I was going to spend it on kratom, but if I wait 2 months I could probably afford a slave.
RedMaistre posted:The 'official' left excitement over Syriza, not to mention Syriza own illusions, can be interpreted as being the result of a decade long process by which Seattle and the initial explosion of popular protest against the Iraq War were taken up again as conveniently purified aesthetic images within spectacle. Their substance was rejected as 'hippie', 'Stalinist', or "merely populist" and replaced with soft warmed over post-Blair social-democracy with a facade of tech Utopianism and Jacobin voluntarism that is more afraid of not being treated seriously by the epigones of predatory creditors than of failing the people who elected it.
drwhat posted:china is pretty fucked up though. it seems quite reasonable to expect it to go down another 20-30%. while the euro is disintegrating itself. i suppose if you were the US you would want to be pushing greece as hard as you could to take this as far as they can, as long as it wasn't actually traceable to you. and i wonder whose idea it was that everyday citizens take loans to buy chinese stocks. or how true that really is.
will the chinese people demand stricter regulations from the communist party, or will the irony be too much for them to bear
stegosaurus posted:Some leftcoms on fb were saying 'lol predicted it, at least they rejected the kke's stalinist autarky'
stegosaurus posted:Dr what we need all the details you have from your job please
i don't work there anymore, now i am just a common citizen of the world again who knows nothing
last paragraph is pretty strong words considering what unabashed syriza fanbois they were during and after their election:
Whatever happens in the next few hours and days, one thing should be clear: any attempt to cancel the popular will for the overturn of austerity and the memoranda amounts to hubris in the ancient Greek sense of the term. Whoever dares to lead the country, and the Left, to surrender and to dishonor should be ready to face the corresponding Nemesis.
RedMaistre posted:Ironically, the proposal still shields the military. It calls for €100 million in cuts this year and €200 million for 2016. These are cuts versus budget, so the total cut on an ongoing basis is €200 million. The creditors had called for €400 million. Note also that the story that claimed that the IMF rejected cuts appears to be false. Not only was it denied by the IMF, but we are told by a reliable source that a US official in a position to get an answer from the IMF asked about the press story saying that the IMF objected to cuts said that the IMF had in fact pushed for the Greek government to make cuts to military spending and they were opposed.
this seems accurate.
"Syriza has thus managed to deliver to the neoliberals a victory more complete than they could ever have engineered on their own."
also i'm curious how the shortage of medicine was engineered, or is it just an artifact of capitalist media outlets? Varoufakis had been yelling on his twitter about media lies and media fog since the day he was made minister until the day he wasn't, and then he said not much except for posting his statement of official support of the new capitulation -- which he will not be voting for, and instead he's taking a "leave". hahaha.
everything is bullshit.
This is what gets me....even a merely ambitious man would have acted better, when such an opportunity presented itself, than Tsipras did.
wasted posted:something something "the center can not hold"
The center was never in Athens, really.
dank_xiaopeng posted:pretty good response piece from teh jac0bean https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/tsipras-syriza-greece-euro-debt/
last paragraph is pretty strong words considering what unabashed syriza fanbois they were during and after their election:
Whatever happens in the next few hours and days, one thing should be clear: any attempt to cancel the popular will for the overturn of austerity and the memoranda amounts to hubris in the ancient Greek sense of the term. Whoever dares to lead the country, and the Left, to surrender and to dishonor should be ready to face the corresponding Nemesis.
much of this is wrong or irrelevant now - and it's by a fucking syriza CC member
NoFreeWill posted:greece is a country which has to import food and pharmaceuticals. i wish they'd import a clue!
If you were drowning, i wouldnt even throw you a clue.
BRUSSELS (AP) -- Bailout discussions between the Greek finance minister and his skeptical counterparts in the 19-country eurozone will resume Sunday after breaking up following more than eight hours of talks without any apparent breakthrough that will secure the country's future in the euro.
On leaving the meeting, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the eurozone's top official, said there had been "in-depth" discussions, and highlighted the issue of "trust."
Greece's finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos is clearly struggling to convince skeptical creditors that the Greek government can be trusted to deliver on its reform promises in exchange for a financial rescue package securing the country's future in the euro.
The pressure has been on Greece all day even after the Greek parliament passed a harsh austerity package that it hopes will lead to a three-year bailout. Over and over, finance ministers and top officials of the eurozone said the same thing as they arrived for the key meeting in Brussels on Greece's bailout proposals - we don't fully trust you to make good on your promises.
Greece's left-wing Syriza government, they said, needed to do a lot more than just publish a 13-page plan of reform commitments before they could sign off on another multibillion-euro bailout deal that would keep the country afloat and prevent its exit from the euro.
Epic, even aftre SYriza's total capitulation the vultures are pushing for more guarantees
Crow posted:I wish you'd overdose on clues
i'm actually smarter than everyone on this forum, including tpaine (RIP).
