The German Chancellor faces a crucial decision

By KYLE ANDREW BROWN

Chancellor Angela Merkel should reach an  honorable agreement with Greece says finance minister Yannis Varoufakis in a German weekend publication. 

§  §  §  

Introduction

Washington, June 21 – Just as the European Union is set to meet on Monday night on the Grexit bankruptcy, the Greek finance minister  Yannis Varoufakis  directly addresses the  German Chancellor Angela Merkel in an article published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung:

“In an honorable agreement to enter with a government that has the “bailouts” and rejected a negotiated solution aspires. Or follow the alarms from your governments, encouraging them to cast the only Greek Government overboard that is principled and can bring the Greek people to the path of reform. This decision, I very much fear, you must make.“

In this statement the Greek government of Alexis Tsipras is breaking the narrative of the past week. It was a demonizing  narrative by the European Union’s two top officials in Brussels: European Parliament President Martin Shultz of Germany. And European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker of  Luxembourg. 

§  §  §  

Brussels’ Political Objectives

Last weeks very public narrative by the European Union’s dual presidents has two political objectives.

First, to provide political cover to Chancellor Angela Merkel and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde by removing them from personal responsibility for a jettison of Greece from the European Union.

And second, to legitimize the separation of Greece from the European Union by characterizing Brussels as the victim a Greek government without legitimacy to govern a nation of filthy rich Greeks.

Everyone has always understood that the disastrous financial ledger sheets that successive Brussells administrations and Athens governments have laid upon today’s Tsipras government can never be repaid.

§  §  §  

How it works

The credit rating agencies want the German financial banking institutions to clear the unsecured Greek debt from their books.

Christine Lagarde and the IMF told the banks she will no longer continue to participate in the financial pyramid scheme that has operated between the banks, Brussells and Athens.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s responsibility has been to protect the German financial system that controls the European banking system’s integrity. 

The “negotiations” this past Spring were designed to ease the German – and by extension the European – financial markets’ reaction to a Greek debt write off.

The introduction of Grexit as a brand by the Germans signaled that the markets are prepared to absorb the Greek debt write off. A typical estimate was a 10 percent haircut to pension funds  in the UK.

Chump change.

§  §  §  

Demonizing 

There should be no mistaking that severing Athens from the euro is in fact – shall we use the recent Soviet metaphor here: – de- ascensioning Greece from the European Union.

The Germans might not actually march into Athens and take down the flag. But it’s basically just a tiny little country about the size of Ohio with lotsa olive orchards, sun seeking tourists and an economy that’s been plugged into the Brussels ATM for over a generation.

The demonizing of Alexis Tsipas, his government and the Greek people this past week by Schulz and Junker is deceptive cover to remove an appearance of Brussels’ association with the impending chaotic suffering of the common Greek people Brussels intends to jettison.

It is a de-ascension without consideration by the voters of the European states or the consideration of the European Parliament. It is a process that unmasks that it is a handful of technical bureaucrats and the German Chancellor who make decisions regarding the federal currency .

In this case, a decision by Junker, Schulz and Merkel alone to determine who shall and shall not be granted a franchise in the union.

Membership has it’s privileges as determined by the Germanic Trio.

The demonizing of Greece is a strategy to recast the Greece jettison as a choice Alexis Tsipras choose to happen:  

It is to falsely portray that Greece has decided not to repay billions and billions [what everyone already knew could never be repaid] so , therefore, it must be that Greece has decided to leave the European Union.

Wrong.

And it is not so much that Greece has decided not to pay back billions and billions that the current government did not contract for:

It is that the Greek government will not go along with Junker and Schulz’s demand that pensions not be paid – or cut, whatever – and that VAT be increased from what 30% – and that state industry be sold off to German buyers.

CORRECT.

§  §  §  

Placing Responsibility 

Finance Minister Yannis’ challenge to the German Chancellor is a political construction to put the responsibility for  the outcome of Grexit where Greece says it belongs: On Germany and the  German technocrats who run the European Commission.

Last week those officials attempted to dismiss the newly elected government’s legitimacy to govern by characterizing the Syriza party  as having deceived the Greek electorate with promises Alexis Tsipras “knew to be false.”

The core of that promise was that an elected Syriza government would break with the corrupt handling of past governments which  relied upon the European Union Commission and the IMF to continue to shovel in cash into Athens without transparency, accountability and a duty to build in Greece a viable economic infrastructure:

This is the inherent responsibility of the central government that controls the purse strings: Brussels.

