Yanis Varoufakis's Blog, page 99
July 26, 2018
On The Jolly Swagmen podcast, discussing economics, the economy, politics, Europe & Greece
Joe speaks with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, the man who defied Europe to save Greece – and failed. Yanis, the suave economics professor turned unexpected politician, has recently announced he will run for Prime Minister of Greece at the next national elections. He is the author of multiple books including And The Weak Suffer What They Must?, Adults in the Room, and Talking to My Daughter About the Economy.
Topics discussed
What three core economics concepts should a person know in order to be a minimum effective citizen? [4:30]
What percentage of citizens in a Western nation like US, Australia or Greece actually understand basic economics?[8:40]
Why government spending is not analogous to household spending. [9:14]
Game theory and the prisoner’s dilemma from the guy who wrote a textbook about them. [14:52]
Who were Yanis’ parents and how did they meet? [21:24]
Insiders vs. outsiders. [26:56]
The prevailing atmosphere in an insolvent post-2010 Greece. [32:50]
How does a country become insolvent? [43:04]
Why Greece needed debt restructuring. [45:02]
The cold logic behind why the Troika wished to impose more loans on Greece. [50:32]
What is Angela Merkel like as a leader and a person? [55:00]
The Greek Bankers threaten Yanis and his family, who move to the US. [57:45]
Staring down the Troika, as Finance Minister of Greece. [1:01:02]
Does game theory apply to the negotiations between Greece and the Troika? [1:09:39]
Whose idea was the Greek Bailout Referendum and why did it lead to Yanis’ resignation? [1:12:04]
Is Alexis Tsipras an insider or an outsider? [1:15:43]
What motivated Alexis Tsipras to accept the european programme? [1:17:10]
What general lessons did Yanis take from the Greek government-debt crisis? [1:18:09]
Is there such a thing as “too much” government debt? [1:20:08]
What is Yanis’ advice to the Australian Treasurer? [1:21:22]
DiEM, Yanis’ new democratic movement. [1:22:42]
Selected links
Follow Yanis Varoufakis: Website | Twitter
Game Theory: A Critical Introduction, by Sean Hargreaves-Heap and Yanis Varoufakis
Adults in the Room, by Yanis Varoufakis
Yanis’ other books: The Global Minotaur, And The Weak Suffer What They Must?, and Talking To My Daughter About The Economy
“I Am In Blood Stepp’d In So Far”, Macbeth quote
DiEM25
July 21, 2018
Free Gaza now!
No one can be free if one person is in chains, let alone a whole people. It is in the interests of all, Jews & Arabs, Europeans & Americans, Asians & Africans that the blockade of Gaza and the collective abuse of its people ends now!
July 20, 2018
L’autre Europe de Yanis Varoufakis: Radio France Culture
Yanis Varoufakis, ancien ministre des Finances grec, auteur de Et les faibles subissent ce qu’ils doivent ? : comment l’Europe de l’austérité menace la stabilité du monde, chez Actes Sud.
L’ancien ministre des finances grec Yanis Varoufakis lors de la manifestation internationale du 1er mai 2018 à Athènes. •Crédits : GIORGOS GEORGIOU / NURPHOTO – AFPCLICK HERE FOR THE PODCAST
Contre une Europe de l’austérité, quelle alternative ?
Il n’y a qu’un seul adversaire, c’est la crise, qui a fragmenté l’Europe et l’a poussé à perdre son âme. C’est semblable à l’enchaînement des années 1930 : crise provoque establishment, puis montée au pouvoir des extrêmes.” Yanis Varoufakis
Bête noire de Bruxelles pendant la crise grecque, économiste iconoclaste et engagé, Yanis Varoufakis est l’auteur de « conversation entre adultes », récit d’une tentative de sauvetage de la Grèce, et de « Et les faibles subissent ce qu’ils doivent ? », chez Actes Sud, à l’automne dernier, sur les causes profondes de la crise.
Il n’y a pas de reprise en Grèce. Nous avons perdus 25% de notre économie, 1M de Grecs sont partis, 1 famille sur 2 est au chômage intégral, et la seule cause de la croissance est l’enrichissement des plus riches.” Yanis Varoufakis
L’ancien ministre des finances du gouvernement Tsipras continue à faire entendre sa voix : dissidente ? Dissonante ? Indépendante ? au sein du concert européen, et tente aujourd’hui de rassembler à gauche en vue de prochaines échéances.
Les propositions de Macron pour démocratiser l’Europe sont bonnes, mais sa manière de négocier est la mauvaise. Il cède à l’Allemagne sans contrepartie, au lieu d’adopter une politique gaulliste plus ferme.” Yanis Varoufakis
Il présentera ce soir les grandes axes de son programme commun (Diem25, mouvement paneuropéen et transnational, fondé en mars cette année) et lancer son “Printemps Européen”, une liste transnationale à laquelle se rattacherait notamment le mouvement Génération de Benoît Hamon.
Je propose un New Deal pour l’Europe qui lancerait un vaste questionnement constitutionnel et démocratique pour que les Européens, enfin, choisissent l’Europe qu’ils veulent.” Yanis Varoufakis
BIBLIOGRAPHIE
Conversations entre adultes, dans les coulisses secrètes de l’EuropeYanis Varoufakis Les liens qui libèrent, 2017
Ushering in a new school of principled politics: a discussion between Yanis Varoufakis (DiEM25) & Aldo Cazzullo (Corriere Della Sera) – openDemocracy
“The reason we formed DiEM25 was the diagnosis that old wine in new bottles will not help revive the spirits of progressives in Italy or in the rest of Europe.”
Aldo Cazzullo, Corriere Della Sera (AC): Let us start from the beginning? Why did you decide to resign after OXI’s victory in the Greek referendum?
Yanis Varoufakis (YV): Because that very night, when I spoke to Prime Minister Tsipras, he declared his readiness to turn the NO, our people’s majestic 62% OXI vote, into a YES. Staying would have meant endorsing the overthrowing of a people by its… government.
AC: Did you know or did you expect that Tsipras would accept an even harder austerity plan than the one rejected by the Greek people?
YV: Of course. The troika were not interested in policies that worked for Greece or for Europe. Indeed, they were not even very interested in getting their money back – for if they did care about their money, they would have accepted the moderate proposals I put to them which would have generated more income, more taxes and, ultimately, more repayments to our creditors. No, they were only interested in one thing: Crushing the Greek Spring and humiliating Tsipras so as to signal to the peoples of Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and, ultimately, France that they will suffer if they dare vote for governments that do not obey Berlin and Frankfurt. Tsipras’ humiliation via brutal new austerity was the priority. Our priority ought to have been to honour that NO.
AC: What are your relations with Tsipras today? What are you predictions about the next Greek elections?
YV: My relation with Tsipras is non-existent for a simple reason: we have nothing to talk about! In order for him to continue to do what he does he needs to tell himelf a story that he knows I know that he knows to be… untrue!
As for the election results, it is too early to tell. Syriza and New Democracy are struggling to convince the people that each of them will be better at implementing measures that everyone knows will fail. This causes widespread despondency and apathy, boosting abstention and the de-legitimation of politics. Our new party, MeRA25, will do well, I hope, as long as the voters learn about us; as long as we manage to break down the complete media silence about us and the total exclusion of our representatives from TV and most radio stations. As we say, our only opponent is the… couch which keeps disappointed but politicised, progressive people from going to the polling stations on election day.
AC: What’s your political project today?
YV: Across Europe, it is to turn the May 2019 European Parliament elections into a transnational campaign against both the Deep Establishment’s business-as-usual and the nationalists’ false promises. To this effect, our Democracy in Europe Movement, DiEM25, has inaugurated, together with other political forces across Europe, including of course in Italy, a transnational progressive list, #EuropeanSpring, with which to succeed in putting forward a progressive, hopeful, ambitious, credible alternative.
