Thursday, April 28, 2016

Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Thursday, April 28, 2016

Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Thursday, April 28, 2016
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Noam Chomsky: Young Bernie Sanders Supporters are a "Mobilized Force That Could Change the Country"
During an event Tuesday at the Brooklyn Public Library, Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and professor, was asked about Bernie Sanders’ run for the White House. "[H]e’s considered radical and extremist, which is a pretty interesting characterization, because he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat," Chomsky said. "His positions would not have surprised President Eisenhower, who said, in fact, that anyone who does not accept New Deal programs doesn’t belong in the American political system. That’s now considered very radical." Chomsky concluded by noting that Sanders "has mobilized a large number of young people, these young people who are saying, 'Look, we’re not going to consent anymore.' And if that turns into a continuing, organized, mobilized force, that could change the country—maybe not for this election, but in the longer term."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re on the road in our 100-city tour, broadcasting from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Nermeen Shaikh is in New York.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Good morning, Amy. We begin today’s show with Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than half a century. Noam Chomsky has penned more than a hundred books.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this week, Noam Chomsky spoke at the New York Public Library along with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who will join us in a minute in our studio. During the event, Noam Chomsky was asked about Bernie Sanders’ run for the White House.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, Bernie Sanders is an extremely interesting phenomenon. He’s a decent, honest person. That’s pretty unusual in the political system. Maybe there are two of them in the world, you know. But he’s considered radical and extremist, which is a pretty interesting characterization, because he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat. His positions would not have surprised President Eisenhower, who said, in fact, that anyone who does not accept New Deal programs doesn’t belong in the American political system. That’s now considered very radical.
The other interesting aspect of Sanders’s positions is that they’re quite strongly supported by the general public, and have been for a long time. That’s true on taxes. It’s true on healthcare. So, take, say, healthcare. His proposal for a national healthcare system, meaning the kind of system that just about every other developed country has, at half the per capita cost of the United States and comparable or better outcomes, that’s considered very radical. But it’s been the position of the majority of the American population for a long time. So, you go back, say, to the Reagan—right now, for example, latest polls, about 60 percent of the population favor it. When Obama put through the Affordable Care Act, there was, you recall, a public option. But that was dropped. It was dropped even though it was supported by about almost two-thirds of the population. You go back earlier, say, to the Reagan years, about 70 percent of the population thought that national healthcare should be in the Constitution, because it’s such an obvious right. And, in fact, about 40 percent of the population thought it was in the Constitution, again, because it’s such an obvious right. The same is true on tax policy and others.
So we have this phenomenon where someone is taking positions that would have been considered pretty mainstream during the Eisenhower years, that are supported by a large part, often a considerable majority, of the population, but he’s dismissed as radical and extremist. That’s an indication of how the spectrum has shifted to the right during the neoliberal period, so far to the right that the contemporary Democrats are pretty much what used to be called moderate Republicans. And the Republicans are just off the spectrum. They’re not a legitimate parliamentary party anymore. And Sanders has—the significant part of—he has pressed the mainstream Democrats a little bit towards the progressive side. You see that in Clinton’s statements. But he has mobilized a large number of young people, these young people who are saying, "Look, we’re not going to consent anymore." And if that turns into a continuing, organized, mobilized—mobilized force, that could change the country—maybe not for this election, but in the longer term.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he’s taught for more than half a century. He spoke earlier this week at the New York Public Library as part of the "LIVE from the NYPL" series, along with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who is here in the United States promoting his new book titled And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future. Varoufakis served as the Syriza party’s first finance minister after the left-wing party took power in 2015, after promoting an anti-austerity platform. ... Read More →

Former Greek Finance Minister: Massive IMF Bailouts are "Ponzi Austerity" Scheme
As the White House is backing calls for Greece to continue to implement widespread austerity measures, we spend the hour with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. Earlier this week, negotiations between Greece and international creditors hit an impasse over the bankers’ demands for extra austerity measures. The International Monetary Fund is demanding cutting Greek pensions and eliminating income-tax exemptions if Greece does not hit its budget targets. "Cutting down pension is not reform. It’s like confusing butchery for surgery," says Varoufakis. He served as the Syriza party’s first finance minister after the left-wing party took power in 2015, after promoting an anti-austerity platform. He is in the United States promoting his new book, "And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future." Earlier this year, he launched a new pan-European umbrella organization called Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Yanis Varoufakis joins us today as the White House is backing calls for Greece to continue to implement widespread austerity measures, following President Obama’s meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this week. Greece and its international creditors are once again negotiating the terms of the bailout and the extent of the austerity measures creditors can impose. On Wednesday, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest told reporters the administration believes Greece must follow through on structural reforms.