The unsecured debt which has ended up smothering the Athens ledger account is owed to both the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel is fronting the recovery efforts for the European Commision. Managing Director Christine Lagarde is fronting the recovery efforts for the IMF. 

Merkel and Lagarde are in fact serving as political debt collectors for financial institutions which used the quasi-governmental organizations as collateral on unsecured debt that revolved around the financial pyramid scheme that enriched the bankers.

§  §  §  

Cast Adrift

For several months in the Spring the German Chancellor and Lagarde have played nice with Alexis Tsipras.

Now that the markets have factored in a  possible Greek bankruptcy Merkel and Lagarde have moved onto the next phase: ending the appearance of negotiating repayment and onto casting Greece off to join the hapless Mediterranean asylum seekers.  

The Germans have even given the default they mastermind it’s own  catchy  Grexit brand name. 

Now the German Chancellor has unleashed the men at the European Commission to plaster the media with their Grexit demonizing smear campaign.  

These two Brussels super weights Shultz and Juncker wield their immense power at the European Commission not because they are beholden to an electorate.

Rather because they are in place to protect Germany and German financial interests which oversee European currency assets.

It is for this reason Schulz and Junker are remarkably comfortable publicly addressing with hostility and personal affront the elected head of government of a member European Union state. And to characterize that elected government as illegitimate.

These guys are simply financial technocrats in service to Germany without accountability to  member country governments nor electoral constituencies.

Last week when Shulz and Juncker made their very public demonizations of Alexis Tsipras – his government and the Greek people –  they did so knowing it would be echoed throughout the European media in the 30 second sound bites of  hourly news bulletins. And splashed across the front pages of print and digital media.

However, in the extended period of negotiations during the Spring Shultz, Juncker, Merkel and Lagarde never once the many many times they formally met with Alexis Tsipras and his Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis questioned their legitimacy to govern Greece.

In fact, the large photo gallery of all their meetings is one filled with cordiality and approval.

Now that the German Chancellor has determined that the financial markets are set to comfortably absorb a Greece jettison, she is legitimizing the maneuver by having the European Commission and the Parliament Presidents make demons of Alexis Tsipras, his government and the Greek people.

§  §  §  

Syriza Street Smarts

From the start of the Syriza party’s electoral campaign and throughout the Tsipras government’s negotiations with its  creditors – Angela Merkel’s financiers and Christine Lagarde’s benefactors – the Greek prime minister and finance minister have published their analysis of the Greece’s relationship to the European Union.

Their presentations have an academic foundation because that is where their political genesis lies. Indeed, neither Tsipras nor his finance minister are the financial technocrats typical of those who command the machinery of Brussels. 

The Greek prime minister is equipped with the charismatic street smarts of a Greek generation that witnessed the spoiled fruit of successive Greek governments which colluded with the European Commission to play with  German bankers’ monoply money.

The Greek finance minister is an Oxford educated economist with a professorship at the University of Texas in Austin. Just as his credentials in macro economics informs his mastery of public finance – his residency in Britain and dual Australian citizenship informs his mastery Westminster government.

British parliamentary government is anchored in the elected member’s close connection to her constituency and the dynamic manner in which governments are formed in response to immediate political issues and tensions.

Technocrats are not parliamentarians.

Alexis Tsipras and Yannis Varoufakis are in fact by experience and training the best prepared officials to govern Greece since the German Occupation.

§  §  §  

Overplayed Hand

The German Chancellor in the past week has overplayed her hand on behalf of the financial interests which control the European Commission.

In setting her attack dogs on the Greeks Angela Merkel has unmasked the true nature of Brussels’ relationship to the member states of the European Union.

Those who control the European Union are neither accountable to national electoral constituencies nor capable of governing as the representatives of electoral constituencies of member states.

Brussels is just a bunch of  regulations and numbers crunchers.

This is what the elected government of Greece has been pointing out to the German Chancellor all along from the day it was elected.

This political statement of fact – that Brussels’ administrative relationship with Greece has been corrupt all along – has been brushed aside by Angela Merkel and her league of creditors in the niceties of negotiation. 

Junker and Schulz obliquely brush aside any articulation of the social underpinning of  the Greek position as the noise of inexperienced cronies of the little people of Athens.  

Yes, the German Chancellor has a decision to make at Monday afternoon’s Grexit Summit.

That’s when Brussels threatens to stomp it’s jackboots upon Greece – a  member of the European Union.

§  §  §  

Next: Brussels Tsipras-Markel summit maps Greece future