As for Greece, my project is to help turn MeRA25, DiEM25’s new political party, into an instrument by which to end Greece’s Great Depression.
AC: The Other Europe with Tsipras list gathered 4% of votes during the last elections. How much would a Varoufakis list score?
YV: There will be no Varoufakis list! The time for ‘saviours’ and persona-led parties is well and truly over. I am happy to be one of the many co-founders of DiEM25 and of our #EuropeanSpring. And I am proud of being part of Europe’s first transnational political party aiming to save all our countries from the false dilemma between the troika or exit, between pro-Europe and anti-Europe, between an authoritarian establishment and an authoritarian anti-European nationalism.
AC: Who are your interlocutors and allies in Italy? What do you think about Liberi e Uguali the party of Mr D’Alema and Vendola?
YV: The reason we formed DiEM25 in the first place was the diagnosis that old wine in new bottles will not help revive the spirits of progressives in Italy or in the rest of Europe. The performance of parties like Liberi e Uguali in Italy, the social democrats and the Left in Germany, and other such parties elsewhere confirmed this.
So, our main interlocutors are our members, the activists of DiEM25 Italia who, recently, held twenty regional constituency meetings to construct a national political structure involving 10,000 citizens and, with this structure, to join in our transnational #EuropeanSpring movement. Rather than indulging the old school of politics, we refuse to enter into negotiations with politicians with a view to divide positions and share offices. Instead, we are concentrating on cultivating a new school of politics which concentrates on talking only about policy proposals and ideas of what must be done. In this context, we place a great deal of emphasis on local government, municipalist movements and solutions. It is in this context that we are working, for example, with Napoli Mayor Luigi de Magistris in constructing our transnational #EuropeanSpring.
Having established that Italy and the rest of Europe needs a new political movement along the lines of DiEM25, we have made the courageous decision to contest the national and, of course, the European Parliament elections in Italy. Our members are currently debating the final details and the manner in which we shall construct as broad a coalition as possible against both the incompetent establishment and the xenophobic nationalists. On June 13 we shall be announcing our decisions in Milano.
AC: Much has happened in Italy in the last few hours. Do you regret that a Lega-5S government was not born?
YV: I regret that President Mattarella had no problem with Salvini being Interior Minister given his promise to throw half a million migrants out of the country
I regret that not even for a moment did he consider vetoing the idea of a European country deploying its security forces to round up hundreds of thousands of people, cage them, and force them into trains, buses and ferries before sending them goodness knows where.
I regret that Matteo Renzi missed his opportunity to insist that Berlin accepts a policy re-think that would make our countries sustainable within the eurozone – thus putting Salvini and de Maio in the driving seat.
Finally, I regret that President Mattarella’s only concern was to block the appointment of a finance minister that voiced reasonable concerns about the euro’s architecture (concerns that all decent economists have, even ones supporting the euro vehemently) and who believed that Italy should have a plan for exiting the euro just in case it is needed (a plan that everyone has, including the ECB, the German government, every major bank etc.)
AC: Could the two populisms get together against the Brussels and Berlin elite?
YV: You are asking someone who sees populism as a clear and present threat to democracy and to prosperity for the many. There is a profound difference between being popular and being populist. Populists exploit fear and anger to garner power in order to use it against the majority. If Brussels and Berlin lose to populism, we all lose. This is why DiEM25 is so keen to create a democratic, Europeanist alternative to both (A) the authoritarian incompetence of Berlin-Brussels, and (B) to the xenophobic populists.
AC: Do you know Mr Salvini and if yes what do you think about him?
YV: No, I have never met him.
AC: You said that the 5 Star movement is not a left party. What are they then? Could they still be considered an anti-system movement?
YV: They began as an anti-system movement combining some ideas that would benefit the common people with increasingly xenophobic views. They are appealing to Italians who are being held back by corruption and by austerity – and who, wrongly, turn against the foreigners, the ‘others’. Having said that, I am convinced that 5S has risen high only because the Left has failed so spectacularly.
AC: Does it still make sense to distinguish between a political left and right? Or is the new division among the people and the elite, those on top and those at the bottom, or between globalist and nationalist or (sovereign-ist)?
YV: As long as we live under capitalism, the Left-Right divide will be pertinent and inescapable. As long as there is a distinction between those who work but do not own the company and those who own the company (or parts of it) without working in it, the tug of war between capital and labour, profit and wages will be central in determining social outcomes. And so will the Left-Right distinction. But, having said that, there are moments in history, like the 1930s and the post-2008 period, when the crisis of capitalism is so deep, and democracy so much under treat, that room is created for a minimum common program between anti-systemic liberals, Marxists, ecologists, even progressive conservatives. This is why we say that, while I and many of my DiEM25 colleagues are unapologetic left-wingers, DiEM25 is more than a left-wing movement. It is rather the meeting place of democrats eager to find an alternative both to the inane establishment and to the nationalists.
AC: President Mattarella has rejected Professor Savona as minister of finance because he is supposedly anti-German. But isn’t there a sort of German arrogance whereby Germans aim to dictate rules to other EU countries?
YV: The problem with the German elites is that they are refusing to be hegemonic and, thus, end up being authoritarian. The German political class continues to behave as if Germany is a small open economy whose net exports are only due to the skill and hard work of their engineers and whose surpluses are well earned. They deny the macroeconomic effects of their policies upon their partners and insist, puzzlingly, on celebrating their surpluses while admonishing others for having… deficits. In the end, German savers are forced by the laws of economics to entrust their savings to foreigners whom they end up despising for being indebted to them.
Free riding comes in two varieties: (1) Wanting to live off other people’s money. And, (2) Wanting to benefit from the low exchange rate that other people’s moneylessness causes. It is clear that no Union can survive in this manner. Unfortunately, there seems to be no likelihood of a change in Berlin now that the new social democratic finance minister has proven more austere and less imaginative than even Dr Wolfgang Schauble was.
AC: Introducing Professor Savona, the Bild wrote he is ‘the new Varoufakis’. Are they wrong?
YV: Of course. The profound difference is that I was desperate to keep Greece in the euro sustainably, which required that I clash with the troika whose policies (and refusal of the necessary debt restructuring within the euro) were making this impossible. In contrast, exiting the euro is the not-so-secret dream of the Lega (the party behind the choice of Mr Savona).
AC: You know the US very well. What do you think about Trump and his ideologist Bannon who visited Italy last March and who is supporting a national ( sovereign-ist) government?
YV: Mr Bannon is, undoubtedly, an ultra-dangerous belligerent who wants catastrophic regime change (Libya- and Iraq-style) in countries where, if he succeeds, developments will turn the world into an even more treacherous place than it already is, with many more millions of refugees flooding our shores. Mr Trump, on the other hand, is trying to control the diminution of American power through a process of economic shock-and-awe that stuns Germany and China into submission. The combination of his scandalous corporate tax cuts, the new tariffs, and his pulling out of the Iran deal are part of this overarching program. However, I have little doubt that, if he succeeds, the result will be a new global recession that, ultimately, undermines American interests as well.
AC: Has Angela Merkel reached end of her political career? Who’s next?
YV: Yes. Mrs Merkel is now an enfeebled Chancellor, totally at the mercy of those in her party who are already plotting her replacement. Of course, she is totally to blame, having squandered enormous political power since 2010 that she could have used to unite Europe, rather than divide it via the awful policy mix of universal austerity for the many and socialism for the bankers. Sadly, her successor, whomever it is, will make us feel nostalgic for Mrs Merkel – just like Mr Scholz managed to make me miss Dr Schauble!
