The latest stage in the Greek debt crisis has the been the referendum called by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose ruling Syriza party was elected on a platform of opposition to the austerity measures imposed by the Eurozone and the International  Monetary Fund, in exchange for loans to service what almost everyone recognized are sovereign debts that Athens can never repay. With the collapse of talks between the Greek government and its creditors, Tsipras called the referendum, seeking a “no” vote  on the latest bailout terms offered by the Eurozone and IMF.  Not surprisingly, many business commentators and economists have savaged the negotiating tactic being employed by Tsipras, essentially claiming that such an approach will lead to the inevitable ejection of Greece from the Eurozone, and an even worse contraction of the already depressed Greek economy.

On the basis of cold logic, those pundits may be correct. However, the affairs of human societies are rarely played out in a purely logical manner. Those observers, and the leadership of the Eurozone and IMF, have ignored the lessons from Greek history of the last century.

In  asking Greek voters to render a vote for “Οχι” (pronounced “Ohi,” which is “no” in Greek), Tsipras was echoing one of the most important dates on the Greek national calendar, “Ohi Day,” held every October 28. “Ohi Day” commemorates an event that occurred on October 28, 1940 which has influenced the Greek national character ever since. In was on that day that the Italian ambassador to Greece handed an ultimatum to the Greek Prime Minister, Ioannis Metaxas. Mussolini, who was jealous of the military successes achieved by his Axis partner, Hitler, decided he would attempt the game of conquest as well. Despite the fact that Metaxas was a dictator, sympathetic  to both Nazi Germany  and Fascist Italy, Mussolini decided on attacking Greece for no other reason than it appearing to be a defenseless country, ripe for easy conquest. At 3.00 AM  Metaxas was informed by Rome’s ambassador that an Italian army would march  into Greece from Albania in less than 3 hours, and he must capitulate or expect war. The answer from Metaxas was “Ohi.”

That one word rallied Greek resistance to the invasion mounted by Fascist Italy. Metaxas, who was an ill man who would die within months, underwent a profound metamorphosis. He abandoned his previous empathy for fascism, and became a stalwart fighter for democracy. On the day of the Italian invasion, Metaxas issued a proclamation to the Greek people which began with these words, “The hour has come to fight for the liberty of Greece , her integrity and honor.” In a stirring radio broadcast made a month later, Metaxas told his nation, “All must know that the struggle must be hard and long, and that our road will not be strewn with flowers, but we shall overcome all difficulties, face all perils…We are fighting for values the significance of which goes beyond our own frontiers and those of the Balkan countries and extends to all humanity. Let us thank God that His will has again destined Greece  to fight for such a lofty cause.”

To the surprise of the entire world, the Greek army utterly routed the Italian invaders, and even liberated a large party of Italian-occupied Albania. It was the first time in World War II that an Axis army had been defeated in a land campaign. At a dark time in human history, the courage of the Greek nation was a rare beacon of light.

Eventually, Nazi Germany intervened in the fighting, and its massive war machine overcame Greek resistance. However, even under Nazi occupation, the Greek people continued to resist by mounting guerrilla warfare. The war brought much suffering to Greece, and an argument could have been made that accepting the Italian ultimatum might have spared the nation much material suffering. However, the cost would have been severe to the Greek people’s sense of national dignity. In 1940, they followed in the direction set by Metaxas, and established an example of national honor that inspired the world.

On July 5, 2015 the Greek people have again said “no.” As in 1940, despite the hard road mandated by their decision, the Greek people have placed national honor and dignity on a higher plane than the only other alternative on offer: an ultimatum based on collective indignity and national impoverishment .

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Negotiations between the Greek government  of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza ruling party on one side, and the IMF and Eurozone creditors of the massive public debt  afflicting Greece on the other side, have collapsed. A collision course is now being pursued between the two opposite sides, a game of fiscal chicken with no discernible good outcome for either side.

