SYRIZA, Coalition of the Radical Left

https://www.thenation.com/article/195441/syriza-rising

All bets are off as to whether Syriza will be able to implement these promises: the country’s creditors insist they will oppose any attempt by Greece to backtrack from its commitments. But in the eyes of Greek voters, that’s not the biggest wager Syriza has to win. In his televised speech, which was attended by thousands of cheering supporters, Tsipras promised to “cut with a knife” the strings that bind big business to the political establishment. It was one of the many sharp phrases that the party has been using to emphasize its readiness to take on the deep nexus of power in Greece: the oligarchs intertwined with the political class, the banks and the media. Every sale of public assets under the privatization plan mandated by the lenders will be scrutinized. Major weapons contracts will be investigated, as well as an old scandal involving millions in bribes given to Greek politicians by the German telecommunications company Siemens; so will the sudden shutdown of the national broadcaster in the summer of 2013.

This is an explosive shopping list: the business elite in Greece is so profoundly linked with the political class that holding power without its support has been almost unthinkable. At the same time, such a clash with vested interests should have been at the center of the bailout-dictated reforms in the first place. Tsipras might find unlikely allies among Greece’s creditors, should he attempt to put his money where his mouth is.

only have a layman's understanding of the situation in greece, but this party seems exciting. i wonder how much of a ripple effect a leftist government in greece could have on europe in general?

http://elburrito.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NEW-soyrizo-ksa.jpg

those are probably good

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_01/syriza_on_the_brink053852.php

http://inthesetimes.com/article/17561/zizek_greece_syriza

Zizek's take. Pretty straightforward but still interesting.

This seems urgent to me. The idea of Greece challenging austerity and even the notion of the legitimacy of its debts could be a watershed moment. So many countries are caught in Greece's basic situation, and dutifully pay down their unpayable debts every year instead of asking what else is possible

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PSqU9SXkbRE/VMLDX6iGJaI/AAAAAAAAAYI/fgsSYAF6Pts/s1600/001a.png

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30975437

The left-wing party is projected to win about 150 seats, just one short of an absolute majority, though officials say that number could change.

Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras, who has pledged to renegotiate Greece's debt with international creditors, said "today the Greeks wrote history".

The ruling New Democracy party is projected to come a distant second.

Outgoing Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has admitted defeat and phoned Mr Tsipras to congratulate him.

wtf is that comic

bad

This interview with Stathis Kouvelakis gets pretty granular at times, but I found it useful as an overview of Syriza's prospects and internal dynamics: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/01/phase-one/

these guys will definitely change the world

I hope so!

Even if its only a little bit and improves a few peoples lives that would be very good

me too, what's left of it.

the most promising thing about them is that, it seems, they achieved power without the support of the "oligarchs" who have had greek politics on lockdown for years (from what i have gathered through reading about the situation.)

just the feasibility of an alternative is important but of course following through on that is where shit gets real, or not.

idk i thought the zizek piece was not too far off but then i would.

cartoon's funny, mostly for the scribble cloud in the last panel. prescience to be evaluated. whole things pretty inspiring, i have to admit (syriza's success, not the cartoon). but yeah, this is just step one.

i think things will probably get worse there in some ways for some people as a result of this, either that or the threat of it will force compromise at some point like a game of chicken, that's just how power and hierarchy works, you get punished for bucking it or threatened until you're too tired / scared to put up a fight any more. idk it will be interesting to follow i guess.

My impression is that Greece and its politics are in such a mess that a breach from the status quo was necessary and SYRIZA represents the best chance. Whether it leads to lasting change, who knows.

just the feasibility of an alternative is important but of course following through on that is where shit gets real, or not.

― languagelessness (mattresslessness), Sunday, January 25, 2015 5:06 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i worry that inevitable disappointment will feed into a huge right-wing backlash soon enough. but for now this seemed like probably the best possible outcome.

like, i'm not sure if a crisis moment like this represents the best opportunity for the left, but i don't know a ton about the greek situation specifically. the left's rise in latin america (well, parts of it) seems to have taken place in less obviously chaotic conditions.

which nations in latin america should i read about? i haven't paid close attention to latin american politics but am interested

Bolivia.

Paul Mason's take is quite reasonable as usual.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/greece-shows-what-can-happen-when-young-revolt-against-corrupt-elites

"the notion of the legitimacy of its debts" vs. "being cut off from the credit markets which effectively finance its bloated public sector and unbalanced pension system"

And I'm sure Syriza is really interested in solving those problems! Though I suspect they will be eventually.

glib prediction: syriza will precipitate a greek euro exit and some sort of default. this will end up with economic consequences, and then syriza will collapse and one of the usual suspect parties will then attempt to step in to conduct further austerity to "clean things up". i.e. i think every major player actually in some sense wants a renegotiation of debt and greek exit, but none of them are willing to pay the ideological cost of being the ones to advocate it -- so they let the problem fall to syriza, which, once it does its job, they will move against in some fashion.