AC: What about Renzi?
YV: He wasted his many opportunities to make a positive difference. I shall mention two: First, the opportunity to go to Brussels to demand, as the Prime Minister of the third largest eurozone country, that the EU considers changes to the eurozone rules that would make our countries sustainable within the euro area. He chose, instead, to demand Italy’s right to bend the existing rules – thus looking in German eyes like a spoilt child. Secondly, in June/July 2015 he had an opportunity to defend the then Greek government’s arguments in favour of an immediate debt restructure and a humane fiscal policy. Instead of helping Europe demonstrate that it could be a decent place for deficit countries like ours, he aided Merkel to throttle Tsipras and push him into capitulating. On the day of that capitulation, he celebrated that “they” had gotten “rid of Varoufakis”. The road toward his own downfall was thus paved.
AC: What do you think about the Italian left? the PD is divided among followers of Renzi willing to position the party on the political centre, and the post-communists pushing more to the left.
YV: Very little, sadly. Unfortunately, my friends on the Italian Left still believe that they can stitch together a coalition without a clear, European-wide agenda, forgetting that the whole they are constructing is even less than the sum of the parts. I wish this were not so, so that we could support them. But it is so and this is why DiEM25 has made the momentous decision to contest elections in Italy: because we need a progressive movement that ushers in a new school of principled politics.
AC: Is Corbyn a good model for revamping the European left?
YV: Jeremy Corbyn has already made a gigantic contribution to the quality of politics in Europe, and not just left-wing politics. He has shown that it is possible to activate politically millions of disenfranchised young people that the establishment traditionally dismisses as apolitical, Generation Y etc. And he has proven that a principled position can cut through the walls erected in our way by systemic media doing the job of an authoritarian oligarchy.
Having said that, we must not forget that the UK is quite different to our continental countries – which means that, while we must learn from Jeremy, we can’t just copy his techniques. We need our own strategy which, in the case of Europe, must be transnational – like the one DiEM25 has been putting together since February 2016.
AC: What do you think about Macron?
YV: I have spoken a great deal about the French President, praising his solidarity to me personally in 2015 and explaining that he understands that the present architecture of the eurozone is unsustainable. On the other hand, I also said that, ever since he rose to the Presidency, he has adopted legislation that is socially regressive (e.g. cutting taxes on the rich while diminishing the incomes of weaker citizens), awfully authoritarian (e.g. he made permanent security legislation that clashes with civil liberties) and self-defeating.
He also put forward proposals about eurozone reform which, while in the right direction, were too lukewarm. Worse still, he did not back them up with any credible threat to Berlin – which led Mrs Merkel and the German establishment to bury them. The result is that, given France’s inability to flourish in the present architecture of the eurozone, Mr Macron is a spent force. He looks and sounds good but his capacity to make a difference has been wasted and will, from now on, lose authority little by little.
AC: What about Podemos in Spain, and the current discussion about Pablo Iglesias’ new villa?
YV: Podemos blew fresh wind into the progressive side of politics when it managed to give voice to the Indignados. My concern is not the new villa that Pablo and his partner have purchased. Even though I understand the reactions against this purchase, the notion that those speaking for the dispossessed must be themselves dispossessed is not one that I can adopt. No, my concern is Podemos’ reluctance to articulate a coherent economic and social policy framework that answers to specific questions such as: “If elected, what will you do in the Eurogroup? What is your policy on non-performing bank loans and how will you implement it against resistance from the ECB?” Without such a policy framework, progressive movements like Podemos can never win elections. This is why at DiEM25 we are putting so much emphasis in presenting a rational, comprehensive policy agenda that answers all these burning questions.
AC: What do you think about the prospects for a Cottarelli government?
YV: First, let me say that this is not a personal matter. I know Carlo Cottarelli from his days at the IMF, I worked with him in 2015, and I hold him in some personal esteem. His problem is that, unlike Mario Monti, he cannot count on anything like a parliamentary majority. His will be a stopgap, caretaker government that will hold the ‘fort’ until a new election strengthens the ultra-right further, to the detriment of migrants, progressive Italians and our common goal to turn Europe into as realm of shared prosperity.
A shorter version of this interview first appeared in Italian in Corriere Della Sera, the Italian daily on May 31, 2018.
July 19, 2018
Reality & Nightmare: A brief assessment of the Eurozone’s ‘reforms’ – in Der Freitag, Issue 26, 2018
In 2010, the Greek debt crisis was dismissed as a Greek problem – which it undoubtedly was – to hide the fact that our bankruptcy was an ugly symptom of Eurozone design flaws, which is why Greece also caused a domino effect across the continent. The fact that the Greek state bankruptcy is still unresolved ten years after it occurred reflects the profound disagreements between the Franco-German axis on how the Eurozone should be reshaped. While three Presidents of the French Republic and one German Chancellor could not agree on the institutional changes that would make the Eurozone sustainable,
Macron’s election as French president created new hope. His proposals included: a common budget for the eurozone with a secure debt instrument and the possibility of quasi-federal tax collection. A common unemployment and mutual bank deposit insurance and a common fund to provide new funds to stunted banks, thus creating the basis of a true banking union. An investment fund that would mobilize untapped savings throughout Europe without continuing to burden the Member States with fiscal resources. At the same time, the French Government seemed in principle to accept the proposal that I had made as Greek Minister of Finance:
Berlin has been praising Macron for a year now, as it shoots one after another of its proposals from the sky. Since Merkel and Macron met in Meseberg last week, Macron’s agenda is all that remains to try to sanctify his humiliation. As for the “solution” of the Greek debt question, which is widely acclaimed in the media, the cruel reality allows one to disagree: the Greek government has been offered comfortable repayments until 2033 in exchange for an unlimited strict austerity policy and annual repayments from 2033 to 2060 in Amount of about 60 percent of state tax revenues.
Can we at least say that Germany benefits from Merkel’s stalling tactics? Not in the least. While gigantic surpluses are accumulated in German banks thanks to a huge trade surplus and capital flight from countries such as Italy, this flood of liquidity keeps interest rates at zero, thus destroying the old-age pension of the legendary Swabian housewife and thus causing them to turn their backs on Merkel and herself to turn to the AfD or Horst Seehofer.
At this stage, when Merkel denies the reality, Europe faces its worst nightmare: an external threat from a US president who is determined to divide Europe to dominate us. And with an internal threat in the form of the nationalist International, headed by Italy’s Vice-Premier Matteo Salvini: a 1930s politician who purposely sows the seeds of xenophobia to appeal to the lowest instincts of a majority of Italians. Salvini takes advantage of the fact that the average income of Italians has been falling steadily for two decades due to the construction flaws of the Eurozone and points to the EU’s failure to spread the burden of incoming migrants across Europe.
It is a sign of the collapse of a system when its authorities celebrate their dubious successes as the foundations collapse. The EU is falling apart as our beleaguered leaders congratulate themselves on their good work. That is why our Movement Democracy in Europe Movement, DiEM25, calls on all progressive Europeans to unite, regardless of nationality or party affiliation, with the nationalist International and the establishment.
Yanis Varoufakis is an economist, politician and co-founder of DiEM25
Translation: Holger Hutt
This article is part of the current issue of Der Freitag.
For the current table of contents, click here
If Trump wants to blow up the world order, who will stop him? op-ed in The Guardian
Mon 11 Jun 2018 16.23 BST
Donald Trump’s early departure, and his subsequent refusal to endorse the G7 communique, has thrown the mainstream press into an apoplexy reflecting a deeper incomprehension of our unfolding global reality.