REPORTER: Is there any concern within the White House about what appears to be an obvious deadlock between the creditors over the Greek debt situation and the International Monetary Fund?
PRESS SECRETARY JOSH EARNEST: I don’t have any detailed knowledge of those ongoing discussions. Obviously, you know, we’re very supportive of the efforts that members of the EU have made to deal with the financial challenges posed by Greece’s finances. Part of that agreement included Greece following through on a number of structural reforms. And we certainly believe that—that Greece has a responsibility to do that.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Earlier this week, negotiations between Greece and international creditors hit an impasse over the bankers’ demands for extra austerity measures. The International Monetary Fund is demanding cutting Greek pensions and eliminating income tax exemptions if Greece does not hit its budget targets. It’s the latest impasse in years of fierce political clashes between Greece and international creditors.
For more, we’re joined by a man who had a front-row seat to these battles: former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. He has been called "the most interesting man in the world." He’s also a professor of economic theory at the University of Athens and the author of more than 15 books, including, most recently, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future.
AMY GOODMAN: Yanis Varoufakis’s book takes a sweeping look at the history of the eurozone, the creation of the euro, the construction of the European Central Bank, the lead-up to the 2008 crisis, and what went so disastrously wrong in its wake. He served as the Greek finance minister from January 2015 to the following July as a member of the anti-austerity Syriza party, during which he helped lead Greece’s battle against European central bankers and an historic referendum in which Greeks resoundingly voted down austerity. But only days after the "no" vote, Varoufakis resigned. At the time, he said, quote, "I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride." Earlier this year, he launched a new pan-European umbrella organization called Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25.
Yanis Varoufakis, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Can you respond to what’s happened right now with Washington and Germany, President Obama’s meeting with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, calling for continued austerity in Greece? What exactly does this mean?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, it means that we have a stupendous case of the White House spokesman violating the Obama line. When we were elected in January of 2015, President Obama came out with a splendid statement. If I recall correctly, he said something along the lines that the principle of the greatest austerity for the most depressed of nations needs to be re-examined. He was opposing it. And now we have, yet again, this typical disconnect in the American administration. It’s quite astonishing and saddening. On the one hand, the president is making all the right noises, and on the other hand, his spokesman comes out and supports cruel, self-defeating, irrational, inefficient, mind-blowingly inane austerity.
And, Amy, allow me to correct the conventional wisdom peddled by the mainstream media. If you read or listen to all the reports regarding the negotiations and [inaudible] between Greece and its creditors, you will hear what we heard just before in your report, that the Greek government’s negotiations have stalled, because supposedly Greece, the Greek government, Athens, is resisting structural reforms. But nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that the Greek government last summer, in July of 2015, surrendered to the creditors. This is why I’m no longer the finance minister. And ever since, it governs by email. It’s simply told—it is simply told what to do. And it’s trying to do it. It is trying to implement it.
