Europe’s demands and receive a bailout.
Juncker added, “it is Greece’s last chance, and the Greek people must understand this.”
This, dear readers, seems to me to be the latest in a long line of Eurozone threats to Greece in the tradition of “with friends like these, who needs enemies.”
To add salt to the already gaping wound, German Chancellor Merkel said today that she will not even discuss an extension of the Greek program until the troika’s report is completed.
The hard and sad truth is that after two-and-one-half years of austerity -- with increasing unemployment and business closings, falling state tax revenues -- Greece is now in its fifth year of recession. Without funds to pump the economy and provide basic social services, the country cannot possibly turn around its fiscal situation.
And, yet, Europe is now awaiting “payment” of yet another 11.5 Billion Euros in government cutbacks and economies before it releases the next payment of 31.5 Billion Euros agreed to as part of the Greek austerity program. Juncker has delayed this payment until October, while he knows full well that Greece lacks operating funds now.

The Greek situation is a study in the basic flaws in the European Union:

- No one is in charge until a committee is formed for a specific problem.
- No one can say no or override the wishes of the countries that pay the bills for the rest of the EU - Germany and France, and to a lesser extent Britain, The Netherlands, Denmark. So the EU is really a tyranny of the rich.
- Those countries who are considered as being inferior because their economies are driven by tourism or agriculture - Spain, Greece, Ireland, Portugal - are at the mercy of the industrialized EU members - Germany,
France (but France also has a huge agricultural presence in the EU), Great Britain and those Scandinavian countries that are EU and Eurozone members.

The European Union - the classic example of the rich driving the poor into greater poverty.