Some of us always said it: Grexit was an incredible threat

 

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/ 

27 Jan

So, Grexit is off the table, at least for now.

Well, it was really never on the table, as some of us have been shouting from the rooftops for years now.

Back in May 2011, I was writing here that the whole idea of expelling Greece from the Eurozone was based on “an incredible treat”; on “…a flagrant lie”.  ”Greece” I insisted, “cannot be pushed out of the euro without the euro collapsing in short order.” The utility of issuing such a threat was, I suggested, “to exact from the Greek polity many pounds of flesh, by which to impress Northern Europe’s despondent electorates that Greece deserves another huge, expensive loan. As is so often the case with naked blackmailing, an incredible threat is pressed into the service of an ill-conceived goal: To the issuing of a fresh gargantuan loan to an insolvent country that neither needs nor wants it.”

Events of the past few months have confirmed all of the above. Now, that this revised loan agreement has been forced upon Greece, the Grexit threat has been put back in the drawer, to be retrieved whenever the powers-that-be think necessary. Meanwhile, the organised supporters of the troika’s austerian irrationalism are doing what they are good at: painting all critics of the troika program with the same brush. To give an example, Nuriel Roubini’s admission that he was wrong on Grexit is used as an excuse for celebration; as confirmation that the troika’s cheerleaders were right all along. In their enthusiasm they fill Greece’s social media with tweets such as “Roubini and Varoufakis proven wrong” and questions aimed at me like “Roubini accepted his error. You?”

Well, I prey and hope that I too can admit I was mistaken. That Greece and Europe are back on track. Alas, reality does not let me do this. For, as this post (among many others) demonstrates, I was, unhappily, spot on: Grexit was indeed used as part of a fiscal water-boarding strategy for the purposes of pushing Greece further into its curent Depression. 

Grexit, as some of us were warning, should never have been taken seriously. It was never on the cards. Tragically, as a strategy of subjugation it worked a treat.