Greece Prepares War Economy

If the Greek government is serious about standing up to the Troika’s genocidal policies, they have to start planning for a war economy in terms of the physical economic requirements that they have to secure, since they can expect to be totally blockaded by the bankrupt and desperate trans-Atlantic system. It appears that that is exactly what the Tsipras government is doing.

In a discussion with Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said, “Luckily we have six months stocks of oil and four months stocks of pharmaceuticals,” according to a July 3 column by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who, it turns out, is currently in Athens. Evans-Pritchard adds that “Mr. Varoufakis said a special five-man committee from the Greek treasury, the Bank of Greece, the trade unions and the private banks is working feverishly in a ‘war room’ near his office, allocating precious reserves for top priorities.” Food imports have so far been exempted from the import freeze which has been put in place along with capital controls.

Not mentioned in the article is the fact that the intense discussions between Greece and the BRICS, especially Russia, over recent weeks, assuredly include the issue of how Greece can obtain required physical-economic inputs for their economy, under conditions of economic warfare.

Evans-Pritchard otherwise states the obvious: “The crisis is likely to escalate fast if there is no resolution early next week,” i.e. if the No vote wins in the July 5 referendum. Already the liquidity shortage is so acute that companies have begun to issue scrip to their workers and vendors, to keep the economy alive. If the Yes vote wins, then the Syriza government is “expected” to fall, and the ECB “is expected to restore emergency liquidity for the Greek banking system almost immediately.” But Varoufakis warned that the Troika needs to think twice about pushing Greece over the edge, since the ECB has lent Greece about EU120 billion in ELA and Target 2 money: “They are very vulnerable. Target 2 becomes a real loss if a country leaves the euro.” Although Varoufakis’s remarks fall short of LaRouche’s insistence that it is the entire euro system which is bankrupt, and not Greece, it does at least point to the euro system’s vulnerability.

Allister Heath, also writing in the July 3 Telegraph, lays out the scenario succinctly. If the Yes vote wins, the ECB will bail Greece out again. If the No vote wins,