EU CAN HAZ ANARCHISTS!

From a LinkedIn discussion, which you can follow here:

Will Greece go bankrupt?

My response:

"I strongly believe that Greece needs to restructure its debt. The sums don't work. We can't grow our way out of this monstrous amount of debt, and we can't cut our way out of it without Mad-Max levels of civil unrest. 

Some of my rationale can be found here.  

On the other hand, if we do give our creditors a substantial haircut, it will set off a chain reaction that could bankrupt a number of banks around Europe, and in fact WILL send the entire continent into depression. Already, interbank lending in Europe is frozen. It won't take much to send the system into meltdown.

Clearly, the EU will not allow that to happen even if it means that France has to annex Greece (Germany won't do for obvious reasons, plus much of our elite would secretly enjoy that). This may sound like a joke but a massive loss of sovereignty can come about in very simple ways - a Eurozone country without a vote in the Council (an idea that has been mooted by some), and with its budgets subject to Eurozone finance ministers' approval, will have no say on most of the legislation it is subject to.

So what is going to happen is that Europe will keep us high on cheap debt until they think it's safe to let us go. We will only be sovereign in the most trivial sense for the next 10 years, during which time we will give our creditors one or two minor haircuts.

This could of course change radically if Spain, or Italy or anyone else starts to need this kind of help. Putting the entire periphery of Europe on subsidised probation will really bring the whole thing to the boil. The EU will do all it can to contain this type of mechanism to one or at most two minor Eurozone countries.

And then there are some massive wildcards still to be played. As power is transferred from the Greek government and parliament to the EU institutions, the crosshair for our "known-unknowns" will move from Athens to Brussels, Strasbourg and Frankfurt. And then it's really going to hit the fan. 

What happens when it's not our Minister of the Interior but an EU Commissioner that gets their office bombed? What happens when the older generation of our urban guerillas finally decide to shack up with their posh yuppie girlfriends in Brussels and start firebombing Belgian coppers? What happens if our demonstrators occupy the Berlaymont instead of the Acropolis, or if the mayor of Strasbourg should wake up to the entire town spray painted with "No job, no church, nothing to do man! - Let's sh*t on the grave of Schuman!"? 

I don't have the answers to that."

SAFETY EPIC FAIL

So, G-PAP, why is it safe to invest in Greece? I'm asking because I keep getting queries about how to move money out of Greece to a UK bank account and I'd like to just tell everyone to leave me alone.

My line so far has been that when Greece finally defaults, there really won't be any safe place left in Europe to put one's money except into gold coins and up one's own rectum.

But now our PM offers a glimmer of hope. How, I hear you ask?

Enjoy his ludicrously chummy interview with FOX News, that unrivalled bastion of socialist thought. G-PAP explains that Greece is a safe place for tourists, and hence a great place to invest if you're keen to profit from that industry. 0:22" into the interview, the FAIL lands with a momentous thud:





"Greece has a tourism industry that can really thrive, and which can become more attractive; we're now moving into niche tourism, high-quality tourism; Greece is a safe country, it's a beautiful country, a hospitable country, I'd like to make that plug on FOX News [...] " [Emphasis mine]

Let's qualify that, shall we? There are still some parts of the country that are pretty rough, where a man (or woman, including pregnant ones) can get killed just minding his/her own business. Like any bank in the centre of Athens. Like that training centre for bureaucrats in Patissia where a 15 yr old Afghan boy got a heavy sample of our hospitality. And, recently, like Greece's ministry for law enforcement, where the correspondence (no doubt checked diligently by the heavily unionised security staff and postal workers before them) has become literaly too hot to handle.

To be fair to G-PAP, no one actually mails any bombs to any of our islands - perhaps they can't be sure they will arrive. Indeed, there are almost no recorded incidents of this sort anywhere in the countryside. Which begs that question: who are our urban guerillas?  Any guesses as to where they live, or where they meet? Any guesses as to why they do what they do? (Actually, there have been some early guesses, in this excellent piece of research.)

At any rate, some of our compatriots are not too keen on these questions. What appears to matter to some is who bears the political responsibility, and who should therefore resign. Others do not mention the news at all - as they say, only the state and the capitalists are murderers. Others still, elected political leaders no less, say it's all a ploy to divert attention from recent austerity measures. The fact that some of our compatriots have no regard for human life in their ridiculous pursuit of failed ideologies is secondary

Let me be clear: the tiny, fringe element of the Greek Left will not cease to be knuckle-dragging subhumans if G-PAP and half his cabinet quit. Their well-to-do fathers will not grow a pair and turn them in if we beef up security at ministries. Those of our pupils who live for the few weeks of school occupations per year will not apologise for glorifying the molotov culture if every employer in the country accepts responsibility for the bombing.

It is true that Greece has enormous wind energy potential. If only the wind weren't blowing out of our own arses.