Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Jasper Sky — Deutsche Welle — Opinion: In Greece, two rival reform agendas battle for Europe's future

What's really at stake as eurozone officials debate Greece's proposals for a renegotiated bailout is whether Europe stays committed to a radical neoliberal agenda or shifts back toward a social market economy.…
This is about protecting global hypercapitalism and the European oligarchy…
Must read.

This op-ed lays it out as it is rather than with spin. There are two competing visions of Europe and what is happening now is a contest over which will prevail. This contest is also going on in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. The ruling elite of these countries is promoting the neoliberal agenda by attempting to substitute a market state for the welfare state as it emerged from the influence of Keynes during and after the Great Depression. This is reflected on the global front in the contest over neoliberal Western-dominated globalization favor by the Western ruling elite and back up by NATO the multipolar view of BRICS and the emerging world.

The stakes.
There would be serious risks attendant on letting Greece default rather than agreeing to a three-month renegotiation window proposed by Syriza. A "Grexit" might lead Spain, Italy, and other countries to follow suit, generate temporary financial chaos, and impose major losses on creditor nations. 
But it's possible that Europe's leading officials may be willing to incur those costs, rather than the risk that a Syriza reform agenda could succeed - and set a dangerous precedent.
Syriza's version of reform could see banks taken into public hands and treated as public utilities, extreme concentrations of wealth diminished through heavy taxation, and laws and treaties aim at fair wages, fair trade, and environmental health. Key monopolistic assets like ports, railways, and waterways might be retained in public ownership, rather than sold to private-sector rentiers.

If Syriza succeeds with such reforms, that might give people all over Europe the idea that a return to a social market economy could present a real alternative to hypercapitalism - and that it makes sense to vote for populist leftist parties. This is a prospect that Europe's ownership class regards with disfavor, to put it mildly.
The revolution begins.
But in this high-stakes poker game, Greece has an ace up its sleeve that could substantially increase the costs to Europe and the US of a Greek default. That ace has a name: Russia.

On Wednesday, even as eurozone finance ministers met to discuss Greece's fate, Nikos Kotzias, the Greek minister of foreign affairs, was in Moscow, getting on demonstratively well with his Russian colleague, Sergey Lavrov.

The message from Athens is clear: The price to the European Union of refusing to negotiate in good faith with Syriza could include a shift in Greece's allegiance from the EU to Russia
[read BRICS and the emerging world].
Could Western countries begin peeling away from neoliberalism?

Deutsche Welle
Opinion: In Greece, two rival reform agendas battle for Europe's future
Jasper Sky
ht Clonal
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