Rex wrote:
Burnsy, what is your take on Varoufakis' comments?
Well, I think the statement speaks pretty loudly by itself. Varoufakis's commentary is enlightening, but a bit histrionic.
Whether or not Greece is out of the euro, if it ends up accepting this document it's effectively finished as a peer in the eurozone.
We usually think of markets and finance influencing governments indirectly, but as Varoufakis puts it, accession to these requirements would make Greece a 'ward' of the EU without self-determination. To insist that every piece of legislation must be reviewed by the Eurogroup prior to being put to debate, by an unelected and unaccountable committee is an extraordinary requirement.
This is not an evidently rational programme, it's an ideological set of demands that's contestable in terms of its practical likelihood of success, its focus, its language and its intersection with the bedrock of democracy.
Varoufakis is quite right to point out that demanding that strike actions and collective bargaining be "modernised" (ie done away with) is disturbing. It signals that severe pain is going to be inflicted on workers, whose reactions must then be crushed. I'd invite people to consider how you'd react if your own governments proposed to outlaw industrial action.
Many economists believe the macro prospects of this plan are junk and the Eurogroup's growth forecasts are false optimism. History is on the side of the pessimists given the yield of the last five years of austerity. If this plan is adopted, we'll probably be here again in a few years because of unsustainable Greek debt. It will be interesting to see who continues to blame Greece then.
It will be brutish to enforce harsh measures if they won't resolve the underlying issue of debt that allegedly justifies them.
In the long term, it seems EU powerbrokers (I won't say "Germany") have burnt a lot of goodwill here. Hollande has been in favour of a more generous arrangement, and the US has been sending signals via the IMF. The structure of the EU is broken politically and economically, it's as lop-sided as La Liga. Many member states should be keen for reform if they have any sense.
