Greece and the eurozone’s existential crisis

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/15/greece-eurozone-existential-crisis

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If Greece gives in to the demands of the European banks and the IMF, the consequences for its pensioners and other poor people will be worse than anything Draco ever dreamt up. The pensions cut and the VAT increase are favoured by the banks because there will be an immediate impact on those perceived to have benefited immoderately from the government’s profligacy – a benefit not clear to people whose country has already been devastated by cuts.

If the banks give way, however, who will notice? No one in the short term. In the long term, maybe the banks or hedge fund managers may have to adjust their books to reflect a bad investment.

So what are we looking at? Immediate and substantial increases in poverty for a lot of people or a long-term accounting procedure marginally affecting banking and investing institutions. Is there no humanity in the negotiators?

Related: Fears of Greece eurozone exit mount as EU deadline looms

And if Tsipras and Syriza have to answer for the mistakes of their predecessors, don’t we have to balance that against the benefits we’ve had from earlier Greek governments? Greece must pay £1.1bn to the IMF at the end of this month. If all the British billionaires give a million the problem will be solved overnight. I’m just a retired public servant on a pension - but I promise to donate £10 for my debt to each of these people: Homer for his beautiful writing – £10. Cleisthenes and Themistocles for inventing democracy – £20. Pericles for consolidating democratic principles in a fully functioning state – £10. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes for founding our notions of theatre – £40. Phidias for his sculpture and architecture – £10. Herodotus and Thucydides for recording it all for us – £20. Plato and Aristotle for teaching us how to think about all these things - £20. Total: £130.Jack HeeryWirral, Merseyside

• Greece essentially reflects what is happening in the rest of world. Not just the failure of austerity policies, but the deliberate appropriation of people’s prosperity by the banks and multinationals; the manipulation of most politicians being part of this drive. It’s time to face the fact that politics has changed. It is no longer a matter of one party versus another, one ideology versus another. It is the survival of all of us, including the planet, depending on stopping this outrageous and insupportable plunder.Mora McIntyreHove

• Ian Traynor envisages the Greek government issuing IOUs to finance its public sector (Greek exit from euro ‘is likeliest outcome’, 13 June). Abraham Lincoln issued “greenbacks” to finance the war effort in the American civil war without the backing of the banking system. And Hjalmar Schacht’s labour treasury certificates lifted prewar Germany out of very deep economic depression quicker than anywhere else in Europe and the Americas. Traynor rightly remarks that the Greek IOU currency could not be used for international trade, but prewar Germany and some postwar Communist countries have bypassed problems with exchange rates by bartering goods.

This may all part be of the loosening of the grip of the commercial banks control over the creation of money and new era of government-controlled sovereign money spearheaded by Iceland.DBC ReedNorthampton

• You start your report on the IMF pulling out of key negotiations (12 June), with the news of Athens’ failure to compromise over labour market and pension reforms. It could just as easily have said that the elected government of Greece, in sticking to its manifesto, refused, among other things, to cut state pensions by 3.5%, legislate against the right to strike and abolish EKAS – a scheme for permanently disabled people. “Failing to compromise with reforms” uses the language of the powerful not the underdog in this enormously one-sided fight to avoid paying back loans taken out in very dubious circumstances. This language beguiles and disguises at the same time. It seems eminently reasonable to proclaim that we (all) should pay our debts, while clouding the fact that the majority were not invited to the party the money paid for. In Greece the game is explicit; in the UK we seem happy to become complicit in our own fleecing.Terry McGinnBarrowford, Lancashire

• Timothy Garton Ash (Opinion, 15 June) is right to warn of the existential crisis that the European Union will face in the event of Grexit. The EU at present is run largely for the benefit of the big business corporations and banks, rather than the people, as it is the Greek people who are punished with austerity, while the German banks that contributed to the crisis are beneficiaries of the generous bailout funds from the ECB. Can the devastating austerity programme be anything but contrary to the preamble in the original Treaty of Rome in which the member states affirm “as the essential objective of their efforts the constant improvements of the living and working conditions of their peoples”? The EU cannot survive without the consent of the people and this it is in danger of losing with its surrender to the corporatist agenda as demonstrated in the forthcoming TTIP treaty. Anti-EU parties such as the Front National in France can only prosper when the price of continued EU membership is the destruction of the social democratic state, which as in Greece means the effective ending of health provision for all and the destruction of pensions system.Derrick JoadLeeds

Related: Europe must save Greece to save itself | Timothy Garton Ash

• Greece is a country whose buildings and infrastructure have not been shattered by war nor devastated by natural disaster, whose people are vigorous, talented and resourceful, and with a culture that lies at the heart of European civilisation. Is it not time a line was drawn under its debts, its recent financial misdemeanours were forgiven, the sufferings of its people ended, and it was restored to its rightful place as a valued member of the European community? In the way that the Bank of England, by a bit of deft footwork and a hefty chunk of quantitative easing, forgave the misdemeanours of our banks, and cleared their debts to enable them to get back to work again, so the European Central Bank should clear Greece’s debts, and let its people get back to work again. There is nothing magical about money – it is only a lubricant, a tool we use to release the energies of a people. It should not be withheld to punish them. Forgive Greece its trespasses, grant it the money it needs, by some form of European quantitative easing, and let Greece’s agony come to an end. We will all benefit.Tony CheneyIpswich, Suffolk

• The harshness of the Europe towards Greece has already led to increased Russian and Chinese influence in that country. Why has the United States, whose Marshall Aid once saved western Europe, not come to the rescue of Greece? Ralph BlumenauLondon

• In politics what is right is not always expedient and the resentment and even despair shown by the Greek citizens to the continued squeeze on their economy is becoming dangerously counterproductive. Of course Greece should make further reforms to its pensions and social welfare policies but the question is now “how?” and “at what pace?” After the first world war it was right for the victorious allies to force Germany to pay – in Lloyd George’s phrase, “to the uttermost farthing”– but the effect of the draconian policies on the German people was a significant cause of the rise of Hitler and thus of the second world war. Similarly the failure of the west to underpin the Russian rouble at the time of Gorbachev was one reason for the election of Vladimir Putin, the consequences of which we have endured ever since. There needs now to be more sensitive EU, IMF and Eurozone policies towards Greece to enable its reforms to take place within a secure framework.Michael MeadowcroftLeeds

• If Greece is driven out of the eurozone by EU intransigence and self-interest I’ll be voting no in the referendum. Even if Mr Cameron wrings “concessions” from the EU that appear beneficial to our own narrow interests, its actions when one of its members is in trouble are the real test of its value. As of now, that looks nonexistent.John Bishop  Wolverhampton

• If Greece had been on the drachma it would have devalued; its exports would be cheaper, its imports more expensive and employment would increase. Where is the equivalent mechanism in the structure of the euro? Professor AB TurnerBrighton