GRECIA 2015

[CHOSEN]

El aumento de la pobreza en el 1er mundo sólo tendría una solución, que es taponar los vasos comunicantes de la globalización: Aranceles, aduanas, fronteras y autarquía continental.
Nazionalismo y banderitas, orgullo nacional, etc.
Sólo hay que mirar este foro, todo el día hablando de "humillaciones al pueblo griego" y similares (lo que no dicen es que Syriza obtuvo sólo el 40% de votos... con un 40% de abstención = apenas el 20% de los griegos votaron syriza)

En otros países se fabrica mas barato (y mejor). Hay que empezar a asimilarlo cuanto antes.
Que los países subdesarrollados consigan a base de jornadas de 14 horas será bienestar que están "ganando" a los países del primer mundo.
Y bien ganado que está. Como yo no soy racista me da igual que la gasolina la compre un negro que un murciano.

En otro orden...
Que el rescate es y debe ser para los acreedores (francoalemanes) es algo LÓGICO y exponer esto como una crítica al sistema  da muestra de la realidad paralela en la que viven algunos.

La pregunta es... ¿donde está el dinero que se prestó inicialmente?
Es que sigo sin entender a que viene el falso slógan "salvad a los griegos no a los bancos" cuando es obvio que el préstamo se ha gastado, y lo que se pretende es... poner el montante de nuevo en el bolsillo del deudor!!! 

Es como ir al Carrefour, comprar un jamón, comérselo, y exigirle al seguro de compensación que nos entregue TAMBIÉN la cantidad asegurada por el impago, en vez de que se dinero sea logicamente para al vendedor del jamón al que no se le ha abonado

Contraargumentar como si fuera cierto    que el prestamista asuma sus riesgos queda muy bien desde el sofá, pero es que precisamente ese riesgo los estaba sumiendo el país con el diferencial de financiación en los mercados.

Es decir, el acreedor no arriesgó nada mas allá del contrato, por mas que guste decirlo.
Y aunque lo hubiera arriesgado...
¿Entonces a que viene pedir el rescate para el deudor?  Si el deudor ya se lo ha pulido!!! ¿Quereis compensar al deudor por ser deudor?
Es que no tiene ni pies ni cabeza.

No lo tenía hace 4 años cuando hablabamos de PIIGS y sigue sin tenerlo hoy.
Es de locos.

[sudden and sharp]

No aspiraba el ministro al puesto del gafitas...? 

[Lego]

 

(lo que no dicen es que Syriza obtuvo sólo el 40% de votos... con un 40% de abstención = apenas el 20% de los griegos votaron syriza)

Ajá, el gobierno de Marianoniano es un 4% más legítimo que el de Tsipras    Me lo guardo, que sé voy a usarlo mucho cuando vuelvan los debates sobre la abstención y la legitimidad. Gracias.

[Currobena]

Hablando de austeridad, igual en las instituciones europeas podrían dar ejemplo antes de exigirla.

