Greece Needs a “New Deal”
In a Feb 3 op-ed in the Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher and editor of The Nation, wrote that Greece’s ongoing revolution has
“offered Europe hope. This is Europe’s chance to turn from the crippling austerity that has left the South mired in depression and the North sinking in deflation. Syriza is calling for a ‘New Deal,’ not only for Greece but for all of Europe.”
Note that the EIR article on the election is titled “Greek Elections Can Spark Shift to European ‘New Deal.'”
Noting that Germany and the EU leadership’s response to the Greek election is to reject any changes, and to “opt for misery” for the people of Europe, vanden Heuvel calls on the US and progressives to “join in a bold call to save Europe from its folly.”
Most importantly, she asserts that “the Greek debt cannot be repaid.” When the troika responded to the crisis in southern Europe by bailing out the banks, she writes, Greece’s corrupt leadership followed orders, and
“sold off their assets, crushed workers, trampled labor laws and slashed vital public services to ensure that the private bankers be paid.”
It’s not only Greece, she adds:
“Syriza, as well as Podemos in Spain (The `We Can’ party formed only a year ago and now leading in the polls) and reform parties elsewhere represent democracy offering a way out,”
she suggests.
Alexis Tsipras, she says, wants to honor the debt, but
“This is the prescription that Europe needs for its ills. All that is required is adult leadership to join in saving the community. Instead, the initial reaction of European officials has been juvenile bluster. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s Finance Minister, states that Greece is bound by the terms of its contract even if the contract is bankrupt. Elections change nothing, he says, there are rules. Bundesbank’s Joachim Nagel threatens fatal consequences if Greece violates the terms of the deal…. This is, in a word, idiocy.”
She calls on Germany to learn from its own history, with the WWI reparations leading to the rise of Hitler and Nazism, while after WWII,
“the allies had enough good sense to forgive German debt racked up by the most heinous of all governments, and put the country on the road to growth.”
The implication is clear, but not stated in her article, that the alternative to writing down the debt is war.
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