:-/

https://twitter.com/frbonnet/status/559426331105308672

that's a really lucid account. so syriza's success depends on upcoming elections in italy and spain?

hmmm

I like that they are fighting against "austerity" -- a bad idea which goes against basic economic principles.

But. I doubt that the debts can be handled in a simple manner. Kicking those bastards out is good, but dealing with the problems they caused is another matter.

Italy's Five Star Movement looks burnt out already and there are no General Elections until 2018. Podemos in Spain looks to have some juice, though. Even if they aren't the largest single party you could have an overwhelming majority voting for leftist parties.

Most Greeks do not want to return to the Drachma and it's going to take a while for things like the effective collection of taxes to be introduced. For context, many of the rich have been evading tax for 40+ years and even the ones who are caught ( which has been slowly starting to happen anyway) can expect to string out criminal proceedings for another eight or ten.

It's possible the mainstream European financial system will act punitively, which would be bad for Greece and bad for democracy, but I'd guess the short term objective for Syriza would be to not do anything too radical and try to negotiate some form of debt relief with Germany.

The not so glib prediction is harder.

Syriza do want to be in the Euro, just not at any cost and its about time someone laughed at the market reaction on a daily basis.

I suspect that Syriza has more leeway than some commentators think, based on the fact that the EU will want to prevent a Greek exit at all costs. Previous Greek governments have in theory had a democratic mandate for austerity, hardmanning the new govt straight away would unequivocally send the message that the EU does not give a shit about the democratic wishes of its constituent nations. Which may well be true but would be a very dangerous signal to send out given it would fuel the rise of the Far Right and potentially lead to other exits later down the line.

I mean they're hardly going to write the debt off either so some form of compromise looks likely, I suppose it's a question of how much compromise Syriza will be able to withstand before anger and disillusionment sets in.

or else the EU will let Greece exit and let the consequences lead Spain, Italy, and (gulp) France (in that order) to choose a different route than Greece

They won't leave the EU, nobody wants them to.

Except the guys they've gone into coalition with.

True!

That's unlikely to have been the negotiating point in the coalition though - I imagine things are about to get a little rougher for non-nationals.

First ever 'erratic Marxist' to become finance minister in the EU?

i really don't think that the fate of greece is as tied to spain and italy as it was a few years go.

many of the rich have been evading tax for 40+ years

this is the most insane part of this whole situation

Krugman in the NY Times, briefly touches on taxes, after addressing spending cuts:

In reality, Greece imposed savage cuts in public services, wages of government workers and social benefits. Thanks to repeated further waves of austerity, public spending was cut much more than the original program envisaged, and it’s currently about 20 percent lower than it was in 2010.

Yet Greek debt troubles are if anything worse than before the program started. One reason is that the economic plunge has reduced revenues: The Greek government is collecting a substantially higher share of G.D.P. in taxes than it used to, but G.D.P. has fallen so quickly that the overall tax take is down. Furthermore, the plunge in G.D.P. has caused a key fiscal indicator, the ratio of debt to G.D.P., to keep rising even though debt growth has slowed and Greece received some modest debt relief in 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/opinion/paul-krugman-ending-greeces-nightmare.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

i wonder how you start collecting taxes when you have decades of not doing so, without some kind of revolt

It's a cliche but nobody wants to be the only sucker paying the correct rate of tax. Tolerance for closing down the black money at the lower end of the economic scale is going to be greater if people can see laws being implemented impartially.

The revolt at the upper end of the scale is likely to be moving assets, and whole businesses, to Malta and Cyprus and potentially funnelling more cash into right-wing populism.

One reason is that the economic plunge has reduced revenues

The 'Western World's Fastest Growing Economy' has faced a similar scenario*

(*that's the UK of course)

moving assets, and whole businesses, to Malta and Cyprus

I assume a whole lot of this happened in the run-up to the election

i think that colleague is being carried along on the wave. I think there's a good chance Greece goes if syriza don't

friend of mine complaining about Syriza being pro-Putin, is there any basis to this

It's much more likely that Greece will go before Germany but irrespective of what happens with Greece, Spain and potentially Italy, there will be an impact on the value / credibility of the Euro. German consumers are already seeing their spending power eaten away by the devaluation of the currency against the Dollar and Sterling, though it does present some export opportunities. The challenge will be convincing Germans that they are better off as part of a single currency and not going it alone like the Swiss, who are flying at the moment. It's speculative but I can see the reasoning. Said colleague has €50k in cash under the bed and about eight Euro in their Greek bank account.