European Commission officials have fiddled their expenses, sexually harassed colleagues and watched hundreds of hours of pornography in the office – yet kept their jobs.  Disciplinary records obtained by the Sunday Telegraph show how dozens of senior officials at the European Commission accused of serious misconduct have escaped with little more than a slap on the wrist.  They include officials who submitted false invoices and attempted to secure jobs for family members on contracts they managed.  In two years, the Investigatory and Disciplinary Office of the Commission (IDOC) investigated 84 cases of suspected misconduct among officials. Some 43 staff were sanctioned, and six dismissed.  Life at the Commission is frequently well rewarded. One in five staff take home more than David Cameron does from his £142,000 a year salary, thanks to generous living allowances and a special 13 per cent tax rate. Yet some employees regard it as a gilded cage, with staff underworked and bored yet unable to find comparable remuneration elsewhere.  Those found to have flouted the rules and yet kept their jobs included four officials who failed to declare the family allowances paid to them by their home countries while working for the commission – meaning they received more allowances than they were entitled to from the commission.
 The “grossly negligent” act resulted in a “significant financial loss” and was only discovered by chance. They were demoted, two temporarily.
 In another case, an official lied about their home nationality during the recruitment process, “and then produced documents which had been tampered with”. They were demoted for one year.
 Another official who lied about his nationality in order to receive a higher expatriation allowance was demoted. It was a second offence, but the official allowed to remain in post after showing “remorse”.
 In a further case, a “very senior” commission official who wrongly received “substantial” sums of rental allowances over several years had his pension docked for three years.
 Another bureaucrat received family, education and medical allowances for his son for four years in a “persistent and deliberate” fraud – when the young man was in fact in work. The official had his pension docked for three years after a criminal conviction.
 One official was reprimanded after presenting the administration with an “altered” medical certificate after his doctor refused a diagnosis.
 In another case, an official requested a period of leave “on personal grounds” while “at the same time, without requesting prior permission, offered his services to the Commission as a remunerated external consultant.” They were reprimanded.
 The records reveals how one official was dismissed for “embezzlement” – while others accused of attempting to secure jobs or contracts for their family members kept their jobs.
 “A staff member who recommended some people he knew, including his sister-in-law to a contracting party of the Commission with a view to obtaining employment for them, received a reprimand. As he was responsible for the execution of the contract, he placed himself in a situation of conflict of interest liable to adversely reflect upon the reputation of the Institution,” the records reveal.
 In another case: “A caution was given to another staff member who requested a false invoice for a member of his family under a contract he was responsible for. The isolated nature of the incident was taken into consideration in not opening a disciplinary procedure.”
 Another official was cautioned after they “made use of a vehicle owned by a contracting party to the Commission for the transportation of his personal belongings. Although he was responsible for the execution of the contract with the party in question, the very limited nature of the service rendered and the isolated nature of the incident meant that the opening of a disciplinary procedure was not justified in this case.”
 The records reveal a number of cases of lewd and violent behaviour in the European Commission’s Brussels offices.
 In one case: “A staff member who was responsible for more than 100GB of downloaded material (equivalent to 200-300 hours of on-line video) from over 100 sexually explicit websites was downgraded. The fact that this was his second offence of this nature was an aggravating factor.” Another was sanctioned for “ frequent and intensive” use of pornographic websites.
 Another civil servant received a reprimand “for conduct of an explicit sexual nature towards two colleagues at the place of work”, while another was chastised for “physical aggression and insulting remarks towards a colleague [which] cannot be excused by a state of tiredness brought about by intense working conditions."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11427479/Sex-pest-cases-fraud-or-porn-but-Eurocrats-keep-their-jobs.html

[Mad Men]

Eso es verdad Chosen.

Si miramos la evolución económica de los últimos veinte años, observamos un fuerte auge de los países subdesarrollados  y un fuerte estancamiento de los países ricos, que gracias a la deuda han podido mantener su nivel de riqueza.

La cuestión es que el mundo se está volviendo más plano, la globalización ha supuesto una vía directa al desarrollo mundial, donde, en occidente hemos visto que lo que dábamos por cierto no lo es, es decir, que siempre seríamos ricos.

Y que pasará con los pobres? Pues simple y llanamente que se distribuirán, de hecho ya esta ocurriendo, surge una floreciente clase media en China y una pobre en Europa.

Desde occidente lo tenemos difícil, porque en el mundo existe mucha gente capaz, no solo nostros, y también tienen derecho a progresar.

Lo que en un principio se antojaba bueno para occidente, ahora resulta contraproducente, llevando los déficits a cotas nunca vistas.


Algo así ocurrió después de la segunda guerra mundial.Los bombarderos de EE.UU destrozaron toda la industria de sus competidores, dejando el campo allanado para florecer, llegaron a fabricar más del 50%  de todos los productos manufacturados del planeta. Con el tiempo el resto de países volvieron al nivel potencial que tenían y EE.UU pues redujo su peso.

Tercer mundo cada vez será un término sustituido por el de Cuarto Mundo, se mezclará riqueza y pobreza. Veremos ferraris aparcados al lado de chabolas.

En la época victoriana,el imperio inglés supuso el 80 % del pib mundial (lo digo a ojo), ahora está por detrás de Brasil y bajando.

Los nacionalismos, charismos, aranceles..... es la solución populista pero para nada es buena, todo lo contrario, la globalización no es política, es tecnológica y por lo que parece estamos menos preparados de lo que pensábamos, es infantil quejarse porque existan cargueros que nos traigan productos de china, áfrica o suramérica.

En cierto modo el movimiento antiglobalización son los actuales Luditas

Lo interesante es que tiene cierta correlación con las burbujas inmobiliarias.

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

Algo así ocurrió después de la segunda guerra mundial.Los bombarderos de EE.UU destrozaron toda la industria de sus competidores, dejando el campo allanado para florecer, llegaron a fabricar más del 50%  de todos los productos manufacturados del planeta. Con el tiempo el resto de países volvieron al nivel potencial que tenían y EE.UU pues redujo su peso.

Excelente, Mad Men!

...y ASÍ + Bretton Woods (y no por el New Deal ni por Keynes) se salió de la Gran Depresión...

