As AP reports, Greece has just gone (further) to the left by voting in their “Syriza” party. With 60% of the vote counted, Syriza leads with 36%, a blowout by Greece’s fragmented / multi-party standard.
Flounder of Delta House was reached for comment and said, “Oh boy, is this great!” Why would he? Because Syriza is a delightful mixture of the sane and the insane.
First, their key campaign plank has been to provoke a new crisis over Greece’s debt to the rest of Europe, including no small chance that Greece would default and/or leave the Euro currency. And that’s the sane part.
It’s sane, because Greece had entered the Euro under false pretenses and then borrowed far more than Greece can ever repay. Syriza is right that Greece’s debt problem is serious, and right that Greece’s solution may well be to default honestly and return to its former currency (the drachma), so that (after devaluation) Greece can be competitive in world markets. (Correction: Officially, Syriza wants to remain in the Euro. It’s just that no one else believes they can, if they’re serious about getting a haircut on Greece’s debt.)
The insane part is that Syriza calls their plans “an end to austerity”, “leaving austerity behind”, and so forth. The implication would be that, these last few years, Greece has buckled down and made painful, deep cuts to its public-sector spending. Yeah, except they haven’t.
When I last checked in 2013, Greece had still not made significant cuts to government spending after years of crisis and supposed austerity. (Update: tradingeconomics.com figures say that Greece did cut spending in 2010-2012 and has already started to reverse the cuts. In 2014, Greece’s spending was near its all-time high from 2009.)
As I’ve explained before, “austerity” is just the Left’s code word to mean “We aren’t being allowed to spend wildly enough!” If government stays as big as ever – if government has merely a small pause or slowing of its growth – the Left screams about the horrible austerity.
Likewise, “ending austerity” is the Left’s code to mean they get to grow government again and basically have it consume the rest of the economy (whatever it doesn’t own already). That is what the Greeks just voted in. A party that (wisely) wants to provoke a crisis over Greece’s debt; so that it can (stupidly) have even moar of the high-spending, Big Government policies that bankrupted Greece in the first place.
Something tells me the Greeks are about to find out what austerity really is.
Greeks are indeed about to find out what austerity is, if indeed their new ruling left actually thinks it can change the formula that’s kept them somewhat upright in the past couple of years.
Theirs is a culture of corruption with no institutions to effectively audit. They have minimal internal revenue since they can’t seem to gather taxes & they’re beholden to their unions that run out into the streets on a dime.
Personally, I see only two ways to correct the situation. Martial law or coming out of the deep end after total national collapse. It’s a mess.
Martial law.
Greece is already a kleptocracy, and they might as well make it officially a junta-led dictatorship.
Greece must leave the EU in order to get its finances in order. Golden Dawn came in at 3rd place. Maybe after breaking out of the EU they can take up Putin’s free trade zone offer. There was no false pretenses for Greece entering, it was as disqualified as Turkey but EU made exceptions, so that Greece couldn’t protect Europe’s southern border. The Ukraine will need to spend 10 years worth of its previous entire GDP to comply with the EU.
The EU forces Greece to waste money on 3rd world illegal aliens. 1/10 of Greece’s population are illegal aliens as it is the gateway to Europe for illegals. The EU doesn’t allow them sovereign borders and forces them to treat illegals better than their own citizens. Golden Dawn members had gone through hospitals kicking 3rd world illegals to the curb when hospitals had no room for Citizens. While their taxes go to support illegals, Golden Dawn is criticized for giving Charity to Greeks only.
The best case scenario is that Greece becomes a systempunkt–a point of failure with cascade effects that far outweigh the local damage. Leftists like to think they have numbers on their side but even if they did they are numbers of weakling leftists. This video One Golden Dawn vs. 30 Leftists, shows how badly leftists fare versus real men. Trigger Warning people like Evan can only hope to rough up a real mans knuckles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfUolJ3MVpI
Luckily O-Hole has so dismantled the military that he cant do what Clinton did to indigenous Serbs that tried to kick out illegal alien drug dealing moslems.
Greece doesn’t know it, but who they really elected are the Gods of the Copybook Headings.
As a conservative, my first inclination is to honor the contracts made with veterans and under social security.
But, when those payouts are absurdly dangerous to the general welfare, it becomes patently clear that bankruptcy takes precedence.
The Greeks bought into a promise that you could retire young and get your salary for endless years until you croak. Sorry, but the math won’t work. They are simply going to have to face bankruptcy and then redo the shortcomings of socialistic pie-in-the-sky crapola. No one outside of Greece is hot to bail them out of the mess they made for themselves.
In Larry Niven’s “known Space” history, Louis Wu is apt to proclain, “Stupidity can be a Capital crime.” I live near to the Us Equivalent of Greece aka Chicago. Let’s watch!
I just added this to the main post:
Mark Steyn has written about Greece: a society that made lavish promises to its people who then failed to have enough kids to stick with the bill.
So now they’ve voted to reject reality (again). I would add, though, that the institutions that loaned them the money knew damn well what was coming so they can eat their own dirt. Sticking other people (e.g. German taxpayers) with the payments should be a non-starter.
@4: Love the reference to the “gods of the copybook headings.” I need to see if there’s a collection of those headings anywhere.
I should clarify my first sentence to read: a society that made lavish promises to itself and then failed to have enough kids to stick with the bill.