The problem at the moment, the reason why we have yet another impasse, yet another delay in the announcement of the great reforms and fiscal policies that will be applied to the case of a depressed Greece, is very simple. The International Monetary Fund and the German government are loggerheads. They are at each other’s throats. They can’t see eye to eye. The elephants in the room are tussling, and the little pipsqueak mouse, Greece, is being trampled upon. This is the truth. It’s got nothing to do with the Greek government stalling on structural reforms. By the way, there are no structural reforms in question. Cutting down pensions is not reform. It’s like confusing butchery for surgery. It’s not the same thing.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, earlier this month—I want to ask about the details of a discussion that WikiLeaks released, precisely of IMF officials in charge of managing the Greek debt crisis. Poul Thomsen, the head of the IMF’s European Department, and Delia Velculescu, the IMF mission chief for Greece. Could you talk about what was revealed in those discussions and what the significance is?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, exactly what I just said. If you read the dialogue, it’s very clear. The IMF people are utterly frustrated with Germany. Why? Because the IMF, whatever one may accuse them of—and there is a lot to say about the IMF—at least they are numerate: They can add, subtract; they know arithmetic. And they know that the Greek debt is unsustainable. They know that the numbers that the European Commission, on behalf of Germany, is imposing upon Greece are numbers that will explode, they will fail. In six months’ time, we’ll have another failure of the program, like we’ve had in the last six years. So the IMF wants to—the IMF, wherever it goes, it tries to impose what they refer to as internal devaluation—devaluing labor, devaluing pensions, closing down small firms, small shops, pharmacies, and replace them with supermarkets. That creates—you know, liquidate, liquidate, liquidate. So, that means, of course, a wholesome shrinkage in the economy, in the social economy. Now, that is their want. But at the same time, they are clever enough to know that when you shrink the national income and the social economy of a country like Greece, a program country, then you can’t expect them to repay the gargantuan debt that has been accumulated. So, they’re like a quasi-numerate villain, who wants to turn Greece into a desert, call it peace, and, of course, they understand that they have to call the debt.
The German government, on the other hand, and the European Commission that is acting on their behalf, simply do not want to talk about the debt, because this would mean going to the federal Parliament in Berlin and admitting that the loans for Greece, the so-called bailout loans for Greece, were not loans for Greece. They were loans, bailout loans, for German and French banks. And that money was never intended to come back to the German, to the Slavik, to the Portuguese taxpayers. It was always going to be money that was given from the taxpayers of Europe—initially from Greeks, and then everybody else—to the French and the German bankers. So they refuse the IMF’s calls for debt relief. And now the IMF, Washington, D.C., and Berlin are clashing, and they can’t agree.
If you read this dialogue, it’s spectacular. At some point, they say, "What will it take to get the Europeans"—he means Berlin—"to see that it’s about time to cut the debt?" And Poul Thomsen’s response is, "We need an event." By that, he meant another crisis, another bankruptcy, another spate of bank closures in Greece, to concentrate the mind of Mrs. Merkel, who is named explicitly. So, this story, this illusion, this soothing myth—soothing for the media—that the Greek government is resisting reforms, and this is why we have an impasse, has been completely and utterly exploded by the WikiLeaks exposure of these dialogues.
AMY GOODMAN: What is Ponzi austerity, Yanis Varoufakis.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, Amy, we all know what Ponzi growth is—right?—what a Ponzi scheme is. It’s when you pretend to be growing your income on the basis of unsustainable debt. And the more debt you take, the more you pretend that you’re growing. But then you have to have even more unsustainable debt in order to maintain this illusion. Now, what is Ponzi austerity? Once these bubbles burst, the only way you can continue to pretend that you’re solvent is through even more debt, that will be utilized in order to repay or to pretend to repay the previous debts. And if you’re going through a period of belt tightening to impress creditors that you’re doing the right—the good Protestant thing, which is, you know, to be parsimonious and to tighten your belt, you have austerity, which continuously reduces national income, because when you reduce pensions, when you reduce investment, when you reduce all the determinants of aggregate demand, income of the nation shrinks. And you keep tightening that belt through more pension cuts, more reductions in public health and so on, and public education, and you keep on taking new unsustainable loans in order to pretend that you’re not insolvent. That’s Ponzi austerity for you.
AMY GOODMAN: Yanis Varoufakis, we’re going to continue this conversation after break. Professor Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece, now teaching economic theory at the University of Athens. His new book is titled And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future. We’ll be back with him in a minute.. ... Read More →

Yanis Varoufakis: Europe's "Hot Spot" Refugee Registration Centers are "Concentration Camps"
We continue our conversation with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis as the White House is backing calls for Greece to continue to implement widespread austerity measures, following President Obama’s meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this week. Greece and its international creditors are once again negotiating the terms of the bailout and the extent of the austerity measures creditors can impose. Varoufakis responds to the German government’s claim that the majority of Germans oppose giving more money to Greece, and addresses the previous bailouts. "What happened to that money? It wasn’t money for Greece. It was money for the banks," Varoufakis says. "The Greek people took on the largest loan in human history on behalf of German and French bankers." He notes the conditions of the loan "guaranteed our national income would shrink by one-third. So it was impossible to repay that money." He says he opposes taking additional funds until the country’s economy is more stable.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Public Enemy, "By the Time I Get to Arizona." And that’s where we are right now. We’re in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona University, as we continue our 100-city tour, heading on to Phoenix this afternoon and Tucson at the Convention Center tonight. I’m Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! Nermeen Shaikh is in New York with our guest, Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister of Greece who resigned over austerity. Nermeen?