[Kid A]

Yo pienso que De Guindos le atiza a Grecia por la cuenta que le trae. Es imprescindible que Syriza fracase para que la gran coalición PP+PSOE de 2016 gane las elecciones. Si Syriza consigue que Grecia no colapse sin ceder a la Troika daría impulso a Podemos y demostraría que los recortes sociales no son imprescindibles para frenar la deuda.

[Mad Men]

Yo pienso que De Guindos le atiza a Grecia por la cuenta que le trae. Es imprescindible que Syriza fracase para que la gran coalición PP+PSOE de 2016 gane las elecciones. Si Syriza consigue que Grecia no colapse sin ceder a la Troika daría impulso a Podemos y demostraría que los recortes sociales no son imprescindibles para frenar la deuda.

Sin duda, pero piensa que España siempre ha sido un perro fiel.

[Currobena]

Un artículo muy interesante sobre los últimos años de la economía griega y las consecuencias del clientelismo. Los paralelismos con el PPSOE en España asustan.

Greece from Postwar Orthodoxy to Democratic Peronism  Posted on 2015-02-23                     by pseudoerasmus                                   The roots of the present Greek crisis lie in the political transformation of the country during the 1980s. Disclaimer: I am not taking Germany’s side !
 
In a paper which might as well be a parody of the Washington Consensus fad of the 1990s, DeLong & Eichengreen argued that the main effect of the Marshall Plan was enticing postwar Europe away from economic dirigisme and toward market mechanisms. Given their wariness of markets in the wake of depression and world war, Europeans lacking such inducements might have stressed the controls aspect of the mixed economy more than the market part of it. IMF-like “conditionalities” saved them from the self-destructive impulses to which the unconstrained Argentina surrendered in its postwar stagnation and decline. Thus, the Marshall Plan was “history’s most successful structural adjustment programme”.
I don’t really buy that argument (that’s for another day), but it might be the best way to think about the Greek economy in the long run. Not simply the Marshall Plan, but external institutional incentives in general have played a major role in the evolution of the Greek economy since 1949. In short, external factors have interacted positively or negatively with Greek cultural traits and population characteristics. When Greece was constrained, the Greek economy performed well. When constraints were relaxed or gave way to outright perverse incentives, the Greeks let their worst impulses rip and behaved like a Third World country.
(1)
The proximate causes of the present Greek crisis are straightforward. Although the Greek government had engaged in ‘fiscal consolidation’ during the 1990s in order to qualify for the Eurozone, upon accession it began running larger budget and current account deficits. These were financed with cheap foreign credit thanks to the lower cost of borrowing in euros. The fiscal monitoring functions of the EU’s Stability & Growth Pact were laxly enforced, but Greece also had some foreign help in cooking its books. When the global financial crisis hit, investors suddenly lost confidence in Greece as a sovereign debtor. Soon Greece could no longer roll over its debt, its deficits rose even further on account of the recession, and the government was forced to seek help.
Greek budget deficits represented a combination of rising public sector spending and stagnant tax revenue. “Oligarchs” are often blamed for not paying their fair share of taxes, but tax evasion is widespread in the country, with the professionals disproportionately responsible. Evasion is enabled in good measure by an unusually high level of self-employment and also by the size of the underground economy, whose estimates place Greece at the lower bound of the ex-communist countries. Moreover, whilst it’s likely the very richest avoid taxes altogether, the tax incidence in Greece has been very progressive, and it’s equally likely the average Greek has paid little tax. (See Mitsopoulos on the pre-crisis “full employment” tax incidence.) “Oligarchs” are also often blamed for rising state expenditures, but some 75% of the government’s non-interest budget in 2009 went to wages and pensions. Greek public sector employment is actually not too big compared with other OECD countries, but the majority of public employees in Greece work for state-owned enterprises, which is very much outside the EU norm.
Many have pointed to Greece’s long history of accumulating foreign debts and defaulting on them. Others have argued the recent crisis is the fault of the oligarchs lording over the Greek people, an implicit comparison with Russia or Mexico.
What’s less noted is that as of 2008, Greek sovereign debt as a share of GDP had been approximately constant since 1993. That doesn’t mean Greece hadn’t been borrowing new sums in the 2000s, just that the debt had been growing in proportion to GDP. Most of the leap in the debt-GDP ratio, in fact, took place in the 1980s. Greek debt as % of GDP in the very long run:

[Chart from here]