With the collapse of talks between Athens and her creditors and the announcement by Tsipras of a pending referendum by the Greek electorate on a bailout deal being offered by the Eurozone and IMF (which Tsipras recommends be rejected), the European Central Bank appears on the verge of ending its liquidity lifeline to Greek banks. If that happens, Greece may close its banks as early as Monday, and impose capital controls. The end result: a Greek exit from the Euro appears more likely, along with the inevitable disruptive ripples that will afflict not only the Eurozone, but the global economy as a whole.

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It is high noon in the Eurozone, as talks between Greece and her creditors have collapsed. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was elected on an platform of anti-austerity, and thus  has little room to maneuver. Greece’s creditors in the Eurozone and IMF have  their own limitations on compromising in the austerity required of Athens as the price for more credit to service its massive and unpayable sovereign debt.

We are now at a pint where the can may no longer be kicked down the road. With a debt payment coming due at the end of the month, and the credit required to meet that payment likely to be denied, Greece may very well default on its debt, and be on the way to leaving the Euro monetary union. The impact of such a development, both within the Eurozone and within the broader global economy, may be the pin that punctures the feeble recovery that has barely occurred since the onset of the global economic and financial crisis in 2008.

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Five years after the onset of the Greek sovereign debt crisis, Greece remains debilitated by economic and fiscal crises.  Out of desperation, the Greek voters elected the left-off-center Syriza Party to head a government that ran on a platform of repudiating the austerity measures imposed on Athens in exchange for loans and debt right-offs from the European Monetary Union members and IMF.

When the Greek debt crisis first arose, there was fear of contagion, leading to massive bailouts for Athens, largely funded by the German taxpayer. Those taxpayers are now fed up, and it would be politically inexpedient for Angela Merkel to go back to the same well to provide further assistance to Greece, especially when its government is openly engaged in anti-German rhetoric.

The Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, is basically offering a poison pill to his European partners; we don’t want o leave the Eurozone–but neither do we want to pay the fiscal price of remaining, so save us with more cash, or we’ll blow up the Eurozone. Problem is, more Europeans, especially decision makers in Germany, are becoming increasingly accepting of a Greek exit from the Euro, on the premise that it would not be as bad as Athens thinks for the remaining partners in the Eurozone.

The bottom line is we really do not know how the international markets or global economy will react to a Greek exit, but this is a scenario that is looking a lot more plausible than only one year ago.

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Just when everyone thought the Cypriote banking disaster could not get any worse-how can it get worse when the government is desperate enough to steal bank depositors’ money-it has suddenly become much worse. The President of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, is back on his hands and knees, begging the European Union for more help.

It turns out that the original estimate for the cost of bailing out Cyprus and its banks of 17.5 billion euros was way under the mark. In only a couple of weeks, the latest figure on the bailout requirement is now 23 billion euros, or about thirty billion U.S. dollars, a sum exceeding the entire GDP of Cyprus. Having already announced plans to seize a significant portion of bank deposits in excess of 100,000 euros, the desperate Cypriote government is frantically scrambling for resources to pay its share of the ever-growing cost of bailing out the insolvent banks of Cyprus, including selling off the nation’s gold reserves.

Let us recall that the root cause of the banking calamity on Cyprus was the decision by the Eurozone and IMF to force creditors holding Greek sovereign debt to take a haircut- a move that inflicted devastating losses on Cypriote banks. And with the unemployment rate in Greece now exceeding 27 percent, don’t expect the “prescription” emanating from Brussels to be any more benign for the already crippled economy of Cyprus.

In summation, the economic unraveling being imposed on Cyprus is a microcosm for the European monetary union’s disastrous continuity of policy prescriptions that are a train wreck of failures. In response to the Greek debt crisis, the technocrats and politicians in the Eurozone imposed austerity measures on Greece that sent that nation’s economy into a severe depression, while exporting a banking crisis to Cyprus. And now, in response to the banking calamity in Cyprus, the Eurozone policymakers are set to repeat the same formula on that embattled Island.