In a bid to mix toughness with humour, Emmanuel Macron had quipped that the G7 might become the … G6. That’s absurd, not least because without the United States, capitalism as we know it (let alone the pitiful G7 gatherings) would disappear from the planet’s face.
There is, of course, little doubt that with Trump in the White House there is an awful lot we should be angst-ridden about. However, the establishment’s reaction to the president’s shenanigans, in the United States and in Europe, is perhaps an even greater worry for progressives, replete as it is with dangerous wishful thinking and copious miscalculation.
Some put their faith in the Mueller investigation, assuming that Mike Pence would be kinder to them as president. Others are holding their breath until 2020, refusing to consider the possibility of a second term. What they all fail to grasp is the very real tectonic shifts underpinning Trump’s uncouth antics.
The Trump administration is building up a substantial economic momentum domestically. First, he passed income and corporate tax cuts that the establishment Republicans could not have imagined even in their wildest dreams a few years ago. But this was not all. Behind the scenes, Trump astonished Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat’s leader in the House of Representatives, by approving every single social program that she asked of him. As a result, the federal government is running the largest budget deficit in America’s history when the rate of unemployment is less than 4%.
Whatever one thinks of this president, he is giving money away not only to the richest, who of course get the most, but also to many poor people. With demonstrably strong employment, especially among African American workers, inflation under control and the stock market still buoyant, Donald Trump has his home front covered as he travels to foreign lands to confront friends and foes.
The US anti-Trump establishment prays that markets will punish his profligacy. This is precisely what would have happened if America were any other country. With a fiscal deficit expected to reach $804bn 2018 and $981bn in 2019, and with the government expected to borrow $2.34tn in the next 18 months, the exchange rate would be crashing and interest rates would be going through the roof. Except that the US is not any other country.
As its central bank, the Fed, winds down its quantitative easing program by selling off its stock of accumulated assets to the private sector, investors need dollars to buy them. This causes the number of dollars available to investors to shrink by up to $50bn a month. Add to this the dollars German and Chinese capitalists need to buy US government bonds (in a bid to park their profits somewhere safe) and you begin to see why Trump believes he will not be punished by a run either on the dollar or on government bonds.
Armed with the exorbitant privilege that owning the dollar presses affords him, Trump then takes a look at the trade flows with the rest of the G7 and comes to an inescapable conclusion: he cannot possibly lose a trade war against countries that have such high surpluses with the US (eg Germany, Italy, China), or which (like Canada) will catch pneumonia the moment the American economy catches the common cold.
None of this is new. Richard Nixon also confronted Europe’s establishment in 1971 while Ronald Reagan brutally squeezed the Japanese in 1985. Even the language was not less uncivilised – recall the summary of the Nixon administration’s attitude in the inimitable words of John Connally: “My philosophy is that all foreigners are out to screw us, and it’s our job to screw them first.” Today’s US aggression toward its allies is distinguished from those episodes in two ways.
First, since the 2008 collapse of Wall Street, and despite the subsequent re-floating of the financial sector, Wall Street and the US domestic economy can no longer do what they were doing before 2008: that is, absorb the net exports of European and Asian factories through a trade surplus financed by an equivalent influx of US-bound foreign profits. This failure is the underlying cause of the current global economic and political instability.
Second, unlike in the 1970s, Europe’s decade of mishandling the euro crisis has seen to it that the Franco-German establishment is now disunited and on the run – with xenophobic, anti-European nationalists taking over governments.
Trump takes one look at all this and concludes that, if the US can no longer stabilise global capitalism, he might as well blow up existing multilateral conventions and build from scratch a new global order resembling a wheel, with America its hub and all other powers its spokes – an arrangement of bilateral deals that ensures the US will always be the largest partner in each, and thus be able to exact a pound of flesh through divide and rule tactics.
Can the EU create a “Europe First” anti-Trump alliance, perhaps involving China? The answer has been given already, following Trump’s annulment of the Iran nuclear deal. Within minutes of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statement that European companies would stay in Iran, every single German corporation announced it was pulling out, prioritising the fat tax cuts Trump was offering them within the United States.
In conclusion, we have good reason to be appalled by Trump: he is winning against a European establishment that wallows in perfect ignorance of the forces undermining it and paving the ground for appalling developments. The onus falls on progressives in continental Europe, in the UK, and in the United States, to put on the agenda an Internationalist New Deal – and to win elections campaigning on it.
In my rare optimistic moments, I imagine an alliance of Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn and our Democracy in Europe Movement, DiEM25, giving the Nationalist International led by Trump a run for its money. A few years ago, a Trump triumph in the US, Europe and beyond sounded even more farfetched than this. It is worth a try.
A letter to my daughter about the black magic of banking…
This is not a new contradiction. It reflects the problematic relationship the powerful have always had with the state. While they fear the state will intervene to curb their self-enrichment, they also sorely need it. The inequality that market societies generate—gigantic concentrations of wealth alongside widespread deprivation and poverty—makes them jittery. What other than a mighty state can protect them when the grapes of wrath have grown too heavy for the vines and the desperate masses congregate threateningly outside their fenced villas? But, then again, if the state has sufficient power to keep the riff-raff at bay, it will also have enough power to confiscate their property and throw them into the street if the government were to fall into the hands of those thronging crowds.
One of the most prevalent arguments they make against the state is that wealth is produced individually, by heroic individuals. Taxation is therefore seen as an unjustifiable confiscation of what is rightfully theirs. Nothing could be further from the truth. To see this, let’s go back to the beginning of market societies for a moment—to the time when the serfs were being kicked off their ancestral lands.
How do you think the landowners managed to get rid of the serfs so efficiently? The answer is: with the help of the state. The king and his government lent the landowners a hand, sending their soldiers in to put down any rebellion by the peasants. And how do you think the new order, underpinning market society, was maintained? How were the majority living under conditions of abject dehumanization in the slums of Manchester, Birmingham, and London kept under control when a few streets away the minority lived in the lap of luxury? To put it simply, private wealth was built and then maintained on the back of state-sponsored violence.
State-sponsored violence isn’t the only thing governments have provided for the powerful since then. Whenever the state has used its revenues to pay for roads, tunnels, and bridges by which goods can be transported, to maintain the hospitals and schools that deliver workers’ health and education, to support the downtrodden and unemployed, to police the towns and cities, or to organize in any way the peaceful and stable functioning of society—whenever it has done any of these things (and many more besides), the state has provided the conditions in which individuals, especially the most powerful ones, have been able to pursue their path to wealth. Seen from this angle, the state has always provided the rich with a magnificent insurance policy. And the rich have returned the favor by doing all they can to avoid paying their premiums.
In fact, it is not just the state that provides the conditions for wealth creation. If you think about it, all wealth has always been produced collectively—through recycling and through a gradual accumulation of knowledge. Workers need entrepreneurs to hire them, who need workers to buy their goods. Entrepreneurs need bankers to lend to them, who need entrepreneurs to pay interest. Bankers need governments to protect them, who need bankers to fuel the economy. Inventors cannibalize the inventions of others and plagiarize the ideas of scientists. The economy relies on everyone.
Public debt: the ghost in the machine
While consistently demanding that the state continue to provide the conditions in which their wealth can grow, every time the high and mighty have received the bill for the state’s services from the tax office, they have grunted, moaned, whinged, and protested. And since the powerful have great in influence over the state, this has led to a curious phenomenon: the taxes asked of them have always tended to be low in relation to the amount the state has actually spent, directly or indirectly, on their behalf. As for the workers, their wages have for most of history barely been sufficient to feed themselves and their children, so their taxes have never amounted to a sufficient sum either. So where has the additional money come from? The answer is: public debt. And who has provided the government with the requisite loans? The bankers, of course! And where have the bankers found the money? I hardly need tell you that they have conjured it from thin air. You can start to see how paying low taxes works doubly in the bankers’ favor.