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn to Michael Fuchs, a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party. He was asked in February 2015 why the majority of Germans were opposed to giving money to Greece.
MICHAEL FUCHS: Well, it’s a little bit the Greek government, and particularly Mr. Varoufakis, who came up with some wordings which were not really in a way somebody who’s—well, who is in a demand—is in need of money, and he should not handle our finance minister, neither our chancellor, like he did. And so, it was quite insulting our people. And that’s one of the reasons the Germans are pretty upset about the situation.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was a member of Angela Merkel’s CDU party. So, Yanis Varoufakis, could you comment on what he said about your negotiating style and its impact on how the Germans saw the Greece debt crisis?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Oh, by the way, there’s no such thing as the Germans. If you go to Germany, you get a variety of opinion. We began our Democracy in Europe Movement with our comrades in Germany. Everywhere we go in Germany, we have immense support as a pan-European democratic movement. It is the German government that saw me as a major, major inconvenience. And you know what? They were very right to see me as a major inconvenience.
And you know why I was extremely inconvenient? Because I didn’t want any money. What I was saying to our electorate before the election, that was the basis for my being elected. And what I was saying to the creditors after my election was very, very simple. The problem is not that Germany has not paid enough. Germany has paid too much, in the case of the Greek bailout. We had the largest loan in human history. The question is, what happened to that money? It wasn’t money for Greece. It was money for the banks. And the Greek people took on the largest loan in human history on behalf of German and French bankers, under conditions that guaranteed that their income, our income in Greece, would shrink by one-third. That is Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck material. One-third of national income, poof, disappeared. So it was impossible to repay that money. And they knew that, in the first place. So the only reason why they effected this so-called bailout of Greece was to save their own banks and to present this as solidarity with Greece. And my simple line was this: We’re not going to take another euro from the German taxpayers, from the hard-working people of Germany, of Slovakia, of France, until and unless we stabilize our economy.
And, you know, let me put it this way. The German Swabian housewife, the Protestant ethic, what does it recommend? That if you’re bankrupt, you should not borrow more money. Right? So this is what I said. This is why I was extremely inconvenient, because I was utilizing the ethos and the morality of the Protestant ethic, of the spirit of capitalism, according to Weber and to the German traditions. And they just—they couldn’t believe it, that here was a Greek finance minister who was not asking for more loans. So, you know, I can understand why the gentleman was very upset with me.
AMY GOODMAN: Ninety-one percent of the bailout went to German and French banks?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Yes. Well, the first bailout, the first bailout. The second bailout, 100 percent. And the third bailout, which I didn’t sign, Amy, it was $85 billion. Of that, precisely zero will go to Greece. So, these are just typical extend-and-pretend loans.
