by Joe
Emersberger
Thanks to
the mass media, European elites badly misinform their own people and
get away with a quasi-coup in Greece. A July 10 Yougov poll found
very solid public support in Germany for the Merkel government’s
leading role in the destruction of the Greek economy.
Only 9
percent of Germans blame the Troika - the European Union, European
Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund - for the state of
the Greek economy. The level of ignorance is even worse in Sweden and
Denmark. Only 6 percent and 4 percent in those countries,
respectively, blame the Troika for the crisis in Greece.
In Germany,
59 percent exclusively blame past and present Greek governments for
the crisis. In Sweden and Denmark, 65 percent and 70 percent,
respectively, exclusively blame Greek governments. These numbers are
a grim reminder of how effectively the media undermines democracy.
Consider how
Der Spiegel, a German media outlet, summed things up for its readers:
“From the perspective of most European Union leaders … Greece is
little more than a failed state governed by clientelism and nepotism,
a country whose economy has little to offer aside from olive oil and
beach bars … That was true already five years ago when the
government in Athens admitted to having taken on three times as much
debt as previously disclosed, an admission that triggered the start
of the euro crisis.”
Putting
aside the condescension and near bigotry in the passage above, the
“euro crisis” was actually triggered by a global recession that
struck in 2009. It devastated countries like Spain which, unlike
Greece, had been running budget surpluses and whose governments had
not lied about their finances. Moreover, absolving Greece’s
creditors by saying they were successfully bamboozled until 2010 is
outrageous. Lenders are supposed to identify fraud and bad investment
risks. It’s the socially useful function they supposedly perform.
It gets
worse for the story Der Spiegel sells its readers. Dangerous trade
imbalances within the eurozone - especially in Greece, Ireland and
Spain - had been building for several years before the global
recession. Dean Baker points out that the ECB was too incompetent to
take action. Baker remarks, “Since it is apparently possible to
take away the pensions that Greek people spent their life working
for, some people may want to know if it’s possible to take back the
much higher pensions earned by top officials at the ECB.” ECB
officials need not worry provided they remain shielded by Der Spiegel
and countless similar European outlets. Greek pensioners, on the
other hand, have plenty to endure and worry about. Absolving
creditors for what happened in Greece up to 2010 is ridiculous, but
ignoring their overwhelming culpability for what has happened since
then is on a whole other level of absurdity.
According to
Der Spiegel, “Much had improved before Tsipras took over the
government, to the point that national revenues had finally exceeded
spending. But the Tsipras government loosened up the austerity
regime, unsettled the business sector and consumers with
contradictory announcements, and refused to privatize state-run
enterprises.” The cynicism of this passage would have impressed
Goebbels. It is best exposed by a single chart that Paul Krugman
pointed out. You can literally draw a straight line between the
amount of austerity (budget slashing) the Greek government has
imposed over the past five years (as commanded by the Troika) and its
brutal economic collapse. Greece’s public debt and the cost of
public pensions both increased dramatically relative to GDP as the
economy shrunk. A slow recovery had just begun when Tsipras took
office, but that recovery was supposed to happen years earlier
according to the Troika. Quite simply, the Troika’s orders were
very closely followed and it led to a disaster comparable to the
Great Depression. The polls I cited above show what a fine job the
media in Europe has done to hide this simple truth from its audience,
but there is more.
The long
overdue recovery in Greece was undone by the malevolence of the ECB,
and not, as Der Spiegel claimed, by Tsipras who has only been in
power several months and, it should not even need saying, could never
operate with very much autonomy from his European overlords. As Mark
Weisbrot explained, “Just 10 days after the election, the ECB cut
off its main line of credit to Greek banks, even though there was no
obvious reason to do so. Shortly thereafter, the ECB put a limit on
how much Greek banks could lend to the government – a limit that
the previous government did not have.”
When the
Tsipras government called a July 5 referendum on the Troika’s June
28 “offer” to Greece, the ECB ramped up its aggression and
effectively forced the closure of Greek banks. Unlike people in
Germany and Sweden, Greeks are living the gruesome consequences of
the Troika’s policies and could not be propagandized or intimidated
into voting the way the Troika openly demanded.
The
Economist argued, “No one has suggested having a referendum in
other countries about bailing out the Greeks, for the very good
reason that they know what the answer will be.”
In other
words, Europeans who have been completely misled about the Greek
crisis, and who are shielded from its consequences, are willing
endorse their governments’ cruelty toward Greeks. German officials
have openly boasted about how well protected its economy is against
collapse in Greece – not an empty boast given the reality of the
past several years. People who believe in democracy assume that it
gives voters the most influence on decisions that impact them the
most. That is why nobody would endorse the citizens of Athens
electing the mayor of Berlin and contemptuously disregarding what
Berliners think. Anyone who claims that Germany and its allies are
acting with democratic legitimacy in Greece are endorsing that kind
of nonsense.
In the same
article, the Economist also argued that German banks have not been
bailed out by the Troika: “if only the banks were the creditors,
the whole issue might be easier to deal with. Go back to the 2012
deal; the private sector creditors (the banks) were made to take a
50% write-off…”
As Jerome
Roos pointed out, the bailouts began in 2010, not 2012 as the
Economist pretends, and even IMF economists stated that the 2010
bailouts “only served to delay debt restructuring and allowed many
private creditors to escape … leaving taxpayers and the official
sector on the hook”.
Decent
people in Germany and elsewhere in Europe who want to hold the Troika
accountable and alleviate suffering in Greece should not
underestimate the uphill battle they face against the media at home.
Source:
US media is the same.
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