FDR once famously said, “You have nothing to fear but fear itself.” What passes for our Prime Minister here in Greece totally reversed this dictum and made a speech with the purpose of instilling the fear of hell into his subjects… sorry, I suppose I mean citizens. But do I?

Anyhow, he subjected us to a whole gruesome tirade of how hellish things will be if we don’t sign up to Germany’s latest demands to annihilate our economy. Hunger, cold, violence and such. Absolute intimidation of a people rendered helpless by the politicians and technocrats in charge. He even went so far as to publish a time schedule of how in a few weeks, say, there would be no food, a few months down the line looting would break out and so on and forth. Calculated to the time and day. As you would expect from any self respecting technocrat.

What he failed to say was that when we submit to the new demands, things will be pretty much the same if not far far worse. What he also failed to say was that a large slice of the population is already going cold and hungry and with no prospects, and that petty theft, is already spiraling up. As a result of the policies already imposed on Greece by Germany. And given that these latest demands are even worse, we will be plunged into hell even without an ‘official’ bankruptcy.

In his lovely little time schedule of how things will play out if we do default now, he forgot to mention one detail. That in this rioting and looting and mayhem that will break out, there will also be (without fail!) the lynching of corrupt politicians and of those instrumental in the destruction of the Greek Economy. Himself included. Though rumour has it he has his air ticket to Boston permanently in his pocket. I have no way of knowing if this is true of course.

But as to fear, unlike Roosevelt, he wishes to stoke it dangerously. He wants to reduce the Greeks to a cowering fearful mass of kow towers obedient to The Frau’s dictates. When it is common knowledge that in her infinite wisdom The Frau has decides to ‘make an example’ of Greece. Treat her so badly and viciously and violently, grind her into pulp, so that no one else in her growing Reich will ever dare go against her wishes.

This is in fact what German policy was in the war. Make an example of them!! For every German soldier killed, annihilate 10 villages, kill off all the men, destroy their very existence! (And by the way the Germans never did pay reparations to Greece for all that.) So this is German policy all over again.

Lela Karayanni was a young woman who, in April 1941, when the German tanks started trundling into Athens was not overcome with fear. Contrary to what Mr Papdemos wants to turn us into here, she was proud and fearless. She committed the first act of defiance against the German occupation of Greece. As the tanks trundled into Athens through Patission Street, totally unarmed, in an act of total defiance, she threw herself against the tank and was squashed to death. But she lit the spark of defiance which grew into a forest fire. and ultimately prevailed

A street has been named after her near where she committed her act of defiance. Apart from that she has receded from our memories. However, Mr Papademos, perhaps we should do well to remember her now. She gave her life for the nation. Fearlessly. Intimidation may work to a certain degree but it does have a tendency to back fire.

And remember, Lela Karayanni showed us what ‘you have nothing to fear but fear itself’ means in practice.

So where conspiracy theories are concerned I have been wrong. Yes, indeed, Greece is the first victim of a horrible conspiracy. A conspiracy to restore Communism but not only to eastern Europe where it used to be but to the whole of Europe this time.

The theory goes like this . The Frau is an Ossie. She grew up and was educated in East Germany, Communist Germany. Her vision and driving force is how to bring this system back and pull the USA down too in the process. She wants revenge on the enemy, the USA, and restoration of the system she adores.

Having taken the reins of power in the new reunited Germany and then by degrees having taken over the whole of the European Union she has set about her devious plan to restore Communism by democratic means.

And Greece is about to show how. At her insistence the country is being pushed further and further into deep depression. After ruining the Greek economy with austerity and prohibition of growth through these policies she has now come up with even more destructive austerity, slashing wages even further, destroying the last vestiges of welfare and increasing taxation beyond belief.

Greece will hold elections. Sooner or later. Perhaps by the Summer even. The way things have gone and are going, there will be such a swing to the left that minds will boggle. This will also be ‘contagious’ like the sovereign debt crisis. All over the European Union co-opted by The Frau and submitted to Pinochet style austerity, left wing and Communist parties will flourish.