What happened was very simple. In 2010, the Greek state went bankrupt, because it was part of a common currency area, a monetary union, that was simply not fit to the purpose of sustaining the great financial collapse of Wall Street, the city of London, the Frankfurt banks, the French banks, etc., and the Greek banks, and so on and so forth. So, there was a cynical transfer of private sector, private bank losses onto the shoulders of the weakest of taxpayers, the Greeks, knowing that those shoulders were weak, so weak that they wouldn’t be able to sustain that burden, and that burden would then be transferred to the shoulders of the German, the Slavic, the French taxpayers. And once they did this, it’s like Shakespeare, it’s like Macbeth: You commit one crime, then you have to commit a second crime to hide the fact that you committed the first one, and then a third one, and then a fourth one. And the second crime, of course, was the second bailout, because once the first bailout makes whole the bankers, then, within a few months, it becomes abundantly clear that the Greek state cannot sustain that loan. So, a second predatory loan is enforced upon the Greek government in order to pretend that it is making its payments for the first loan, and then a third one, and then a fourth one. And the worst aspect of it is that these loans, which were not loans to Greece, were given, extended, on condition of stringent austerity that shrunk our incomes. So we entered a debt deflationary cycle, a great depression, with no end in sight, and a great depression which sees—has absolutely no chance of a New Deal kind of solution like we had here in the United States in the 1930s, as long as the powers that be in Berlin—we heard the White House spokesman siding himself completely with Berlin—insist that this extending and pretending shall continue. ... Read More →

Yanis Varoufakis: Bailouts of Greece are Pretense for Massive Payout for German and French Banks
We continue our conversation with former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis as the White House is backing calls for Greece to continue to implement widespread austerity measures, following President Obama’s meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this week. Greece and its international creditors are once again negotiating the terms of the bailout and the extent of the austerity measures creditors can impose. Varoufakis responds to the German government’s claim that the majority of Germans oppose giving more money to Greece, and addresses the previous bailouts. "What happened to that money? It wasn’t money for Greece. It was money for the banks," Varoufakis says. "The Greek people took on the largest loan in human history on behalf of German and French bankers." He notes the conditions of the loan "guaranteed our national income would shrink by one-third. So it was impossible to repay that money." He says he opposes taking additional funds until the country’s economy is more stable.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Public Enemy, "By the Time I Get to Arizona." And that’s where we are right now. We’re in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona University, as we continue our 100-city tour, heading on to Phoenix this afternoon and Tucson at the Convention Center tonight. I’m Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! Nermeen Shaikh is in New York with our guest, Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister of Greece who resigned over austerity. Nermeen?
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to turn to Michael Fuchs, a senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party. He was asked in February 2015 why the majority of Germans were opposed to giving money to Greece.
MICHAEL FUCHS: Well, it’s a little bit the Greek government, and particularly Mr. Varoufakis, who came up with some wordings which were not really in a way somebody who’s—well, who is in a demand—is in need of money, and he should not handle our finance minister, neither our chancellor, like he did. And so, it was quite insulting our people. And that’s one of the reasons the Germans are pretty upset about the situation.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was a member of Angela Merkel’s CDU party. So, Yanis Varoufakis, could you comment on what he said about your negotiating style and its impact on how the Germans saw the Greece debt crisis?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Oh, by the way, there’s no such thing as the Germans. If you go to Germany, you get a variety of opinion. We began our Democracy in Europe Movement with our comrades in Germany. Everywhere we go in Germany, we have immense support as a pan-European democratic movement. It is the German government that saw me as a major, major inconvenience. And you know what? They were very right to see me as a major inconvenience.
And you know why I was extremely inconvenient? Because I didn’t want any money. What I was saying to our electorate before the election, that was the basis for my being elected. And what I was saying to the creditors after my election was very, very simple. The problem is not that Germany has not paid enough. Germany has paid too much, in the case of the Greek bailout. We had the largest loan in human history. The question is, what happened to that money? It wasn’t money for Greece. It was money for the banks. And the Greek people took on the largest loan in human history on behalf of German and French bankers, under conditions that guaranteed that their income, our income in Greece, would shrink by one-third. That is Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck material. One-third of national income, poof, disappeared. So it was impossible to repay that money. And they knew that, in the first place. So the only reason why they effected this so-called bailout of Greece was to save their own banks and to present this as solidarity with Greece. And my simple line was this: We’re not going to take another euro from the German taxpayers, from the hard-working people of Germany, of Slovakia, of France, until and unless we stabilize our economy.
And, you know, let me put it this way. The German Swabian housewife, the Protestant ethic, what does it recommend? That if you’re bankrupt, you should not borrow more money. Right? So this is what I said. This is why I was extremely inconvenient, because I was utilizing the ethos and the morality of the Protestant ethic, of the spirit of capitalism, according to Weber and to the German traditions. And they just—they couldn’t believe it, that here was a Greek finance minister who was not asking for more loans. So, you know, I can understand why the gentleman was very upset with me.
AMY GOODMAN: Ninety-one percent of the bailout went to German and French banks?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Yes. Well, the first bailout, the first bailout. The second bailout, 100 percent. And the third bailout, which I didn’t sign, Amy, it was $85 billion. Of that, precisely zero will go to Greece. So, these are just typical extend-and-pretend loans.