Yet, watching television, listening to politicians worry themselves sick over the size of the national debt and making all sorts of promises to rein it in, you might be fooled into thinking that government debt—or public debt, as it is known—is an awful thing, something like the smallpox virus, in need of permanent eradication. The argument made by those who consider the state an obstacle to private business is that a government that spends beyond its means and can’t balance its books is heading for disaster. Don’t fall for that nonsense. While it is true that too much public debt can cause major headaches, too little is also a problem. Even Singapore, whose government is forced by law not to spend more than the money it receives in taxes, finds it essential to borrow money. Why? Because a market society’s bankers need public debt as surely as fish need water to swim in. Without public debt, market societies can’t work.
When the government borrows, say, $100 million from a banker for, say, a ten-year period, in return it provides the banker with a piece of paper, an IOU, by which it legally guarantees to repay the money in ten years’ time as well as pay an additional yearly amount to the banker in interest—say, $5 million a year. This IOU is called a bond, implying that the government is now bound for ten years to whoever possesses this piece of paper. Given that the rich refuse to cough up the kind of taxes that would make government borrowing unnecessary, the state issues bonds and “sells” them to banks and rich people in order to pay for the things that keep the whole show on the road: streets, hospitals, schools, police, and so on. By spending this money on its various projects—buying supplies, paying salaries—the government directly boosts the whole recycling process of the economy from which everyone benefits, including the banks.
But this is far from being the only reason that government bonds are useful to bankers. The one thing that bankers hate most is cash: money sitting around in their vaults or on their spreadsheet not being lent in return for interest. But as has hopefully become clear by now, banks become precarious and vulnerable if even a few depositors want their money back all at once. At that point bankers need to have access to something that they can sell in a jiffy so as to pay demanding depositors. Government bonds are perfect for this. To the extent that everyone trusts that the government will be true to its word, its bonds will always be in demand. Indeed, they are exceptional in this way—no other debt can be recycled quite as easily. This means that bankers love government bonds: not only is a bond a loan that earns a nice rate of interest very safely (so much so, in fact, that it can also be used as collateral for taking out further loans from other banks), but it can also be used as a commodity—a piece of property exactly like a painting or a vintage car that can be sold immediately if the banker is in urgent need of cash. Bonds are, in bankers’ parlance, “the most liquid of assets.” As such, they lubricate the banking system to keep its cogs and wheels turning.
In fact, in bad times, when bankers pick up the phone to the government and demand that the state’s central bank bail them out, it does so not just by creating new money, as we have already seen, but also by issuing even more bonds and using them to borrow more money from other bankers, often foreign ones, to pass on to the local bankers.
You can begin to see why public debt is something much, much more than ordinary debt. It is a manifestation of our market society’s power relations, the necessary response to the refusal of the rich to pay their share. It is also a shock absorber that allows accident-prone bankers to avoid many of the major mishaps that would otherwise occur in its absence. It is like an elastic band holding everything together, capable of stretching during the bad times to prevent the system from breaking.
Since the first human looked up at the night sky and wondered why she felt overwhelmed by its immensity, we have felt certain that there is something deep inside us, something indeterminate that gives us our capacity for wonder, dread, hope. Philosophers and writers have referred to that something as the ghost in the machine, the intangible power that makes us who we are. Allow me to suggest that when you hear politicians, economists, and commentators talk about public debt as if it is a curse, you remind yourself that it is a lot more than that. It is the ghost in the machinery of market societies that makes them function, however well or badly they do. And when the powerful or their spokespeople demonize the state, scoffing at the government and at public debt, remember that they need the state as badly as they need their kidneys and livers…
__________________________________
From Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, by Yanis Varoufakis, courtesy Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright 2018 by Yanis Varoufakis.
July 17, 2018
AUSTERITY (in 144 pages)- A Vintage mini
Read more here
Why Germany neither can nor should pay more to save the eurozone – IFO Munich Seminar, 11 June 2018
“I wanted a Germany that was hegemonic and efficient, not authoritarian and caught up in a European Ponzi scheme. That was in 2013.” Excerpt from the Munich Seminar.
This CESifo group Munich seminar took place on June 11, 2018 in Ludwig-Maximilian University, in Munich, in the Grosse Aula of the Ludwig-Maximilian University. The euro crisis has highlighted the urgent need for reform in the Eurozone. However, approaches to a solution can be divided into two camps. The disagreement, primarily between France and Germany, is reflected very clearly in their different attitudes towards fiscal union. While the French strongly support a fiscal union, which necessarily implies fiscal transfers by Germany and other donor countries, Germany absolutely rejects a fiscal union and favours a post-crisis write-off of bad loans instead. In his speech Yanis Varoufakis argues that both visions are flawed and potentially dangerous, going on to differentiate between the solution to the Eurozone’s structural problems and the zeal and ambitions of its political class.
Partial transcript of the speech below:
In these trying times for Europe, our common home, opportunities like tonight’s to discuss honestly and frankly Europe’s crisis are priceless.
When the title of my talk was announced, many of my critics were puzzled. Having portrayed me as a Greek politician who, back in 2015, came to Germany cap-in-hand demanding more money, they had difficulty explaining why I would be standing in front of you to argue that Germany neither can nor should pay more to save the eurozone.
The puzzle of course disappears after a close look at what I was saying since 2010. Let me give you an example. On July 24, 2013 I published an article in Handelsblatt entitled ‘Europe needs a hegemonic Germany’. In that article I had, again, surprised many by arguing in favour of a strong Germany as the best way of leading Europe out of its difficulties. My criticism of the German government, and its attitudes towards the eurozone more broadly and Greece more specifically, was not that Berlin was not paying enough but that, in a sense, it was paying too much – except that it was wasting the German people’s money in perpetuating what I termed a gigantic exercise in fraudulent bankruptcy concealment.Germany was paying too much… in perpetuating a gigantic exercise at fraudulent bankruptcy concealment.
I added that Europe needs a robust Germany, an energised Germany, to lead the way, to use its money wisely – in other words to be genuinely hegemonic, as opposed to spending too many resources on concealing impossible bankruptcies. Indeed, back then, in 2013, I had warned that continuing to insist on hiding serial bankruptcies would cost all of us more and more and would require increasing degrees of authoritarianism to perpetuate and reproduce the policies of denial.
In short, I wanted a Germany that was hegemonic and efficient, not authoritarian and caught up in a European Ponzi scheme. That was in 2013. Two years later, in March 2015, I wrote an article, while Greece’s finance minister, referring to the first and second bailout loans, of 2010 and 2012. Allow me to quote from it:
“The fact is that Greece had no right to borrow from German – or any other European – taxpayers at a time when its public debt was unsustainable. Before Greece took on any loans, it should have initiated debt restructuring and undergone a partial default on debt owed to its private-sector creditors.
But this “radical” argument was largely ignored at the time. Similarly, European citizens should have demanded that their governments refuse even to consider transferring private losses to them. But they failed to do so, and the transfer was effected soon after. The result was the largest taxpayer-backed loan in history, provided on the condition that Greece pursue such strict austerity that its citizens have lost one-quarter of their incomes, making it impossible to repay private or public debts.
The ensueing – and ongoing – humanitarian crisis has been tragic… Animosity among Europeans is at an all-time high, with Greeks and Germans, in particular, having descended to the point of moral grandstanding, mutual finger-pointing, and open antagonism. This toxic blame game benefits only Europe’s enemies.”