The European Union through The Frau’s jackbooted austerity will become a deep red Soviet Union. And this will of course take down the USA too. 

Well it sure does make sense of what is being done to Greece by Germany! And it will work. If current opinion polls are anything to go by!

At the moment the Greek political establishment, or what passes for such, has been plunged into a terrible dilemma. To go noisily or to go quietly.

So we are faced with a difficult dilemma. We may have absolutely nothing else left but we do have the vocabulary to deal with it all.

Dilemma is a Greek word. So is Crisis, Tragedy and of course Catastrophe. Europe, which is also a Greek word, straight out of Greek mythology, might stop for a moment to ponder these foreign words to them and think of what they may really mean.

Hubris, Nemesis, Catharsis.

The Eurogeeks acting under The Frau’s iron fisted command are being extremely generous.  They will be committing themselves to ‘lending’ Greece something like 130 billion Euro, now that we have agreed to plunge our Economy into even deeper recession to please them.

Generosity indeed! Because, well, we may not be defaulting in March perhaps, but there’s no way these extra billions are ever going to get paid back now that we are being tied into a straight jacket to ensure we cannot work to produce anything with which we could try paying off our debts.

So why give us the money at all if the conditionality is to make sure Greece will never be able to repay? Now there are some sneaky people who say they are only doing this in order to get their grubby little hands on Greece’s mineral wealth. Which is far from negligible. Particularly in light of the gas and oil deposits that seem to exist under our seabeds, not unlike those recently discovered in Cyprus.

Unfortunately I don’t believe that. If that was why they were lending these sums they knew they would get back by looting our mineral wealth (sort of acting like grand loan sharks) there would be some sense to it. It may have been underhand and sneaky, but at least it would amount to a logical reason.

The real trouble is that The Frau and her coterie, seem totally unversed in how the economy really works, rather than how she would like it to work. That is by frog marching the whole of Europe to her own personal tune, and viciously punishing anyone who might dare to stray from her command.

The New York Times has an editorial today under the title The Greek Tragedy. In it they refer to, “Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, the main architect of Europe’s disastrous mismanagement of the Euro zone debt crisis…” need I say more?

So Greece, or rather Greece’s bankrupt political system, is all set to sign a vicious agreement in order to secure a new ‘bail out’. That is we are not only signing away any possibility we may have had of turning our economy around, and for all talk of a ‘haircut’, our overall debt is set to grow even further. And our GDP is set to sink even further. So, of course, not only will our Debt to GDP ratio soar (ha ha ha for all those forecasts of 120% by 2020!!! Unless they have slipped a few zeros and mean 120,000% Okay then, maybe), but also the deficit will balloon!

Because all this is so ludicrous, so cruel and even criminal, rumours are whizzing around that these devious Euroautocrats really don’t want to fork out the money for the bail out. Particularly since China is not as daft as The Frau imagined and does not seem inclined to bankroll her crazy hair brained policy or rather lack thereof. And that since they want to put the blame of failure squarely on Greek shoulders, they are insisting on all these savage and counter productive terms so that Greece will be unable to accept them.

Another conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are concocted because people need to find logic in the madness. Unfortunately there is no logic. Only madness. And this latest ‘bail out’ is the result of this madness. And possibly of  tenacious European illusions of grandeur. A grandeut that no longer exists.

Once again Professor Yanis Varoufakis has put it in a nutshell. I urge you to watch his interview on CNBC.

Greece is facing a dilemma. A simple one really. Either we accept the destructive terms of the new loan and crash completely in a few months. Or else we don’t accept this new poison and crash in a month. Not much to chose from.

Only in the first case we crash on our own and all that is left of Greece is what can be found in the history books. A bit like Carthage. Whereas in the second case we crash like Samson and take the Temple of Euroland down with us. Again Greece will be consigned to the history books.