The debt accumulation in the 1980s is not per se important, because it could have been reduced by later stringency and growth. But the events of the 1980s, which cast a long shadow on the present, speak to a fundamental break with the earlier policy regime in Greece. In the decades before the 1980s, Greece had been a model of sterling economic performance !
Between the end of the civil war in 1949 and the first oil crisis of 1973-74, the Greek economy was characterised by rapid growth, low inflation, high rates of investment, government budgets in balance or moderate deficit, and a relatively small public sector. Its persistent external deficits were always offset by private capital inflows, with remittances from Greek workers in northern Europe helping out. After an initial devaluation, Greece in this period never experienced a balance of payments crisis and never required assistance from the IMF. In other words, postwar Greece was a growing economy with a healthy macro environment whose external imbalances reflected investment, not consumption.
So what changed ?
(2)
Greece had been part of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates; and it had also been a recipient of the Marshall Plan, which made certain policy stipulations. (See Pagoulatos.) But politics was also essential. After the Greek Civil War, which was fought against a communist insurgency, the reins of government alternated only between right and centre. The left were effectively excluded from political power by the adoption of a majority voting system, which allowed parties or coalitions winning 45-50% of the vote to control ~80% of the seats in parliament. (Miller documents the involvement of the United States in 1951-52 in pressurising the Greeks into abandoning proportional representation in favour of majority voting.) Electoral data on Greek elections prior to 1981:

[Source: Pappas 2003]

Except in 1958, the combined left-wing parties could scarcely muster 20% of the vote and 30 seats in parliament (out of 300). A military coup in 1967 installed an even more rightist regime that lasted until its collapse in 1974.
Greek trade unions were either repressed or controlled by the state. In some other countries, strong trade unions made wage demands in excess of labour productivity growth, and concessions would be followed by devaluations to maintain competitiveness, which a few years later would prompt further wage demands and devaluations. Greece avoided this wage-price spiral in the postwar period.
The result of both the external constraints and the marginalisation of the left was relatively orthodox fiscal and monetary policies, albeit in combination with a modest import substitution policy which allocated tightly controlled credit to “favoured” industrial sectors. But the latter was not considered terribly heterodox in the 1950s and 1960s, especially for developing countries.

[Chart based on Maddison Project data]

Greece’s constrained policy regime facilitated, or rather did not interfere with, the rapid postwar economic development of the country. I do not say it was caused by those policies because the high growth rates represented convergence with the rich countries, which itself was enabled by the postwar diffusion of technologies developed in 1930-45 and the resumption of global trade. Most developing countries (including Sub-Saharan Africa) also participated in the global boom and grew rapidly in 1945-73/80, at least relative to the subsequent period. The point is that Greece under the monarchy and the junta did not fuck things up, which they might easily have done.
(3)
There was a shift with the first oil shock of 1973-74 which coincided with full democratisation under the Third Republic and the liberation of the trade unions. These had been preceded by the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. Like Ireland, Portugal, and other small open economies, Greece had some difficulty adjusting to a stagflationary environment with volatile exchange rates. But the real sea-change happened with the second oil shock of 1979-80 and Paul Volcker’s decision to disinflate the US economy. The deep global recession which ensued helped produce, in Greece, the historic landslide victory of the firebrand-populist Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement in the election of 1981. The PASOK victory, reflecting a broad nation-wing swing, probably rode the same wave of electoral discontent in the late 1970s and early 1980s which also brought to power Thatcher, Reagan, Mittérand, etc.
PASOK quickly embarked on populism on an extravagant scale, inviting comparisons with some famous cases in Latin America, except Greece was an EEC member by 1981 and a recipient of European regional development funds. Some charts summarising what happened to various macro aggregates after 1980 (click to enlarge):
 

[Source: Alogoskoufis 2013, Alogoskoufis 2012]

The outcomes — a serious deterioration in fiscal balances, inflationary finance, consumption-driven current account deficits, higher external and internal debt, crashing investment rates, balance of payments crises, high volatility of growth, a rise in the number of strikes, wage-price spirals of wage concessions to unions followed by currency devaluations, deferred stabilisation, etc. — would all be eerily familiar to any student of the macroeconomic history of the Third World. In fact, readers of Boom, Crisis, and Adjustment: The Macroeconomic Experiences of Developing Countries or The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America might feel justified in wishing there had been a chapter on Greece in those books !
The details of course differ, but the underlying parallel is that both Greece and many developing countries responded to the sundry shocks, slower growth, and stagflation of the 1970s via “accommodation” and expansion, i.e., spending and printing more money, incrementally adjusting exchange rate pegs, indexing wages, and/or imposing price controls, in order to simultaneously raise wages, fight unemployment, and control inflation. Of course the rich countries also played around with an “incomes” policy in the 1970s, but not nearly to the same extent, and much of it was reversed and the reasons for them mostly eliminated by the mid-1980s. (In the 1980s Ireland went precisely in the opposite direction, pursuing austerity and disinflation with Germanic determination, at the cost of very high unemployment. It makes for an illuminating contrast with Greece.) In Greece and many developing countries, there were also nationalisations, new state-owned enterprises, and state assumption of debt in the distressed private sector — which in Greece amounted to 32% of GDP by 1989.
After 1980, Greece also transformed into the most strike-prone country in Western Europe in the overall period 1980-2008:

[Source]

[Source]

Economic growth in Greece, like elsewhere, slowed down in the 1970s, which was inevitable as the country converged with northern Europe. (In econ-growth pidgin: in postwar period the European countries including Greece were in rapid transition from a lower steady-state to a higher steady-state.) But the Greek economy surely grew less in the 1980s than potential, especially given the mini-divergence from Spain and Portugal after 1980 :

[Chart based on Maddison Project data]

The three countries had shared a parallel growth path and faced similar adjustment issues in the 1970s. But maybe the incentives were different: Greece was already a member of the EEC by 1981, whereas Spain and Portugal were aspirants who only acceded in 1986. Nevertheless, it appears, unlike Spain and Portugal which also became democracies in the mid-1970s, political liberalisation made matters considerably worse in Greece.
(4)
But far more important for the long run than PASOK’s macroeconomic populism, which by itself could have been a fleeting phenomenon, was the radical transformation of Greek party politics amounting to a reorganisation of the state. The political-institutional changes of the 1980s, in combination with the perverse Eurozone incentives of the 2000s, are the cause of Greece’s fiscal pathology.
Greek analysts endlessly navel-gaze about their country’s political culture of clientelism, and it’s pretty clear that Greece ever since becoming independent of the Ottomans has always had a politics of patronage. And the “Currency Committee” that rigidly set postwar lending policies did have cronies (e.g., army officers, agricultural cooperatives, shipping magnates, etc). But clientelism had been mostly an intimate sort of cronyism based on person-to-person contacts, with individual patrons doling out spoils from the public coffer to local clients in backrooms. This traditional clientelism was revolutionised by PASOK into a highly organised, partisan machine politics which infiltrated nearly every institution of society. Schools, universities, trade unions, business associations, private companies, state-owned businesses, the civil service, local governments, these did not so much become ideologically polarised, as simply turned into vehicles of party politics.
Don’t political parties everywhere have special interest groups and other socioeconomic constituents ? Yes, but what happened in Greece in the 1980s seems something special, a degree of politicisation of society that one normally finds only in one-party states and under “corporatism” — except Greece has had since 1974 a genuine and highly competitive two-party system. Here’s a trenchant summary from Mavrogordatos :

And the spoils distributed through these organisational networks were not merely cash transfers and pay increases, but also public sector jobs, lax enforcement of tax and other laws, special exemptions from regulations, etc.
PASOK’s centre-right opponent New Democracy mostly joined the clientelistic fray when it was returned to power, rather than counteract the system, despite several attempted reforms. So the state became “competitive bipartite clientelist”. This Greek peculiarity is well illustrated by what happened with the trade unions, after PASOK required them to adopt the proportional representation system of voting. Again from Mavrogordatos:

Therefore the trade unions did not become special interests of one party, which might be thought more normal, but literally turned into microcosms of the party system. So it’s not surprising that Afonso et al. find the degree of clientelism in Greece to be well beyond the norm in Western Europe, whether measured in terms of the percentage of political party members in the electorate, or in terms of the European rankings in the “pervasiveness of party patronage”. I don’t think those metrics really capture the degree of clientelism in Greece, but this “democratic Peronist” system seems to build in an unusually large upward bias toward fiscal profligacy. Alogoskoufis 2012 finds that in Greece between 1975 and 2009,
 

• the primary (non-interest) deficit as % of GDP trended upward, averaging 0.3-0.4% per year, and the trend was driven by primary expenditure, not falling revenue;
• the “primary deficit is higher by between 1.5 and 3 percentage points of GDP in an election year”, and was driven by expenditure, not tax cuts;
• in non-election years, both parties show modest debt stabilisation behaviour, mostly through tax increases rather than spending cuts;
• the Maastricht Treaty (stipulating the criteria for Eurozone accession) had a restraining effect on Greek fiscal behaviour in the 1990s by both parties, with slightly more than half of the deficit reduction coming from revenue increases and the rest from spending cuts;
• there are “no partisan effects on the primary deficit”, meaning the long-term trend for fiscal deficits is independent of which of the two major parties (PASOK and ND) held power;
• (however, another paper, taking into consideration tax evasion as a determinant of deficits, notes that there were modest partisan effects, with the centre-right party as the bigger offender!)