Edit: A question which would become only more salient if and when any faction moved Greece towards a break with the EU, provoking inevitably intensified economic warfare.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
Now, I cannot exclude the possibility that if Greece takes steps to neutralize the creditors’ main weapon, they will retaliate in other ways, which will result in the eventual exit of Greece from the euro. (Though “exit” is not as black and white as people suppose. But this would be a political choice by the creditors, not in any way a result of economic logic. We should not speak of exit in that case, but embargo.
Interesting take, which gives the lie to people like Owen Jones who say that the Greek leadership is absolved of responsibility because of overwhelming external forces.
RedMaistre posted:That wasn't a sarcastic question--I'm not familiar if any one has put forward concrete ideas how the dependence on food imports would, or could, be dealt with.
Edit: A question which would become only more salient if and when any faction moved Greece towards a break with the EU, provoking inevitably intensified economic warfare.
Seems clear to me that any socialist national project in the year of our lord 2015 involves integrating with the China-Russia attempt to build alternatives to dollar hegemony and the IMF.
RedMaistre posted:It’s not widely realized, but the old national central banks did not cease to exist when the euro was created. In fact, not only do they continue to operate, they perform almost all the day to day operation of central banking in the euro area, with, on paper, a substantial degree of autonomy from the central authorities in Brussels. So what’s required is not “exit,” not a radical step by the Greek government. Rather simply a change in personnel at the Bank of Greece. The BoG only needs to halt what is in effect a politically motivated strike, and return to performing the usual functions of a central bank.
Now, I cannot exclude the possibility that if Greece takes steps to neutralize the creditors’ main weapon, they will retaliate in other ways, which will result in the eventual exit of Greece from the euro. (Though “exit” is not as black and white as people suppose. But this would be a political choice by the creditors, not in any way a result of economic logic. We should not speak of exit in that case, but embargo.
Interesting take, which gives the lie to people like Owen Jones who say that the Greek leadership is absolved of responsibility because of overwhelming external forces.
i dont think they have control over issuing currency though so they are reliant on the ECB for loans whomever controls the greek banks
Panopticon posted:i dont think they have control over issuing currency though so they are reliant on the ECB for loans whomever controls the greek banks
The guys argument is that they could issue bonds on the domestic market because he doubts interest rates would be high. Greece is prevented from doing this because they essentially consolidated their debt. Like if you owe a loan shark money and you borrow from someone else you'll have a bad day. I think most people would disagree that Greece has the capacity to issue a large amount of new debt after a new default at low rates without some sort of angel like China or Russia.
babyhueypnewton posted:RedMaistre posted:That wasn't a sarcastic question--I'm not familiar if any one has put forward concrete ideas how the dependence on food imports would, or could, be dealt with.
Edit: A question which would become only more salient if and when any faction moved Greece towards a break with the EU, provoking inevitably intensified economic warfare.Seems clear to me that any socialist national project in the year of our lord 2015 involves integrating with the China-Russia attempt to build alternatives to dollar hegemony and the IMF.
Agreed. But that doesn't in and of itself answer the question of how they would free themselves from dependence on Western humanitarian aid..
There are countries like Egypt (as discussed here) that have the capacity to feed themselves, but don't because of the dominance of a comprador neoliberal political agenda and of the class interests of the urban bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie. Perhaps someone more familiar with Greek agriculture and rural class struggle could explain to what extant this is also the case in Greece, or whether its inability to feed itself is based on a more fundamental ecological and geographic causes.
getfiscal posted:Panopticon posted:i dont think they have control over issuing currency though so they are reliant on the ECB for loans whomever controls the greek banks
The guys argument is that they could issue bonds on the domestic market because he doubts interest rates would be high. Greece is prevented from doing this because they essentially consolidated their debt. Like if you owe a loan shark money and you borrow from someone else you'll have a bad day. I think most people would disagree that Greece has the capacity to issue a large amount of new debt after a new default at low rates without some sort of angel like China or Russia.
Since the author thinks that Greece being forced out of the euro would have been a likely consequence of reasserting control over its central bank, I don't think he would disagree that turning East would still have to happen. Rather,its, as the last few lines said, a question of how Syriza could have turned the negotiations with Brussels into an actual political confrontation and not merely a technocratic economic debate over how much austerity is "too much."
.....Greek Agriculture is characterized by small lots and significant land fragmentation. However, several studies show that there is a small tendency towards land concentration and centralization. This is re-enforced by land leasing, which increases the cultivating area of the bigger farmers.
--Greek Capitalism in Crisis: Marxist Analysis by Stavros Mavroudeas
a nation has no power-meaning in itself anymore. (this is also demonstrated by the canadian parliament declaring a few years ago that quebec is a nation, and all the things in quebec that are named "national." completely without impact on any power structure, but quebec nationalists feel better about themselves because they are living in an obsolete framework.)