What happened was very simple. In 2010, the Greek state went bankrupt, because it was part of a common currency area, a monetary union, that was simply not fit to the purpose of sustaining the great financial collapse of Wall Street, the city of London, the Frankfurt banks, the French banks, etc., and the Greek banks, and so on and so forth. So, there was a cynical transfer of private sector, private bank losses onto the shoulders of the weakest of taxpayers, the Greeks, knowing that those shoulders were weak, so weak that they wouldn’t be able to sustain that burden, and that burden would then be transferred to the shoulders of the German, the Slavic, the French taxpayers. And once they did this, it’s like Shakespeare, it’s like Macbeth: You commit one crime, then you have to commit a second crime to hide the fact that you committed the first one, and then a third one, and then a fourth one. And the second crime, of course, was the second bailout, because once the first bailout makes whole the bankers, then, within a few months, it becomes abundantly clear that the Greek state cannot sustain that loan. So, a second predatory loan is enforced upon the Greek government in order to pretend that it is making its payments for the first loan, and then a third one, and then a fourth one. And the worst aspect of it is that these loans, which were not loans to Greece, were given, extended, on condition of stringent austerity that shrunk our incomes. So we entered a debt deflationary cycle, a great depression, with no end in sight, and a great depression which sees—has absolutely no chance of a New Deal kind of solution like we had here in the United States in the 1930s, as long as the powers that be in Berlin—we heard the White House spokesman siding himself completely with Berlin—insist that this extending and pretending shall continue.... Read More →

"We Were Elected to Say No to the Creditors": Varoufakis on Resigning as Greek Finance Minister
The International Monetary Fund is demanding additional austerity measures from Greece if it does not hit its budget targets. It’s the latest impasse in years of fierce political clashes between Greece and international creditors. We are joined by a man who had a front-row seat to these battles: the former Greek finance minister for the anti-austerity Syriza party, Yanis Varoufakis. In his new book, "And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future," he describes how he helped lead Greece’s battle against European Central bankers and a historic referendum in which Greeks resoundingly voted down austerity. But only days after the "no" vote, he resigned. Varoufakis elaborates on the resignation statement he issued last July, when he wrote, "Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted 'partners', for my … 'absence' from its meetings; an idea that the prime minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the ministry of finance today." He famously said at the time, "I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So I want to go to your—a short excerpt from your resignation statement last July, when you famously said, quote, "I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride." In explaining your decision to leave, you wrote, quote, "Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted 'partners', for my 'absence' from its meetings; an idea that the prime minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the ministry of finance today." So could you talk more about the decision, your decision, to resign from the government, and also why Prime Minister Tsipras decided to go against the will that was expressed in the referendum?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, it’s a very sad affair. Let me put it this way. We were elected to say no to the creditors. No to what? Not to an agreement, to an honorable agreement, but no to the extending and pretending, to the continuation of the depression. And the agreement that Tsipras and I had was that we were going to be steadfast in that, no? We would compromise, compromise, compromise, but we will not be compromised on this. We will not give the debt deflationary great depression cycle another spin. And we had agreed amongst ourselves that if the pressure gets too much, we may even have to resign. But we are not going to be the ones that sign on the dotted line of yet another deepening magnification of our country’s, of our people’s misery and depression.
At some point, the creditors, it became spectacularly clear that they were only interested in the—in a coup d’état, in overthrowing our government. In 1967, we had a coup d’état in Greece using the tanks; now we had a coup d’état using the banks. They closed down the banks to asphyxiate our government. And we put it to the Greek people. We said to them, "This is the ultimatum that we are being given. You decide: yes or no. We recommend no. But if you say yes, then we will make way for a surrender." By the way, I didn’t expect them to say no, because they were being terrorized on a daily basis by the media, who were saying to them that if they dare vote no, then Armageddon will happen the next day. And their banks were closed. You had pensioners who had no access to their small bundle of savings. And yet, the magnificent Greek people, on the Sunday of 5th of July, gave us a resounding 62 percent no. Even constituency in the land, even constituencies of the right wing and never voted for us, backed us. On that night, I was levitating with enthusiasm, because the Greek people had energized us.