In the past two years in which the Eurozone has been afflicted with a profound economic and debt crisis, the monetary union’s policymakers have had nothing else to offer except for their own unique version of a circular firing squad, which continues to spread the contagion of economic contraction as a misbegotten cure for all that afflicts the Eurozone. Cyprus is only the latest victim of such ill-conceived  decision making in Brussels, and will certainly not be the last.

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For those who thought that the Eurozone debt crisis had
simply gone away, they received a rude reminder that this destructive fiscal
disaster is not only still with us, but that its contagion continues to metastasize.
The private banks in Cyprus were among many privately-owned financial institutions
in the Eurozone that lost heavily on their investments in Greek debt-both
public and private. Proportionate to the size of its assets and the GDP of
Cyprus, the banks in that Island nation
were especially exposed to the ravaging collateral affects of the Greek sovereign
debt crisis.

As with other Eurozone economies whose private banks faced
insolvency, the Eurozone rescue specialists in Brussels offered a bailout
package to save the banks, with strings attached. In the specific case of
Cyprus, the terms were especially onerous. The price of a rescue package by the
Eurozone for Cypriote banks was the requirement that the individual depositors in
those banks bear most of the cost of the bailout. All savers with deposits of up
o 100,000 euros would pay a levy of 6.75 percent of the amount they had deposited with the
financial institution-a deposit of over
100,000 euros would be required to sustain a staggering levy of 9.9 percent.

Was it hubris, or simply rank stupidity (or perhaps a
combination of both) that led the politicians in Brussels and Nicosia to
believe that the Cypriote public that was about to be legally robbed, after
being lied to by their own government with sublime assurances that their deposits
were safe, would simply take such an outrageous policy prescription lying down?
When the understandably angry people of Cyprus engaged in mass protests, the
spin that came out of both Brussels and Nicosia simply defied all logic. The political
decision-makers claimed that they thought since half of the depositors of Cypriote
banks are Russian citizens living offshore, they could never imagine the
remaining Cypriote citizens who were about to be fleeced to pay for bad investment
decisions they had nothing to do with would feel so upset.

Now that reality has intervened in the bizarre punitive
bailout scheme hatched by the politicians, there is frantic back-peddling in
Nicosia. When the bank levy came before the Cypriote parliament, not a single
legislator voted in favor of it, for to do so would clearly be political
suicide. The policymakers are now scrambling for a “plan B,” but meanwhile
the damage has been done. The legalized theft of depositors’ assets that politicians in the Eurozone attempted
to enact is a precedent. Despite assurances
from Brussels that this was a one-time scenario only designed for Cyprus, every
citizen residing in the Eurozone, and in other advanced economies afflicted by
the sovereign debt crisis, now knows that a desperate government can, at any
time, seize their life savings, and employ them to bail out private investors
and bond holders. Again we see robust application of the economic maxim of our
age:”privatize all profits, but socialize all losses -with a
vengeance.”

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Wall Street Kills-Official Trailer

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Streetgo in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

At their most recent meeting, the finance ministers representing the 17 countries that comprise the Eurozone, along with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and ECB (European Central Bank), have thus far failed to decide on releasing the next tranche of bailout funds to insolvent Greece. Without the bailout money being released, Athens is fiscally up the creek, without a paddle.

“Greece has done what it had to and what it had committed to doing. Our partners, along with the IMF, also must do what they have undertaken.” an increasingly desperate Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras pleaded.

The austerity measures enacted by Greece have imploded the economy, now entrapped in a frightful economic depression. The debris of the Greek economy has smashed social cohesion and political stability, witnessed by the sharp rise in popularity of the Fascist and neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, which has promised economic salvation through bashing the immigrants they claim are the cause of the economic woes in Greece.

It is looking increasingly likely that the repeated bailouts at the expense of Eurozone taxpayers, especially from Germany, of the insolvent Greek state will run their course sometime in 2013. The odds that Greece will default on its vast and unsustainable public debt, prompting it to leave or be expelled from the Eurozone, are growing.

