Greece

NOVANEWS By Jack Rasmus Jack Rasmus This past week the Greek Parliament voted by a narrow margin of 153 to 145 to impose even more austerity on its people — thus implementing the latest austerity demands by the Eurozone Troika required for the Troika’s release of loans earmarked for Greece last August 2015. Earlier this year the Troika signaled to Greece, if it wanted to receive its next tranche of loans needed to make a scheduled payment of 3.5 billion euros to the ECB this July, Greece would have to toughen its austerity program still further. The Syriza government complied, and cut pensions and raised income taxes beyond what it had even originally agreed to last August. Greek Government’s Latest Austerity Measures In its May 22, 2016 decision last week, the Greek government...

NOVANEWS by PETER BOHMER I first visited Greece in fall, 2010 to give two talks at a major anti-authoritarian festival in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second biggest city. Anti-authoritarians are a significant political current in Greece. They believe in and organize for anti-capitalism, direct democracy, building non hierarchical economic and social institutions, and confronting austerity. They are very suspicious of electoral politics and political parties. The anti-authoritarians are similar to anarchists here but are a larger proportion of the Greek population. I visited Greece in summer, 2103 where I participated in a conference on the commons and on anti-privatization struggles on an island called Ikaria. I just returned from four weeks in Greece, two weeks on the island of Ikaria and tw...

NOVANEWS By Richard Fidler Global Research In the wake of the September 20 Greek election SYRIZA has once again formed a coalition government with a small right-wing party, ANEL. Both parties lost votes and seats but their standing, like those of most other parties, was not very dissimilar to the results in January, when SYRIZA was first elected. SYRIZA’s 35.46% and ANEL’s 3.69%, combined, were sufficient to give them a majority of 155 seats in the 300-seat parliament under Greece’s electoral law, which gives 50 additional seats to the party with a plurality, in this case (as before) SYRIZA. However, voter turnout was at an all-time low, 44% of the electorate abstaining although voting is mandatory in Greece. This means that SYRIZA was supported by only 20% of eligible voters. And t...

NOVANEWS By Binoy Kampmark Global Research Greeks are the victim[s] of anti-democratic and criminal policies that carry with them the threat of a humanitarian crisis. Zoi Konstantopoulou, The Daily Beast, Sep 20, 2015 Alexis Tsipras of Syriza has clearly decided that the election is one of the best ways of sanctifying controversial programs. (Greece has had five in six years.) Earlier this year, having promised an anti-austerity stance, Tsipras gradually, then dramatically, changed his tune. Syriza, it seemed, was shedding its skin in government. They were becoming the very managing technocrats they had despised. The Troika, breathing heavily down Tsipras’ neck, and the economic fundamentalists insisting that belt tightening, slashing budgets and imposed taxes were the way to go, ...

NOVANEWS By Global Research News Global Research First published in July 2015 By Truth and Satire Every single mainstream media has the following narrative for the economic crisis in Greece: the government spent too much money and went broke; the generous banks gave them money, but Greece still can’t pay the bills because it mismanaged the money that was given. It sounds quite reasonable, right? Except that it is a big fat lie … not only about Greece, but about other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland who are all experiencing various degrees of austerity. It was also the same big, fat lie that was used by banks and corporations to exploit many Latin American, Asian and African countries for many decades. Greece did not fail on its own. It was made to fail. ...

NOVANEWS By Stephen Lendman Global Research It’s all over but the postmortems. Western bankers, large investors and other corporate interests triumphed on Sunday as expected – over fairness, equity and justice. Greece remains Troika occupied territory, its sovereignty and soul lost, its people assured of greater suffering than already, its economy strip-mined for profit, its deplorable status the future of Europe and America, headed toward becoming thirdworldized ruler-serf societies unfit to live in. SRYIZA retained power by a larger than expected margin – with nearly all votes counted, achieving a 7.4% margin over New Democracy (35.5% to 28.1%). It’ll hold 145 seats in the 300 member parliament, majority control easily within reach with a coalition partner, likely Independent Gre...

NOVANEWS The Matterhorn Interview with Michael Bernegger By Michael Bernegger and Lars Schall Global Research Podcast interview: (32 mins) Prior to yesterday’s Fed anti-deflation policy stance Lars Schall talked with Swiss financial analyst Michael Bernegger in an exclusive interview for Matterhorn Asset Management, about his paper “The Greek Tragedy and its solution“ that offers a counter-consensus analysis of Greece’s economic crisis. Another topic in their discussion is the growing economic challenges for China.