A personal note here, if you permit it: For me, nothing hurt more than my unfair portrayal as an anti-Europeanist Greek politician demanding more money from Germany, or arguing that Germany must pay more for Greece and for Europe. In fact the reason I resigned the ministry is simple: I was refusing to sign the third bailout, to take more of your money, because I was convinced that, when you are bankrupt you have no right to borrow more. What should we have done? Declare bankruptcy, suffer the pain together with the lenders that should not have lent to the previous governments, reform the country and move on. What happened instead?
Italy and Greece
A few weeks after my resignation, Mrs Merkel, Mr Tsipras and others agreed on another 85 billion euros loan to the Greek state. On that day I rose in Greece’s Parliament to denounce this as another extend-and-pretend loan – another mountain of money given to the bankrupt Greek state in order to pretend for a few more years that it is repaying its debts – and granted under conditions that guarantee that the Greek economy and our society would continue to shrink, that the debt would not be repaid, and that Europe would move on to repeat the same mistakes in Italy – a country whose public debts and banking losses are just too large for Germany and other countries to sustain via Greek-like bailout loans.
That is what I said in the summer of 2015. Today, I painfully observe the realisation of those fears. Italy has fallen to the forces of xenophobia and Europhobia that welcome the European Union’s breakup. How did that happen? It happened because the failed policies first tried on Greece were also implemented in Italy.
Just like Greece, Italy had been ruled for decades by a corrupt oligarchy enriching itself from EU transfers and relying on a kind of ‘establishment-populism ’ that traded on the impossible promise that everyone would become better off as long everyone pretended to adhere to the EU, Maastricht & Fiscal Compact rules – rules that could not be adhered to even if the government wanted to.
When this promise was proven false, and the doom loop of bankrupt state and zombie banks caused per capita income to shrink and prospects for most Italians to wither, the electorate voted for a new government representing two opposing anti-establishment populisms (that of the xenophobic Lega and of the Five Star movement). The crucial difference, ladies and gentlemen, between this Italian government and the Greek one I served in is that we were committed Europeanists – we did not want to leave the euro even though we had, realistically, to consider a Grexit – especially when constantly threatened with it by the creditors. The main movers behind the new Italian government, however dream of being threatened with Italexit, a fact that guarantees a clash of gigantic enormity with Berlin, Brussels and Frankfurt.
A badly designed monetary union
These developments, ladies and gentlemen, are not the result of bad choices, of human frailty. They are the result of a badly designed monetary union. Germany is simply not rich enough to support this faulty architecture. The EU cannot, backed by Germany, extend and pretend Italy’s 2.6 trillion debt, as well as the losses of their zombie banks. At the very same time, Italy will continue to stagnate within this faulty architecture until some political event will cause its uncontrolled, very costly breakdown. It is the fate of an unsustainable system not to be sustained. The longer it is sustained by political stealth and authoritarianism, the more catastrophic its collapse will be, when it comes.
What should we do?
So, what should we do? What should Germany do? Some argue that we need the German treasury, and the treasuries of other surplus countries, to support the treasuries of the deficit countries. This is both infeasible and undesirable. Infeasible because the fiscal surpluses of the Germanies are dwarfed by the banking losses and debts of the Greeces and the Italies. Then there are those who propose the liquidationist approach – let public debt default if it must. While I sympathise with the logic, and I wish we had followed that approach with Greece’s public debt, liquidationism is inconsistent with the euro architecture: following such government bond automatic restructuring, our weak banks that rely on these bonds for collateral and repo operations will go under, demanding of the weakened states to refinance them – which defeats the purpose of liquidating part of their debt.
Back to square one then: What should we do? I shall be arguing that:
The current rules cannot be applied, even if we were all desperate to apply them
Those who seek a fiscal union with the German federal government footing the bill of other governments are wrong: the German government cannot afford to finance the eurozone’s necessary reforms and, indeed, it should not have to
Those who propose the liquidationist route – e.g. that the ESM extends loans to states at the price of restructuring of their debt – are also wrong, because they do not take into consideration the doom loop binding together the insolvency of our states with the insolvency of our banks (e.g. Italy’s)
Proposing a new Treaty as a solution to the eurozone’s immediate problems only deepens the sense of pessimism in the heart of those who, correctly, estimate that the current political climate makes New Treaties impossible
In this eventuality, there are two courses of action that we must consider: One is the controlled dismantling of the current eurozone. The other is a simulation of a federation using existing institutions and new policies based on a re-interpretation of the letter of the charters and treaties.
So, let me begin by explaining why the current rules cannot work within our asymmetrical monetary union (MU). Sure, the Maastricht rules and the ECB charter could have worked fine in a symmetrical MU, as long as governments wanted/were forced to stick to the rules: a symmetrical MU is one in which countries differ on productivity and endowments but every market in every country comprises exclusively pricetaking firms, customers and workers (in other words, no one has the capacity to influence prices). In such a symmetrical, perfectively competitive union trade surpluses and deficits, as well as different productivity growth paths, are auto-corrected through a process of devaluation in the country whose productivity growth lags behind and of internal revaluation in the ‘stronger’ country. Whether this devaluation is external or internal makes no difference. Whether we have the euro or separate currencies does not matter, except perhaps that under the euro we would have enjoyed lower transaction costs.
However, things are very different in an asymmetrical MU. In a positively asymmetrical MU like our eurozone, financial markets are bound to destabilise our economy and cause a crisis that makes impossible the implementation of our rules.
What exactly is an asymmetrical MU? It is a monetary union between:
1. National economies that comprise large oligopolistic manufacturing sectors, replete with economies of scale (as well as of economies of networks and of scope), with production units operating at excess capacity (that reflects their market power and their capacity to deter competitors), and concentrating much economic activity on the production of capital goods; and
2. National economies where the capital goods sector is atrophic, where production is much less capital intensive, and where economic rents are not due to economies of scale but due to corrupt practices and socio-political impediments to competition (e.g. restrictive practices, crony relations between authorities and particular business interests).
When one nation, or region, is more industrialised than another; when it produces most of the high value added tradable goods while the other concentrates on low yield, low value-added non-tradables; the asymmetry is entrenched. Think not just Greece in relation to Germany. Think also East Germany in relation to West Germany, Missouri in relation to neighbouring Texas, North England in relation to the Greater London area – all cases of trade imbalances with impressive staying power.
A freely moving exchange rate, as that between Japan and Brazil, helps keep the imbalances in check, at the expense of volatility. But when we fix the exchange rate or, even more ambitiously, introduce a common currency, something else happens: banks begin to magnify the surpluses and the deficits.
They inflate the imbalances and make them more dangerous. Automatically. Without asking voters or Parliaments. Without even the government of the land taking notice. It is what I refer to as toxic debt and surplus recycling. By the banks.
It is easy to see how this happens: A German trade surplus over Greece generates a transfer of euros from Greece to Germany. By definition! This is precisely what was happening during the good ol’ times – before the crisis. Euros earned by German companies in Greece, and elsewhere in the Periphery, amassed in the Frankfurt banks. This money increased Germany’s money supply lowering the price of money. And what is the price of money? The interest rate! This is why interest rates in Germany were so low relative to other Eurozone member-states. Suddenly, the Northern banks had a reason to lend their reserves back to the Greeks, to the Irish, to the Spanish – to nations where the interest rate was considerably higher as capital is always scarcer in a monetary union’s deficit regions.
And so it was that a tsunami of debt flowed from Frankfurt, from the Netherlands, from Paris – to Athens, to Dublin, to Madrid, unconcerned by the prospect of a drachma or lira devaluation, as we all share the euro, and lured by the fantasy of riskless risk; a fantasy that had been sown in Wall Street where financialisation reared its ugly head.