As the U.S. political establishment confronts its own self-made fiscal cliff, it should view what is transpiring in Greece as an ill omen and not a situation to gloat over. It is only because of the sovereign debt crisis ravaging Europe’s economies that has enabled a reality whereby the U.S. government can borrow more than a trillion dollars a year, accounting for about thirty percent of all federal government expenditures, at record low interest rates. This situation cannot endure indefinitely. If American politicians fail to craft a sensible, sustainable, long-term fiscal consolidation, America will end up in the economic wasteland that is contemporary Greece. As we can all currently observe, such a draconian reality would present the U.S. with the choice of either  crippling austerity measures imposed by the nation’s creditors, or some form of debt default ( including the option that the Federal Reserve engineers massive inflation).

Greece is not only suffering appalling economic devastation. It is also presenting to the world a modern-day national Cassandra, with a prophetic warning that is especially relevant for American policymakers.

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

 To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Wall Street Kills-Official Trailer

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Street go in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

 

The last of several versions of the Eurozone bailout of Greece had a projection that Athens would have its debt to GDP ratio peak at 167 percent. The Greek authorities are now saying (surprise) that this initial estimate was far too rosy. The latest forecast on the Greek debt bubble? It is now projected to hit a peak of 192 percent in 2014.

As for the Eurozone’s previous forecast that the Greek sovereign debt to GDP ratio would decline to  a still high 120 percent in 2020, that is clearly untenable. The Greek crisis is beyond salvaging, and more bailouts merely spread  the contagion throughout the Eurozone, eventually sucking in the strongest economies in the monetary union. But let’s be clear; should Greece leave the Eurozone, as is being increasingly speculated on, such  a policy measure would have its own negativities. Had an orderly exit by Athens from the Eurozone been crafted earlier in the crisis, those repercussions could have been managed. Now the Eurozone politicos have created a situation in which all the remaining options are saturated with dire consequences.

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

 To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Wall Street Kills-Official Trailer

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Street go in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

 

More political maneuvering  on the Greek debt crisis, which threatens the integrity of the entire Eurozone. After receiving a second massive bailout from Eurozone taxpayers (especially German taxpayers), the Greek political establishment promised that it would adhere to all the austerity conditions, and meet the required timelines. Now, without a trace of embarrassment, politicos are ascending from Greece to towards the decision-makers in the Eurozone, begging for a two-year extension on the formerly sworn promises originally agreed to by Athens.

To be fair to Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, the austerity agreement imposed upon Athens is so crippling, it has plunged the Greek economy into a deep recession, hardly a recipe for the growth required to pay off the massive Greek debts.

These political games seem to point even more strongly towards an eventual exit by Greece form the Eurozone. Once Greece leaves the monetary union, who will be next?

WALL STREET KILLS--A CHILLING NOVEL ABOUT WALL STREET GREED GONE MAD

 To view the official trailer YouTube video for “Wall Street Kills,” click image below:

Wall Street Kills-Official Trailer

In a world dominated by high finance, how far would Wall Street go in search of profits? In Sheldon Filger’s terrifying novel about money, sex and murder, Wall Street has no limits. “Wall Street Kills” is the ultimate thriller about greed gone mad. Read “Wall Street Kills” and blow your mind.

 

There is the old story about the boy who cried wolf too often. Similarly, the Eurozone clique of inept politicians continues to parade out “final” Greek bailout deals. The most recent one is a virtual carbon copy of one submitted months ago. It seems to no longer matter. Even the ratings agencies, far more of a lagging than a leading indicator, now understand that all the talk in Brussels of a real solution  to the Greek debt crisis that also ring fences the other vulnerable Eurozone economies is just fantasy.

Proof this is the decision by Fitch in response to the latest Greek debt crisis plan. It cut its rating on Greek Sovereign debt further, from CCC to C, well inside the territory of junk bonds. Fitch added the following commentary: a default by Athens on its sovereign debt “is highly likely in the near term.”