My prime minister saw things differently. He said to me in his office that night, "It’s time to surrender." I spent two or three hours trying to dissuade him. I didn’t manage it. He was the prime minister; I was just a finance minister. So I decided to resign and to go back to my apartment and script this letter of resignation. That letter was the hardest text I ever had to script, because, on one hand, I had to register my total, utter, vertical opposition with the prime minister’s decision to surrender; on the other hand, I didn’t want to write a letter that clashed with my comrade and friend. And I phrased it in such a way as to say that the creditors clearly have an interest in my removal—which is perfectly understandable, because they were simply interested in overthrowing our government, and our determination to say no to another extend-and-pretend loan. The prime minister thinks he’s going to get an agreement, and therefore I’m going to make his life easier by removing myself.
Of course, there has been no agreement. What there has been is a complete and utter surrender, and a surrender document which will go down in European history as a very black spot on Europe’s democracy. You only have to read the first page of it. It reads like a genuine surrender-to-an-enemy document. And even as we speak, is it not true that even that surrender has not resulted in some kind of agreement? The IMF and Berlin are still at loggerheads on whether they should turn Greece into a stable desert or a constantly declining, miserable, depressed state. This is the difference of opinion between the creditors. And the Greek government, once it surrendered, is simply watching the show of the two elephants tussling, waiting to be told whether we’re going to be a desert or an economy in a permanent state of depression.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, an expression that you used—
AMY GOODMAN: Yanis Varoufakis, you talk about austerity as "fiscal waterboarding." Explain.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Actually, it’s—fiscal waterboarding is something quite separate from austerity. Austerity is a self-defeating process. You cut government spending, you increase taxes in order to balance the other governments’ books, but you fail. Why? Because, yes, you reduce government expenditure, the cost of running the government, but on the other hand, the economy shrinks, so tax take is also reduced, and therefore your books don’t balance, and then you cut even more, and then national income shrinks even further, and then you have to cut even more. So it’s a never-ending downward spiral. That’s the problem with austerity.
Fiscal waterboarding is something quite different. It’s the predatory relationship, the coercive relationship, between the creditors and the Greek government. In order to push the Greek government into even further austerity, in order to keep pretending that the original program works, what the creditors do is this. They have lent Greece a huge amount of money, and Greece has to make repayments every month, every year—the Greek state. Of course, the Greek state is bankrupt. It cannot make these repayments. So it has to keep borrowing from the creditors to be giving money back to the creditors every month, every second month, to pretend that it is ahead of its repayment schedule. But the creditors, every second month, every third month, bring the Greek state to the state of asphyxiation by refusing the loans which are necessary for the Greek state to repay them, so that the Greek state is not declared to be in default. So they bring the Greek state to the verge of not being able to pay pensions, of not being able to pay the electricity bill in schools, and then—or to have to default to the IMF, to the European Central Bank. Then they, at the last moment—this is waterboarding, isn’t it? What is waterboarding? You subject the subject to a process of asphyxiation, and just before death comes, you give the subject a gulp of oxygen, and then you repeat. This is precisely what they’re doing. Instead of oxygen, it’s liquidity, not to run the Greek state, but to keep giving your torturer money back so that the torturer can carry on torturing you ad infinitum. That’s fiscal waterboarding.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to ask about something that you wrote about in your book, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?, about the question of the impact of the financialization of the economy. You called the U.S. economy, in the book, a minotaur. So, could you explain, first of all, what you mean by that, and how U.S. financialization helped lead to the 2008 crash, and whether anything has changed since, in your view?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, in brief, after the Second World War, the New Deal is in power, initially the Roosevelt administration, then the Truman administration, then even the Eisenhower administration, that accepted the New Deal principle. They designed a global system, a global financial and economic system, which was actually quite remarkable in its design, audacity and rationality, to a large extent. The idea was, we have—we dollarize the whole of the capitalist world. Maybe in Britain they have pounds, in France they have francs, but they are all linked to the dollar. The dollar is the currency of capitalism. And in addition to that, you have the surplus country of the time, which was of course the United States of America, taking part of its surpluses and monetizing, dollarizing Europe and Japan, helping them out, not out of philanthropy, but because they understood that unless you take surpluses from where they’re produced to give them to—to channel them, to funnel them to the deficit regions, to create the incomes which are necessary to keep buying American goods, in order to maintain and replenish and recycle the American surpluses, the whole system will no longer be sustainable.