Syriza have been hostile to the idea of radically extending sanctions against Russia. Conspiracy theorists tie that back to the supposed influence of Aleksander Dugin, a quasi-fascist pseudo-philosopher who is thought to be close to some of Putin's advisors and has been in contact with Syriza at various points. at the more extreme end, some people view the whole party as a Russian-engineered plots to divide Europe on foreign policy, which is very fanciful. In reality, they aren't any more pro-Putin than the Serb, Czech, Hungarian, etc governments.

I thought the Hungarian PM had made some pro-Putin statements recently, or is that all just window-dressing

My understanding is that Germany has realized significant profits from related EU crises:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/germany-profiting-from-euro-crisis-through-low-interest-rates-a-917296.html
http://en.mercopress.com/2014/09/03/uk-and-germany-main-beneficiaries-of-spain-s-brain-drain
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/b/c1b9a247-6854-402b-beb1-13c6d1ed8077

xp

It seems realistic to me that, if Germany required the EU to choose between forcing Greece out or Germany leaving, Greece would be sacrificed. Germany knows it holds the strongest hand; the only way it can go wrong would be by badly overplaying its strength and looking like an arrogant bully.

lol not like they have a history of that amirite

yeah this isnt that lads, thanks

Yes, they are all more "pro-Putin" than Germany, UK, etc but it's not necessarily a sinister plot. Xp

Those are.double-edged swords though. Germany might be benefiting from the Southern European brain drain but it also has a lot of EU immigrants for low-paying jobs it doesn't necessarily want. Low interest rates are good for government borrowing but not so much for savers in a country where home ownership, mortgages, etc are less of a priority than the UK.

The Euro has slipped from 1.11 to 1.35 vs the pound and had done worse against the dollar. There are benefits but also lots of drawbacks to it falling further. In governemt borrowing alone, if you are paying dollar loans back in Euro and your currency is sliding, it isn't great news.

Greece leaving the euro is probably not going to be allowed happens by Germany. the brinkmanship between the German gauging of what syriza will accept and syriza's domestic positioning as a fantasy govt will decide everything within that outcome by the end of the week.

not calling it tbh if I'd guess it'd be more to Greek satisfaction than the credit controllers. when the guy you've loaned to turns up to the scheduled meeting naked but for a novelty bowtie your money is gone gone, what hold have you got.

^^^

not clear if Germany recognizes that yet but we'll see shortly

this is why the borrower is more powerful than the lender, at least on this scale (and why in jewish history whenever european debt got too high they just expelled the money lenders and wiped the slate clean)

yeah but the Greeks have the secret of fire and mathematics u just can't fuck with that like

Could probably use a bit of help with the mathematics, tbh.

was gonna say I'll be interesting but I guess it won't really until the deal is unveiled. can't see it not disrupting Germany's/ecb's relations with the other financially stormy economies quite significantly, if they try to hold Greece as a special case then the next elections in each of those states will damned sure return special case governments

xp + 65bn while thumbing yr nose is p sound maths imo

How's it going down at home? Presumably not happy about different rules for different countries.

they have that persecution complex to fall back on tho

strong SF growth in the latest polls, so exactly as you'd expect

but its a strange tension. FG I think are best advised to push very hard behind Germany and for stringency. SF OTOH are promising p much what syriza did, if a little eh not less nuts maybe just more vaguely. so the two parties that matter ito next govt aren't exactly chasing the same coin here but its a huge week for how things are gonna go next year (even if not very many are paying a lot of attention yet, that'll change based on the terms agreed if terms are agreed)

again, tension for Germany is that going easily on Greece is very likely to be the impetus for Germany to lose a lot of allies in the next round of elections, not that they wanted to go easy on em anyway. but it is food for thought for those that say they can't/won't let Greece go to the wall. I wouldn't be daring them like syriza are with their pantomime idiocy this week throughout all the meetings.

The whole 'imposing massive austerity will surely solve this crisis' approach badly needs a midcourse correction imo, so Greece may be doing y'all in the irish republic a favor, deems.

the massive austerity has been a healthy corrective to a bloated and careering irish economy, taking the worldwide ructions out of it, imo. or at least its a good deal more complicated than that depiction aimless.

and while there'd be rhetorical murder I dont believe that any benefits extended to Greece now would roll back to a recovering ireland at this stage, that time has gone and it doesn't look much like our govt are even interested in playing that hand in the uncertainty.

here's the thing, locally- any victory for syriza, who I believe to be a bunch of nuts totally incapable of running a country, will be a victory here for sinn fein, who I know to be a bunch of nuts totally incapable of running a country.