Or perhaps not the history books but the Economics manuals. Under How NOT to manage a sovereign debt crisis.

Today I would like to share with you an incredible cartoon representation of the European Economic Crisis by the Irish Economist David McWilliams ‘Europe’s Austerian State of Play‘, relayed through Professor Yani Varoufakis’ Site. Enjoy it!

P.S. At the risk of sounding perhaps a little bit conceited, I couldn’t have put it better myself! (Well for starters I can’t draw, but be that as it may.)

Okay. Another ‘crucial’ weekend of high level talks on how to resolve the Greek debt crisis. Whatever is decided and however that is implemented, whether orderly, disorderly, comically or tragically, the result will be the same. The Greek economy will have the final nail hammered into its cheap plywood coffin.

Incidentally, can anyone explain why, although it had been decreed that the new loan would be 130 billion Euros it has now gone up to 145 billion? And can anyone explain why this figure is any more valid than the previous or next one which is bound to follow?

And while we are at it, can anyone explain what good it is to write down (one hopes!) 100 billion Euro of debt only to take on 145 billion Euro of debt? Does this not increase the debt? But how do you expect a silly old woman like me to understand high finance?

In any case, since we are doomed whichever way it goes, I would like to dedicate this song to all those who have tried to change the system from within. Leonard Cohen’s ‘First we take Manhattan’. In particular I would like to dedicate it to the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

The Greek Economy is dead. Why keep whipping it so savagely? It certainly wont come to life that way. If you really do want to resuscitate it, try throwing away the whip and giving it the kiss of life.

And besides, no one ever got their money back from a dead horse. A dead economy is no different.

Mr Poul Thomsen is the IMF prong of the three pronged harpoon sticking it into Greece aka the Troika. This gentleman has come in for a lot of bad press here in Greece. Primarily for the recession inducing policies he has been instrumental in imposing but also for his reported brusque and rude manner. He has the image of behaving like a colonial governor at best, a German gauleiter at worse.

However, for all his overbearing manner (and rather inept way of doing his job perhaps) the man has an assignment. This is to implement the provisions of the so called memorandum or contract obligations for the loan granted Greece. So when, for instance, he is told either that one measure he demands will only deepen the recession, or another is constitutionally impossible and he answers ‘I don’t give a damn about that’ (or words to this effect), he is not being abrasive. He is merely trying to do his job.

He is following orders. He may be assisting in the total destruction of a country’s economy, but he didn’t design this. He is only following the orders he has been given. Can’t he understand that the recession he has already achieved, i.e. the free fall the Greek economy is in which looks set to worsen if all he demands is implemented, only ensures that the dreaded default will happen?

It’s not his job to think about things like that. His job is to enforce the terms of the contract. He is only following orders.

Sort of a bit like the Nuremburg plea. Why did you send all these people to the gas chambers? I was only following orders. Couldn’t you see that this was a crime against humanity? I had to carry out my assignment. And stuff like that.

What comes to mind in the way Mr Poul Thomsen is carrying out his duties is that excellent film The Reader. In her defence when the heroine is asked why she sent all these women to the gas chambers, she answers that they kept sending her more and more prisoners and she had to make room for them. How else could she do it? In fact she even turns to the judge in despair and asks, “What would you have done?”

She had an assignment. She carried it out. It was not her concern what happened to these women she packed off to the gas chambers. Her concern was to make room for the new prisoners coming in. That was her assignment.

Now why have I remembered The Reader and the Nuremburg plea of ‘I was just following orders’ in connection with Poul Thomsen of the IMF? Well, he’s just doing his job as best he can like the heroine of The Reader regardless of the consequences.

However, if I am not wrong, the ‘I was just following orders’ is no longer valid where crimes against humanity are concerned. But of course the Nuremburg trials were a long time ago. In another world, in another era. Who gives a damn about human rights any more? Certainly not Poul Thomsen. It isn’t his job to do so and he tells us that to our face.