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Varoufakis--treason?--and what about the non-elected puppet masters of Europe? In the aftermath of this weekend's infamous leak of Yanis Varoufakis audio recording with members of OMFIF in which the former finmin admitted to asset managers that in his tenure as a finmin he had engaged in preparations for a return to the Drachma, Greece has been gripped by a media frenzy debating whether Varoufakis will be charged with treason for daring to even contemplate how an exit from the EMU would take place. personally I see the Eurocrats on a steadily embarrassing and debilitating slide into a state of massive financial encumbrance they cannot escape. Bluster will not work in the end--bullying ends in war--something no right thinking person would recommend or want...
To be sure, Varoufakis may have poured the initial gasoline on the fire when he admitted to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard shortly after the recording surfaced that "the context of all this is that they want to present me as a rogue finance minister, and have me indicted for treason. It is all part of an attempt to annul the first five months of this government and put it in the dustbin of history." His concerns were certainly justified: yesterday Kathimerini reported that Greek Supreme Court prosecutor Efterpi Koutzamani on Tuesday took two initiatives in the wake of revelations by former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis that he had planned a parallel banking system: she forwarded to Parliament two suits filed against the former minister last week by private citizens and she appointed a colleague to determine whether any non-political figures should face criminal charges in connection with the affair.
As a further reminder, during the telephone call Varoufakis detailed his plan for a parallel banking system, which would involve a childhood friend, a professor at Columbia University, to hack into the ministry’s online tax system.
What makes matters confusing, is that the core allegation made by Varoufakis, namely that the Troika controls Greece tax revenues and had to be sabotaged, was strictly denied: European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva on Tuesday described as “false and unfounded” Varoufakis’s claims that Greece’s General Secretariat for Public Revenues is controlled by the country’s creditors. In other words, if Andreeva is right, then Varoufakis' transgression of threatening to hijack the Greek tax system was merely hot air, and the former finmin is guilty of nothing more than self-aggrandizement. On the other hand, if Greece does find it has a legal basis to criminally charge Varoufakis with treason merely for preparing for a Plan B, then it brings up an interesting question: if Varoufakis was a criminal merely for preparing for existing the Euro, then comparable treason charges should also be lobbed against none other than Varoufakis' nemesis - Eurogroup president and Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem. Recall from the November 28 post that "Netherlands, Germany Have Euro Disaster Plan - Possible Return to Guilder and Mark", to wit:
This is precisely what Varoufakis was doing too.
Again, precisely like in the Greek scenario. In fact, if throwing people in jail, may round up Wolfi Schauble as well:
Fast forward 3 years when Greece, too, was making preparations for "preventing the breakup of the eurozone" in doing precisely what Schauble wanted as recently as three weeks ago: implementing a parallel currency which would enable Greece to take its "temporary" sabbatical from the Eurozone. So one wonders: where are the legal suits accusing Dijsselbloem and Schauble of the same "treason" that Varoufakis may have to vigorously defend himself in a kangaroo court designed to be nothing but a spectacle showing what happens to anyone in Europe who dares to give Germany the finger,either literally or metaphorically. The answer: nowhere, and they will never appear, because if Varoufakis is indeed sued it will not be because he did something that other much more "serious" Eurocrats haven't considered or done before, but simply to crucify the Greek and make him into a dramatic example for any other "peripheral" (or even core, ahem "Madame Frexit") European who would even consider taking a comparable action on their own and pushing Europe's artificial, and now expiring, monetary union to the edge of collapse. Then again, considering just how badly Europe misjudged the third season of the Greek bailout tragicomedy, it may want to be careful: the last thing it wants is to create a martyr against what increasingly more are calling a fascist oligarchy operating, conveniently enough, out of Belgium, Frankfurt and Berlin, one whose next item on the agenda is taking advantage of the Greek crisis and finally doing away with European state sovereignty altogether handing over control of Europe to a "parliament", one which if the ECB is any indication, will also be run by a few Goldman bankers. |
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Msg # | Subject | Author | Recs | Date Posted |
152079 | Re: Varoufakis--treason?--and what about the non-elected puppet masters of Europe? | scone | 6 | 7/29/2015 6:07:38 PM |
152081 | Re: Varoufakis--treason?--and what about the non-elected puppet masters of Europe? | cluelessmeetoo | 0 | 7/29/2015 6:44:10 PM |