Crucially, the private capital inflows from a country like Germany to a country like Greece, alter the structure of B’s economy. A large, inefficient service sector develops in the Greece’s while periphery’s manufacturing wanes under the inexorable pressure of the surplus countries exports. While manufacturing wages collapse in absolute and per worker terms, the portion of the wage bill that comes from this parasitic, import-and-debt financed sector rises. And so does the corrupt oligarchy in the Periphery, house prices and a false sense of wealth. To sum this up in a vulgar but accurate manner, this is similar to buying a car from a dealer who also provides you with a loan so that you can afford the car. Vendor-finance, is the term used. Only in Europe we practised it at a macroeconomic level.This is similar to buying a car from a dealer who also provides you with a loan so that you can afford the car.
Irresponsible borrowers and irresponsible lenders
I think you can see the problem? To maintain a nation’s trade surpluses within a monetary union the banking system must pile up increasing debts upon the deficit nations. Yes, the Greek state was an irresponsible borrower. But, ladies and gentlemen, for every irresponsible borrower there corresponds an irresponsible lender. Take Ireland or Spain. Their governments, unlike Greek ones, were not irresponsible. But then the Irish and the Spanish private sectors ended up taking up the extra debt that their government did not. Total debt in the Periphery was the reflection of the surpluses of the Northern, surplus nations.
This is why there is no profit to be had from thinking about debt or surplus in moral terms. And this is why my message to my German friends is simple: before the crash, we Greeks invested our loans and transfers unwisely. But you invested your savings, your surpluses, unwisely.
Let’s take a dispassionate look at Germany’s current account: it is large, persistent, and extraordinary in international and historical comparison for a large country that is not focused on exporting raw materials. This means that your savings are increasingly entrusted to the hands of foreigners who do not have the capacity to look after them. Germany’s net international investment position is over 50% of GDP, after discounting past investments that have lost about 15% of GDP worth in the crisis. Moreover, the German surpluses are mostly due to the non-financial corporate sector, followed by government, with only a modest contribution by households and financial corporations having actually turned to a net borrowing position. So, it is not the demographics that drive the CA surplus in this country. It is the euro’s architecture.
When σ>0 everywhere, and we push τ to zero, we are forced to a large trade surplus – which pushes the euro up and strengthens… Trump.
Will σ not equilibrate in the periphery if wages and prices fall? Will internal devaluation – austerity not do the trick? No, because private and public debts and losses do not devalue – and investment is deterred by this loop of doom, by this recycling of state and private bankruptcies. Even in countries like Spain and Ireland, the growth we have been celebrating recently is due to another unsustainable rise of private debt.
And this is where the rules become impossible and the EU’s attempt to pretend that they still hold ridiculous.
An example of Europe’s Ponzi schemes by which to pretend that the rules were adhered to:
In the rest of the lecture (last 20 minutes), Varoufakis argues that, instead of the wrong question (“How can we pretend that the rules still hold?’) we must ask the right questionL: ‘ What must we do to stop this crisis from destroying us?’ – see the video above. Finally, Varoufakis outlines two stark options: (a) The controlled dismantling of the current Eurozone, or (B) a simulation of a federation. ( Video 58 minutes in all).
For the subsequent Q & A ( 23 minutes), see below:
Η Ελλάδα στον κόσμο του κ. Τραμπ – ΕφΣυν 14 Ιουλίου 2018
Ας δούμε επιγραμματικά τις τρεις πτυχές του προβλήματος που το Μνημονιακό Τόξο του Νυν Υπέρ Πάντων το Ευρώ (Ν.Δ.-ΚΙΝ.ΑΛΛ.-ΠΟΤΑΜΙ-ΣΥΡΙΖΑ) αρνείται να δει:
Σε λίγους μήνες συμπληρώνεται δεκαετία από το κραχ του 2008 –μια δεκαετία κατά την οποία η Ε.Ε. πασχίζει να «κουκουλώσει» την κρίση της ευρωζώνης (αντί να την επιλύσει). Το αποτέλεσμα είναι η απαξίωση της Ε.Ε. στα μάτια της πλειονότητας των χειμαζόμενων Ευρωπαίων πολιτών, κάτι που φουντώνει την εκλογική δύναμη της Εθνικιστικής Διεθνούς (τόσο στα νέα ακροδεξιά κόμματα όσο και εντός παραδοσιακών συντηρητικών, αλλά και αριστερών, κομμάτων)
Τον επόμενο μήνα συμπληρώνεται τριετία από τότε που οι αυξημένες μεταναστευτικές ροές δημιούργησαν μεταναστευτική «κρίση» που ούτε καν να την «κουκουλώσει» δεν μπόρεσε η Ε.Ε. –μια «κρίση» που δεν θα την είχαμε βέβαια προσέξει αν υπήρχε Ευρωπαϊκή… Ενωση (δεδομένου ότι κάθε χώρα έδρασε ως τσαμπατζής που απαιτεί να λύσουν το πρόβλημα «άλλοι»).
Σήμερα, με την ευρωπαϊκή ήπειρο θύμα αυτών των φυγόκεντρων μακρο-οικονομικών δυνάμεων, κατακερματισμένη πολιτικά και καταρρακωμένη ηθικά, οι κινήσεις τεκτονικών γεωπολιτικών πλακών που ενορχηστρώνει ο πρόεδρος Τραμπ στενεύουν απελπιστικά τα περιθώρια επιβίωσης της Ε.Ε.
Ο σκοπός του κ. Τραμπ
Ο Αμερικανός πρόεδρος ενδιαφέρεται για ένα πράγμα μόνο: πώς θα καθυστερήσει τη συρρίκνωση της ηγεμονίας των ΗΠΑ σ’ έναν κόσμο ο οποίος θέλει να αγοράσει όλο και μικρότερο ποσοστό αγαθών Made in USA.
Ο κ. Τραμπ βλέπει τα οικονομικά θαύματα της Ιαπωνίας, την Κίνας και βεβαίως της Ε.Ε. ως κατασκευάσματα των ΗΠΑ καθώς:
■ χωρίς την άμεση βοήθεια και συστηματική διαχείριση της ευρωπαϊκής πολιτικής σκηνής, από το 1945 έως το 2008, η Ε.Ε. δεν θα υπήρχε καν,
■ χωρίς το άνοιγμα των αμερικανικών αγορών στη δεκαετία του 1950, η Ιαπωνία θα ήταν σήμερα φτωχότερη της Ταϊλάνδης,
■ χωρίς το εμπορικό έλλειμμα των ΗΠΑ τής μετά το 1990 περιόδου, η Κίνα δεν θα είχε ποτέ αναπτυχθεί.
«Εμείς σας δημιουργήσαμε -μας χρωστάτε ό,τι έχετε δημιουργήσει από το 1945 μέχρι σήμερα. Αλλά αντί να δείχνετε ευγνωμοσύνη, όχι μόνο δεν πληρώνετε καν για την άμυνά σας (*), αλλά απαιτείτε να εξάγετε σε εμάς τη δική σας κρίση μέσω όλο και μεγαλύτερων εμπορικών πλεονασμάτων (**) προς εμάς. Αυτά που ξέρατε ώς τώρα, τέλος!»
Κάπως έτσι σκέφτεται, και ομιλεί, ο πρόεδρος Τραμπ κάθε φορά που συναντά την κ. Μέρκελ και τους λοιπούς ηγέτες του G20. Βέβαια ο απώτερος στόχος του είναι η κατάργηση της συν-ηγεμονίας του καπιταλιστικού κόσμου με Ε.Ε., Καναδά και Ιαπωνία και η δημιουργία ενός νέου παγκόσμιου καπιταλισμού που να θυμίζει τροχό ποδηλάτου: με τις ΗΠΑ να είναι το κεντρικό ρουλεμάν/άξονας και τους υπόλοιπους (Γερμανία, Γαλλία, Ιαπωνία, Κίνα κ.λπ.) να είναι οι ακτίνες του τροχού.