How does that compare with other countries ? Comparisons with developed countries aren’t really straightforward, because they can typically “afford” bigger national debts (cf. Japan !!!) thanks to capital markets’ confidence in the their taxing ability. So rich countries may face a bigger incentive to borrow. Nonetheless the electoral effects on budget balances are clearly bigger in Greece than in other OECD countries, even taking into account the impact of European growth on the Greek economy.
Unless otherwise noted, I draw on Shi & Svensson, “Political Budget Cycles: A Review of Recent Developments“, for the following results. For OECD countries in 1960s-80s, budgets deficits in election years were higher by approx. 0.6% of GDP. But these effects are very sensitive to time periods sampled. For example, Andrikopoulos et al. could find no electoral effect within the EU as a whole in 1970-98. Also, according to Alesina et al., there were partisan effects on the electoral budget cycles of OECD countries, which were strongest in multiparty coalitional governments — which Greece has not had until 2014.
As for developing countries, per Shi & Svensson, 0.6% of GDP is reported for a smallish sample. Pretty hefty effects (around 6%) are found for years just prior to elections in Latin America, but these are followed by even bigger retrenchments in the subsequent year, for a small net negative effect. Another study for Latin America removing pseudo-democracies that held elections (like Mexico under the PRI) show positive 1% or so. For 44 sub-Saharan African countries the electoral effect was 1.2% of GDP. It’s possible, however, these electoral effects are driven by new democracies, and the political budget cycle diminishes with the age and “quality” of democracy.
But it’s difficult to say whether that’s true for Greece :

[Source]

There was a dip in primary deficits in the 1990s, as there was a national consensus to qualify for Eurozone membership, but the electoral cycles are still pronounced even then. In the 2000s the upward movement in primary deficits resumed, and deficits ticked up near each election (2004= rose by 3.2% of GDP, 2007=1.5%).
How ever one looks at it, the electoral effects on budget deficits in Greece are unusually large for an OECD country, overwhelming the less profligate off-years and creating an upward trend. So it’s only a question of whether Greece might have “matured” into behaving more like other OECD countries in the absence of moral hazards from Europe in the 1980s and 2000s.
In part 2, I will speculate on that question, and also why Greece settled on “democratic Peronism” as a political equilibrium. (Hint: it’s probably not because of actual income inequality.)

http://pseudoerasmus.com/2015/02/23/greece-orthodoxy-peronism/

[Маркс]

Repolitización: La crisis griega es de voluntad política, no económica. 

¿Qué ha logrado Syriza en la reunión del Eurogrupo del viernes?

¿Quién es el vencedor de la reunión del Eurogrupo del pasado viernes? ¿Y quién el perdedor? La cuestión está mal planteada, pues si y quién exactamente qué ha conseguido en Bruselas no es sólo un asunto del conflicto en torno del programa de préstamos para Grecia y las discutidas condiciones de recortes. Anda aquí harto más en juego: la política europea ante la crisis, el balance de poder en la UE y la credibilidad de un curso neoliberal de las cosas que, aun habiendo sido desenmascarado hasta extremos penosos, sigue determinando el escenario. Solo que no de forma incontestada. Ya no.

Ante el compromiso alcanzado el viernes, además, apenas cabe otra cosa que reflexiones provisionales. En efecto, ya en la noche del próximo martes tendrá que salvarse el siguiente gran obstáculo: las “instituciones” y los ministros europeos de finanzas tendrán que aprobar las propuestas procedentes de Atenas. “Si la lista no es aprobada, el acuerdo estará muerto”, ha declarado el ministro griego de finanzas Yanis Varoufakis. La decisión de que Grecia pueda ser “coautora de las reformas y de su propio destino” está, así pues, lejos de haber sido definitivamente tomada.

Sin embargo, puede decirse que en la noche del pasado viernes se puso la semilla del triunfo de Syriza. El nuevo gobierno de Atenas ha ganado un cierto margen, en otras, en materia de excedentes primarios y, parcialmente, de condiciones de recortes. Es verdad: eso no significa un golpe liberador; las viejas reglas siguen vigentes, la cosa apenas es un poco más fácil. Pero: el partido de la izquierda radical griega he demostrado, frente a la línea intransigente de Berlín, quién tenía realmente un interés en el común acuerdo, lo que en la lidia pública por atraerse apoyos no es poca cosa. Y además: Syriza ya ha hecho en las cuatro semanas que lleva en el gobierno mucho más por el cambio en la política de gestión de la crisis que lo que habían hasta ahora conseguido todas las izquierdas europeas (incluidos quienes, no siempre propiamente, por tales se tienen). Ese cambio de rumbo urgentemente necesario no es, desde luego, un proyecto de pocas semanas, y no es ciertamente un proyecto que pueda lograrse en el marco de unas dificilísimas negociaciones para la extensión del programa de préstamos de un país.

