On Wednesday the European Central Bank (ECB) announced
that it would no longer accept Greek government bonds and
government-guaranteed debt as collateral. Although Greece would still be
eligible for other, emergency lending from the Central Bank, the
immediate effect of the announcement was to raise Greek borrowing costs
and squeeze its banks, and to increase financial market instability
within Greece.
We should be clear about what this means. The
ECB's move was completely unnecessary, and it was done some weeks before
any decision had to be made. It looks very much like a deliberate
attempt to undermine the new government. They are trying to force the
government to abandon its promises to the Greek electorate, and to follow the IMF program that its predecessors signed on to.
Clarity
is important here because the European authorities, or the troika, as
they are commonly called, plunged the eurozone into at least two
additional years of unnecessary recession that began in 2011 because
they were playing a similar game of chicken. The ECB, for its part,
deliberately and repeatedly allowed the eurozone to go the brink of
financial meltdown during this period. It was not because the financial
markets had the power to collapse the euro when they pushed the yield on
the 10-year sovereign bonds of Italy and Spain to unsustainable levels
in the range of 7 percent. It was because the ECB deliberately allowed
these market actors to create an existential crisis for the euro, in
order to force concessions from the governments of Spain, Italy, Greece,
Portugal, and Ireland.
These concessions were not just about
paying off debt but also "structural reforms" that sought to remake the
European welfare state in the weaker countries, including shrinking the
size of the state; cutting spending on health care, pensions, and
unemployment compensation; and changing labor laws that favored workers.
The
European authorities were willing to take great risks in order to force
these changes, and as is now widely recognized by most economists,
their macroeconomic policies added additional years of unnecessary
recession and mass unemployment (currently at 11.5 percent, more than
twice that of the United States).
If we understand this recent history,
we can see clearly what they are doing to Greece right now. The main
difference is that, since the ECB reversed course and made a firm
commitment to the survival of the euro in July of 2012, the blows that
they are dealing to the Greek economy are much more contained. The
yields on Italian and Spanish bonds have risen a bit since Syriza was
elected but are still very low -- 1.58 percent for Italy, and 1.47
percent for Spain.
The ECB could also stabilize Greek bond yields
at low levels, but instead it chose this week to go to the opposite
extreme -- and I mean extreme -- to promote a run on bank deposits, tank
the Greek stock market, and drive up Greek borrowing costs.
Syriza's
leadership, headed by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance
Minister Yanis Varoufakis, are playing it smart. They responded to the
ECB's assault without animosity or denunciations. They are not going to
voluntarily leave the euro or even suggest the possibility. Like the
peaceful protesters of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s, they
are facing down the police dogs and fire hoses with courage and
equanimity.
They want the world to know who is the aggressor here
and who is being reasonable. This is important because we are witnessing
a political battle for democracy in Europe, and the outcome of this
chapter will be partly decided by what the troika can get away with
politically. Much noise is made about German voters opposing concessions
to the Greeks, but this is only possible because the whole fight has
been misrepresented to them for years. The European authorities
transferred massive amounts of debt from reckless private lenders to EU
governments (including Germany) and at the same time increased Greece's
debt load from 115 percent to more than 170 percent of GDP by shrinking
the Greek economy at a rate comparable to the worst of the U.S. Great
Depression. Most Europeans, including Germans, would not blame the
Greek people for the resulting unpayable debt if they understood what
really happened.
The troika should be happy with what they have
already "accomplished." The Greek state has been shrunk by 19 percent of
its labor force. Six years of depression and a 25-percent decline in
living standards (actually much greater than that if you count the
decline in imports) should discourage any European country from ever
reaching the terrifying predicament of having to borrow from the
punishers at the troika. The economic adjustment has been done: The
country is running a primary (not including interest payments) budget surplus and a current account surplus.
Syriza
has backed off from its initial demand that Greece's debt stock be
reduced and is offering reasonable proposals to allow them the fiscal
space to be able to recover (i.e., a primary budget surplus of 1
to 2 percent of GDP rather than 4 to 5 percent under the troika's
program). After six years of depression, that is hardly too much to ask.
Nor is reversing some of the worst abuses such as the minimum wage
cuts.
The ECB should be ashamed of its latest assault on Greek
democracy. And they should not be able to get away with disguising it
as anything less than that.
Source: Huffington Post
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