May Greece and Varoufakis now do what Iceland did, repudiate the debt and jail some banksters. The purpose of the forced austerity in Greece is to bail out German banks and has nothing to do with helping Greece. Renegotiating bond debt is common when borrowers can’t msake payments – except when mostly insolvent banks knowingly bought garbage debt and need to pretend the bonds will still be repaid.
Varoufakis says:
“Europe in its infinite wisdom decided to deal with this bankruptcy by loading the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders, the Greek taxpayer. What we’ve been having ever since is a kind of fiscal waterboarding that have turned this nation into a debt colony.”
Today, the people of Greece gave a vote of confidence to hope. They used the ballot box, in this splendid celebration of democracy, to put an end to a self-reinforcing crisis that produces indignity in Greece and feeds Europe’s darkest forces.
The people of Greece today sent a message of solidarity to the North, to the South, to the East and to the West of our continent. The simple message is that the time for crisis-denial, retribution and finger-pointing is over. That the time for the reinvigoration of the ideals of freedom, rationality, democratic process and justice has come in the continent that invented them.
Greek democracy today chose to stop going gently into the night.
Greek democracy resolved to rage against the dying of the light.
Greece’s new leftist prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, is set to announce his anti-bailout government, with the post of economics minister – chief negotiator with the country’s international creditors – going to a radical economist who has described austerity programmes as “fiscal waterboarding”.
With Greece set on a collision course with Europe over the Syriza-led government’s plans to reverse draconian belt-tightening and renegotiate the country’s massive debts, Yanis Varoufakis, who calls himself an “accidental economist”, confirmed in a radio interview that he would take up the key position.