La cosa no ofrece duda: Syriza será criticada desde la izquierda. Perfectamente. Me parece, incluso, necesario. El Partido Comunista griego (KKE), inveteradamente abroquelado contra todo compromiso, ya se ha manifestado en contra el sábado por la mañana. Vendrán más. El curso que sobre todo ha representado Varoufakis no lleva derechamente, en efecto, a una “nueva constitución de Europa” instituida bajo signos totalmente diferentes, ni menos a un socialismo instantáneo fantaseado en los despachos, y probablemente Syriza se verá obligada incluso a renunciar a algunas de sus planeadas medidas de urgencia.

Y sin embargo: el ganar tiempo es más que un mero aplazamiento para un proyecto “meramente reformista”; es una vía rodeada de todo punto necesaria. Ni han sido orillados los peligros de derechización que la profundización de la crisis entraña –tal sería, sin la menor duda, el resultado de una bancarrota pública y una salida de Grecia del euro—, ni puede decirse seriamente que haya ahora mismo mayorías sociales a escala europea a favor de otra UE, de una UE nueva. Sólo que Syriza no puede esperar. El precio a pagar por ello sería insostenible: una “crisis humanitaria” de la que la mayoría de los observadores fuera de Grecia apenas si pueden llegar a hacerse una idea realista.

Por ultimo, pero no a modo de conclusión: la tarde-noche de Bruselas se lleva consigo al obturador de que disponía el neoliberal Berlín. Por lo pronto, el Niet de Schäuble naufragó en el escenario europeo la semana pasada: todo un éxito frente al intento de imponerse con una política de chantaje a toda idea o compromiso alternativos. En segundo lugar, en el juego de poder de la UE, se ha robustecido el peso de la “Europa política” de la Comisión frente a la “Europa financiera” del Eurogrupo y del Ministerio de finanzas alemán. Tercero: el curso impulsado determinantemente por los ultras de Schäuble ha sido desenmascarado en la discusión sobre la extensión del programa de préstamo. Ni las propuestas de Atenas estaban tan “equivocadas”, según se complacía en afirmar aquí la opinión publicada alemana, ni las angosturas político-económicas de la austeridad pueden defenderse frente a una realidad que ha dejado patentemente claras la consecuencias de ese curso. Y cualquiera de verdad interesado en saber, puede ahora ver con sus propios ojos que el aserto “No hay alternativa” es una mentira política: recientemente, Berlín se ha manifestado a favor de aligerar las “condiciones extremadamente duras” de un crédito del FMI a Ucrania, a fin de “no desestabilizar la política interior” del país.

¿Qué ha logrado, así pues, Syriza? El gobierno de Atenas ha impulsado la repolitización de la gestión de la crisis en la UE, lo que también ha contribuido a mejorar las circunstancias políticas de las izquierdas en el resto de países. Syriza ha quebrado el muro de imperiosidad de un burocratismo neoliberal que, sobre desconocer todo lo que no sean Memoranda, Tratados o parámetros técnicos, se complace engolosinado con un dogmatismo de la austeridad al que, a la vista de su hoja de resultados, habría que calificar de ridículo, si no fuera porque el poder político de ese credo de yerros causa tanta desdicha social y económica.

En lo que hace a las condiciones de los acreedores, se pueden –tal es el mensaje del viernes por la noche— negociar políticamente a partir de ahora, aun cuando el lado alemán quería evitar eso a toda costa. En lo que hace a los resultados de las exigencias de privatización; a la cuestión de por qué tras años de “ahorro” la montaña de deudas no ha dejado de crecer; al papel de valores europeos como el de la dignidad humana, la seguridad social y las buenas condiciones de trabajo frente al principio de la austeridad; en lo que a todo eso hace, ya ahora comienza a hablarse de muy distinta forma a como solía antes de las elecciones griegas. Y todo eso es, precisamente desde la perspectiva de las debilidades propias de la izquierda en la crisis, muy otra cosa que nada.

Tom Strohschneider es un analista político alemán que escribe regularmente en el semanario de izquierda Freitag y en el diario, cercano al partido Die Linke (el partido hermano en Alemania de Syriza), Neues Deutschland.

http://www.sinpermiso.info/textos/index.php?id=7765

[muyuu]

Parece que habrá extensión del rescate.

De entrada el gobierno griego se compromete a respetar las privatizaciones. Al parecer subirán el IVA también. Siguen las declaraciones de intenciones respecto al fraude fiscal pero esto es algo que llevan diciendo los gobiernos griegos desde siempre y nunca se ha sacado una cantidad significativa por ahí.

Ahora habrá que esperar un poco a ver qué se formaliza exactamente.