Wouldn't SF have to bring in enough center-left coalition partners that they'd be dancing on the edge of dissolution if they screwed it up too badly? Or are there as many leftist fringe parties in eire as in Greece?

Aye, they could always try it with the Green Party (hollow laugh)

its a fair question thats not rly answerable as things are quite unstable. the two parties they could align with to form a stable majority have always viewed them as anathema, tho political realities may bring ff around yet.

they could conceivably cobble a govt with a rump of independents, we're always being promised more independents each election but I fancy that to actually reverse this time around.

I'm open to being surprised tbh, its obvious to me that the current govt have done quite extraordinarily well but if you believe online and media chatter I'm in a public-salaried minority there, which might be a thing.

the fact that a sf coalition with either treaty party can't be discounted at this stage is a startling demonstration of the change in the landscape since the banking collapse btw. its in Germany's interest to strongly support the incumbent govt from now til next march otherwise they'll be ahem fighting on both fronts

@ShariVari: Is Swiss really 'flying' at the moment? I thought they'd been forced to let the currency float after massive speculation against it? I ask because the same thing is beind done to Denmark at the moment, and nobody here can figure out the consequences of that.

d you're making it seem like the choice is between paying the debt and not paying it with comments like "when the guy you've loaned to turns up to the scheduled meeting naked but for a novelty bowtie your money is gone gone, what hold have you got." which is not the case. it's not about paying off all the debt or not. it's about the structure of payment. gdp is at the equivalent of the USA at the trough of the great DEpression:

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/2015/02/blogs/graphic-detail/20150221_gdc500.png

unless greek gdp growth recovers, immiserating greeks won't make much of a difference. some people think the uptick at the bottom of that chart is austerity finally "working." maybe so. the point of austerity is to eventually reduce labor costs to make greece competitive. but unit labor casts have been falling throughout 08-14, but the catch... employment is falling along with it. labor demand slopes down. what's going on?

https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0AwkHuIjZW-0RykmSXXZRqWAEko=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3412094/20150214_gdc778.0.png

I hear you but I'm not sure any of these are on the German scorecard kind of thing

Xp, the perception is that the Swiss consumer has vastly more purchasing power than they did when the Franc was arbitrarily limited. That obviously has cosequences for exports but it's not a huge export country.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2015/02/17/opinion/021715krugman1/021715krugman1-blog480.pnghttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2015/02/15/opinion/021515krugman1/021515krugman1-blog480.png

cunt Robert Peston on 10 o'clock news now barely suppressing a snigger at the prospect of Greece running out of money

Greece survived a more than normally brutal Nazi occupation. They will survive this, too. But not peacefully.

I don't agree, as has been reported, that the greek letter today was a total volte face. it was very carefully worded and germany's rebuttal was very strong. expect france and italy may come onto greece' side now or else things could get very ugly very quickly for greece.

germany's "leadership" in this whole recent episode has been very

yeah it was some weird legal wording thing where they made it sound like they had compromised but hadn't. can't find the link but there was a good business insider post or something parsing it

this is a great read http://rogerfarmerblog.blogspot.ca/2015/02/lessons-from-great-galactic-depression.html

bailout extended for four months hip hip etc.

was this linked here? tremendous recasting of the debt crisis in non-sovereign terms imo

http://blog.mpettis.com/2015/02/syriza-and-the-french-indemnity-of-1871-73/

i thought this was interesting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/business/dealbook/greek-debt-is-vastly-overstated-an-investor-tells-the-world.html

yeah Tracer it has.

this is going to stabilise p much as predicted right? syriza are gonna become new syriza.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/is-the-mystery-woman-in-pulps-common-people-really-the-greek-finance-ministers-wife-10232324.html

this is going to stabilise p much as predicted right? syriza are gonna become new syriza.

― post you had fecund thoughts about (darraghmac), Wednesday, 25 March 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

According to this Syriza are staying as they are - Grexit nearer than ever:

http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/greeces-syriza-party-sticking-script-imf-deal/3717

The Syriza MP has used her office set up three legal processes that could, even now, give the radical left government leverage over its lenders: a “debt truth” committee, a committee to oversee Greek war reparations claims against Germany, and a pipeline of high-level corruption cases targeted around public sector contracts with German firms.

so heartening to see leftists fight dirty

If Syriza breaks up maybe we can import some of these people here.

crunch time.

More crunch: http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/greece-pictures-troubled-country/3900

IMF admits disastrous love affair with the euro, apologises for the immolation of Greece - www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/07/28/imf-admits-disastrous-love-affair-with-euro-apologises-for-the-i/

https://newsocialist.org.uk/syriza-cautionary-tale/