Yannis Varoufakis: The Greek economy is finished …. This is our Great Depression

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 18/06/2012

Reporter: Leigh Sales

With a pro-bailout and pro-austerity party claiming victory in the Greek election, economist Yanis Varoufakis joins us from Athens to reflect on what the result means for the economy and the Eurozone.

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Joining us now from Athens is the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis.

The obvious question is: what happens now?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS, ECONOMICS, ATHENS UNIVERSITY: Well, the derailment of the train that is the eurozone, which started with Greece and then other carriages started leaving the tracks sequentially – Ireland, Portugal, now Spain – is continuing. And yesterday’s vote is not going to change that at all. All exuberance and celebrations are completely and utterly misplaced. I’m afraid that the eurozone and

Meet the Greek Leader Who Sent Global Markets Reeling

The man behind much of Tuesday’s market selloff is a 37-year-old Greek named Alexi Tsipras, the leader of the Coalition for the Radical Left.

Louisa Gouliamaki | AFP | Getty Images Left Coalition Party Leader, Alexis Tsipras

When handed the right to try and form a coalition government in Greece, he told the world that the Greek bailout agreement is “null and void” and should be abandoned.

This sent global markets reeling because he could potentially unleash a series of events that would force Greece to leave the euro zone.

Besides abandoning the bailout, Tsipras said he’d like to nationalize the banks permanently, restore all salaries and pensions to their previous higher levels and bring back collective bargaining rights.

Money Aplenty for Politicians: Let the rest eak cake

Another €10 million dished out to Greek political parties

They got paid once for the upcoming elections by voting an amendment in the late hours of the night at the beginning of April. Not satisfied with the necks they sucked on the first time, the Greek vampire politicians are set to obtain extra funding to the tune of €10 million. Whatever the case may be, it was a contingency measure, you see.

The first time round, MPs voted to divert funds from debt installments owed to banks in order to finance political parties in view of the elections of May 6. The official explanation for the extra cash was  «in order to secure the conditions for continuity of political parties in the national elections.»

Yes, people were outraged, but who gives a cowpat over at the IMF or the European Commission? We

The Truth about Greece

Prometheus Bound: The titan who stole fire from Zeus to give to mankind is punished. Ring a bell? (painting by Elsie Russell)

Comment by MySatelite: «My name is Dimitris and I come from Greece». This is the opening of a message in a bottle, a cry not for help but for empathy and awakening written by someone called Dimitris, your average, Greek everyman. This is the situation in Greece put simply. It’s illustrated, straight-forward, short and readily comprehended by a 10-year-old. Ok, it has some grammatical inconsistencies and one or two typos, but nothing that impedes understanding.

For once, let go of your stereotypes, the ones the media have instilled in all of us and read something which actually states facts and a reality Greeks have to face on a daily basis. Read Dimitris’s message below and pass it on, for the sake of our children and yours.

The videos of Greece you won’t see

The news won’t mention much other than how Athens burned last night. The news never mentions how millions took to the streets yesterday all over Greece to demand elections, to ask for a referendum, to quit the Euro, to revert back to the drachma. The news never shows what really happens, but chooses to show what it has been told to show.

Well, these are the videos you won’t see on your TV set. Please let everyone know that Greeks aren’t dumb, they see who the measures are for and know that the people implementing them are no longer

Greek prime minister warns of March default

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos has said Greece may default on its debts in March unless unions accept further cuts to salaries.

Mr Papademos said more cuts were needed to avoid exiting the eurozone.

Analysts say the warning is to prepare Greece for more austerity measures.

Will the euro be destroyed by ideologues?

An end to the Eurozone would mean a wave of bank collapses and a recession that would affect the world for a decade.

If the European Central Bank does not write down debt in countries like Greece and Italy, it could result in a double-dip recession in the eurozone that spills over into the rest of the world [GALLO/GETTY]

We could be living through the last days of the euro. That is not a happy thought. While there were many negative aspects to the rules governing the European Central Bank (ECB) and the eurozone economies, no one can want to see the economic chaos that will almost certainly follow the collapse of the euro.

There will likely be a wave of bank collapses as banks are forced to write down much of the debt they hold in Italy, Ireland and other heavily indebted countries. This would bring about another Lehman-type situation where finance freezes up. Banks would stop lending to each other and even healthy businesses would find it difficult to obtain credit.

THE ANSWER (To Whom Do We Owe This Money, Exactly?)

Children have a terrifically simple way of exploring the limits of adult knowledge. They do so by asking a question, then responding to each new piece of data with “but, why?”. The almost inevitable ending to this line of questioning is either “because I said so” or “I don’t know, that’s just how it is”.

I seem to have a elicited a similar response when, on Friday, I posted the blog “To Whom Do We Owe This Money, Exactly?” Since then, that post has been read by 20,000 people on the blog (and many thousands more via a circulating viral email). I have received many hundreds of responses whether by direct comment, email, Facebook or Twitter. The blog has been re-tweeted 1,000 times and shared on Facebook 1,200 times – before being flagged as abusive! The responses almost universally accept that the research is accurate.

The answer is: we owe this money, primarily, to the financial sector we went into debt to bail out.