Στο μυαλό του κ. Τραμπ με μια τέτοια «αρχιτεκτονική» οι ΗΠΑ-ρουλεμάν θα κυριαρχούν πάντα επί κάθε μιας των ακτίνων. Σε αυτό το πλαίσιο η Ε.Ε. δεν έχει ρόλο και η αποδόμησή της αποτελεί στόχο για τη χώρα, τις ΗΠΑ, που τη δημιούργησαν μετά τον Β’ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο.
Τα μέσα του κ. Τραμπ
Ακολουθεί παράδειγμα των μέσων με τα οποία ο κ. Τραμπ διαιρεί την Ε.Ε. ώστε να τη βοηθήσει να ολοκληρώσει την αποδόμησή της:
■ Η Γερμανία έχει τεράστιο εμπορικό πλεόνασμα με τις ΗΠΑ, με τις εξαγωγές γερμανικών αυτοκινήτων να παίζουν πρωταγωνιστικό ρόλο.
■ Η Γαλλία δεν έχει εμπορικό πλεόνασμα με τις ΗΠΑ, ιδίως ως προς την αυτοκινητοβιομηχανία της η οποία επιβιώνει λόγω των δασμών ύψους 10% που ισχύουν για τα εισαγόμενα σε χώρες της Ε.Ε. αυτοκίνητα.
Ο Αμερικανός πρόεδρος ανακοινώνει δασμούς 20% για όλα τα εισαγόμενα στις ΗΠΑ αυτοκίνητα, στη βάση ότι οι ΗΠΑ χρεώνουν μόνο 4% δασμούς –αντίθετα με την Ε.Ε. που χρεώνει 10%. Προσέξτε τι πετυχαίνει:
Τουλάχιστον 5 δισ. δημόσια έσοδα μόνο από τις πωλήσεις γερμανικών αυτοκινήτων στις ΗΠΑ.
Το Βερολίνο προτείνει την εκατέρωθεν «ειρήνη» με κατάργηση των δασμών στα αυτοκίνητα τόσο εκ μέρους των ΗΠΑ όσο και της Ε.Ε.
Το Παρίσι εξαγριώνεται καθώς Ρενό και Πεζό πλήττονται θανάσιμα από ιαπωνικά και κορεατικά εισαγόμενα αυτοκίνητα μετά την κατάργηση δασμών της Ε.Ε. ύψους 10%.
Με τέτοια μέσα ο κ. Τραμπ διαιρεί και βασιλεύει…
Το ψευτοδίλημμα
Μέρκελ, Μακρόν και λοιπές κατεστημένες δυνάμεις προσποιούνται ότι ο Τραμπ είναι ένα περαστικό «κακό», ότι η ευρωζώνη μεταρρυθμίζεται κ.λπ. Πρόκειται για το Σύνδρομο της Αρνησης.
Η Επιλογή της Αποδόμησης: δυνάμεις τόσο της Δεξιάς όσο και της Αριστεράς απαντούν: «Ας διαλυθεί η Ε.Ε. Ας επιστρέψουμε στο κράτος-έθνος μετά την αποτυχία της Ε.Ε.» -με τη δεξιά έκδοση να υιοθετεί τη γραμμή Τραμπ («Να ξανακάνουμε τη Γαλλία/Γερμανία/Ιταλία κ.λπ. μεγάλη!») και την αριστερή έκφανση (π.χ. Μελανσόν) να προκρίνει το αυτόνομο κράτος-έθνος ως τη βάση για τον σοσιαλιστικό διεθνισμό.
Η δική μας θέση, ως ΜέΡΑ25 και ως DiEM25, είναι πως πρόκειται για ψευτοδίλημμα: Τόσο η Αρνηση όσο και η εσκεμμένη Επιλογή της Αποδόμησης οδηγούν ακριβώς σε αυτό που θέλει ο κ. Τραμπ: την αποδόμηση της Ε.Ε. με τρόπο που θα φουντώσει τον εθνικισμό, θα ενισχύσει την ξενοφοβία, θα του επιτρέψει να έρθει σε μια συμφωνία ΗΠΑ-Κίνας που αφήνει την Ευρώπη απέξω και εν τέλει θα επεκτείνει στο διηνεκές την αμερικανική επικυριαρχία.
Και η Ελλάδα;
Στο μεταξύ στη χώρα μας το κατεστημένο ζει τον μύθο του, έχοντας καταφέρει -με την αρωγή της τρόικας- να κάνει ένα κόμμα της Αριστεράς, τον ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, να ενστερνιστεί ως κυβέρνηση όλες του τις αμαρτίες:
● υιοθέτηση των αποτυχημένων πολιτικών μιας ανοήτως αυταρχικής Ε.Ε.,
● ταύτιση του ευρωπαϊσμού με τη συνθηκολόγηση στην τρόικα,
● άκριτη αποδοχή όλων των ΝΑΤΟϊκών επιταγών στην περιοχή,
● συμμαχία με το Ισραήλ του Νετανιάχου.
Ομως αυτός ο θρίαμβος είναι ρηχός καθώς, για πρώτη φορά από το 1950, η Ε.Ε., που το ελληνικό κατεστημένο λαμβάνει ως δεδομένη, αποδομείται ηθελημένα από την υπερδύναμη που την έχτισε. Για εμάς, για το ΜέΡΑ25-DiEM25, μία είναι η επιλογή: ένα πανευρωπαϊκό κίνημα υπεύθυνης ανυπακοής τόσο στη λογική της Εθνικιστικής Διεθνούς, που τόσο πονηρά δημιούργησε και καθοδηγεί ο κ. Τραμπ, όσο και στην αυταρχική ανοησία του ευρωπαϊκού κατεστημένου.
(*) Πράγματι το Βερολίνο έχει παράδοση να ψέγει όσες κυβερνήσεις παραβιάζουν τους συμφωνημένους ποσοτικούς κανόνες, την ώρα που το ίδιο καταστρατηγεί ποσοτικούς κανόνες που δεν το συμφέρουν –π.χ. τη δέσμευση ότι φέτος θα ξόδευαν 1,5% του ΑΕΠ για την άμυνα ανεβάζοντας το ποσοστό αυτό στο 2% μέχρι το 2024, κάτι που δεν έχει σκοπό να κάνει η κ. Μέρκελ, ή το όριο του 6% του ΑΕΠ για το εμπορικό ισοζύγιο της χώρας (το οποίο ξεπέρασε το 8% εδώ και καιρό).
(**) Οταν μια οικονομία όπως η ευρωζώνη επιβάλλει λιτότητα στους πολίτες της (δηλαδή περικοπές και φόρους που στοχεύουν στα πρωτογενή πλεονάσματα), την ώρα που οι συνολικές αποταμιεύσεις ξεπερνούν τις συνολικές επενδύσεις, τότε νομοτελειακά αυξάνει το συνολικό εμπορικό πλεόνασμα. Με απλά λόγια, η οικονομία αυτή εξάγει την κρίση της στις χώρες με τις οποίες εμπορεύεται, π.χ. τις ΗΠΑ. Αυτό το γνωρίζει καλά ο κ. Τραμπ και είναι ο βασικός λόγος που εχθρεύεται την Ε.Ε. γενικά και την ευρωζώνη πιο συγκεκριμένα.
Yanis Varoufakis's Blog
- Yanis Varoufakis's profile
- 2351 followers