Lo que se omite, cosa que tras ver las primeras apariciones en Bruselas de Varoufakis me resulta un poco curiosa, es el hecho de que sin quitas Grecia no podrá pagar esta deuda y eso lo sabe todo el mundo.

¿Esto lo va a comprar el electorado de Syriza y su propia coalición? Si es así me quito el sombrero ante su capacidad de convicción.

[CHOSEN]

Esta clarisimo.
Al igual que hemos visto en Grecia, la pasteurización de la prima de riesgo española está servida tras el CPM de Podemos. Lo único que necesita el eurocore es dejar que los fantasiítas se estrellen con la realidad de unos mercados en desbandada.
Europa ni siquiera tendrá que negociar.
Sera el fragmentado e ingobernable parlamento español el que llame a su puerta pidiendo eurobonos.

Vendrá de fuera y será en Octubre.

[Mad Men]

Algunos mitos falsos sobre la economía griega

http://www.elconfidencial.com/economia/2015-02-24/algunos-mitos-verdaderamente-falsos-sobre-la-economia-griega_716990/#

[Republik]

Como no puedo escribir al Sr Sánchez porque no sé dónde para, lo deo aquí.

Efectivamente la recaudación helena no es en absoluto baja. Pero , y ya lo he dicho más veces, ni la estadísticas griegas ni las nuestras son de fiar. Por eso me molestan tanto los que fingen creerlas y sobre ellas construyen teorías extravagantes.

Hace años sostenía yo, ya en el foro de Burbuja, que las cifras del PIB griego, que oficialmente ha rozado los 240.000M, eran falsísimas y deberían reducirse a la banda 175-190.000 (donde están ahora). Para el español mi apuestason €930.000M para fin de 2015 si todo va bien  y eso porque algo vamos a mejorar este año pese a todo lo mal que van muchas cosas y a lo incierto del futuro más allá del año electoral, que siempre es de regar las plantas para que luzcan bien.

Entonces hay que realcular todas las cifras y nos sale para España y ya con 2014 cerrado con mejoras sustanciales de recaudación (en 2015 llegaremos a unos 415.000M si nada se tuerce), un 44% o algo similar, que no es mal logro.

Grecia ha apretado mucho a sus contribuyentes y está, eso en casi todo lo macro relativo a fiscalidad, mejor (es como si España hubiese hecho un reformón de pensiones y adminiatraciones que de momento viene esquivando).

Y es fácil ver la falsedad pero a algunos no les interesa, de hecho García Domínguez se adhiere al mantra "por cada euro que Grecia ha dejado de gastar se han evaporado 1,7 de PIB"), lo que es sorprendente porque revelaría una pericia pública helena en materia de elección de destino del gasto que ni se adivina en países ricos y desarrollados. Pero le vale para apuntalar sus creencias y punto.

[Mad Men]

Como no puedo escribir al Sr Sánchez porque no sé dónde para, lo deo aquí.

Efectivamente la recaudación helena no es en absoluto baja. Pero , y ya lo he dicho más veces, ni la estadísticas griegas ni las nuestras son de fiar. Por eso me molestan tanto los que fingen creerlas y sobre ellas construyen teorías extravagantes.

Hace años sostenía yo, ya en el foro de Burbuja, que las cifras del PIB griego, que oficialmente ha rozado los 240.000M, eran falsísimas y deberían reducirse a la banda 175-190.000 (donde están ahora). Para el español mi apuestason €930.000M para fin de 2015 si todo va bien  y eso porque algo vamos a mejorar este año pese a todo lo mal que van muchas cosas y a lo incierto del futuro más allá del año electoral, que siempre es de regar las plantas para que luzcan bien.

Entonces hay que realcular todas las cifras y nos sale para España y ya con 2014 cerrado con mejoras sustanciales de recaudación (en 2015 llegaremos a unos 415.000M si nada se tuerce), un 44% o algo similar, que no es mal logro.

Grecia ha apretado mucho a sus contribuyentes y está, eso en casi todo lo macro relativo a fiscalidad, mejor (es como si España hubiese hecho un reformón de pensiones y adminiatraciones que de momento viene esquivando).

Y es fácil ver la falsedad pero a algunos no les interesa, de hecho García Domínguez se adhiere al mantra "por cada euro que Grecia ha dejado de gastar se han evaporado 1,7 de PIB"), lo que es sorprendente porque revelaría una pericia pública helena en materia de elección de destino del gasto que ni se adivina en países ricos y desarrollados. Pero le vale para apuntalar sus creencias y punto.

Buen aporte Republik.
 
Por curiosidad, de donde saca las fuentes (o las fórmulas) para corroborar un PIB de 930.000?

Es que me parece un número muy preciso.