But that system ended with the famous Nixon shock of the 15th of August, 1971. Why? Not because Nixon made a mistake, but because America lost its surpluses. So you can’t recycle surpluses if you don’t have them. And then we moved to the second phase of postwar global U.S. hegemony, which was exactly the opposite of the first. Instead of recycling its own surpluses—America didn’t have surpluses—it was recycling other people’s surpluses. And how did it do it? By means of the United States’ trade deficit. The trade deficit of the United States, which was ever-expanding, operated as a huge vacuum cleaner that was sucking into the United States the net exports of Japan, of Germany, later China, of Saudi Arabia—oil and so on and so forth. And how was it paying for it? How can you keep expanding your deficit? Well, if you are the United States, you can, as long as you create circumstances that attract the profits of the German firms, the Japanese firms, the Saudis, the Chinese firms, into Wall Street, and you close the circle.
But what happens when you give Wall Street a few billion dollars every 10 minutes to play with? They create instruments—you know, financial derivatives and all those beautiful toys of financialization—to make it really expand exponentially and to create, print their own money, in a sense. That’s financialization. And as long as that worked to stabilize a very unstable global capitalism, we had this semblance, this illusion. Remember the great moderation of Ben Bernanke? It was the most immoderate capitalist world you can imagine, but it seemed moderate because you had this recycling. You had capital flowing into Wall Street, constantly paying for the expanding trade deficit of the United States. But the pyramids of financialized money, private money minting, that started on Wall Street, combusted under the weight of their own hubris in 2008. And ever since, the global economy is in disarray.
AMY GOODMAN: Yanis Varoufakis, I wanted to turn to a clip of your conversation that you had this week at the New York Public Library, "LIVE at the NYPL," about the response of economists to the 2008 financial collapse.
NOAM CHOMSKY: One of the more interesting moments in the history of science and scholarship was actually in 2008. For—as you know, for decades, economists had been claiming, with extreme arrogance, that they completely understood how to control and manage an economy. There were fundamental principles, like the efficient market hypothesis, rational expectations. And anyone who didn’t accept this was dismissed as a kind of a—some strange kind of moron. The whole system collapsed. The whole intellectual edifice collapsed in a most amazing fashion, and had no effect on the profession.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: None at all. This is—well, it did have—it had the effect that sometimes, you know, when we’re driving on a freeway—and I usually go well above the speed limit—condemn me, if you will—and I get stopped by the police. For the next 20 minutes, I drive below the speed limit. But it doesn’t last for more than 20 minutes. Then, after a while, I just go back to where I was. This is exactly like the economics profession. They had a brief moment of—
NOAM CHOMSKY: Some did.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Some of them, some. Or at least of being a bit humble and staying—you know, keeping their heads under the parapet for a bit. But then, within 20 minutes, they forgot about it, and they carried on teaching the same rubbish to their students.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, speaking with MIT professor emeritus Noam Chomsky earlier this week at the New York Public Library. We’re going to go to break. When we come back, we’re going to talk to Professor Yanis Varoufakis about the refugee crisis, about why he thinks Greece—Germany is doing this to Greece, and what does France have to do with it, and more about his new book. It’s called And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future. We’ll be back with him in a moment. ... Read More →
Headlines:
Bernie Sanders to Cut Staffers and Focus on California

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he’s cutting hundreds of campaign staffers as he concentrates his efforts on the upcoming California primary. The move comes after rival Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in four of the five contests Tuesday. Clinton won Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and Connecticut. Sanders won Rhode Island.
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Bernie Sanders
2016 Election
Ted Cruz Names Carly Fiorina as Running Mate

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Texas Senator Ted Cruz has named former presidential rival Carly Fiorina as his vice-presidential running mate.
Sen. Ted Cruz: "After a great deal of time and thought, after a great deal of consideration and prayer, I have come to the conclusion that if I am nominated to be president of the United States, that I will run on a ticket with my vice-presidential nominee Carly Fiorina."
It’s the first time in four decades that a presidential hopeful has named a running mate before winning the party nomination. The last candidate to do so was Ronald Reagan during his 1976 campaign.
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2016 Election
Ted Cruz
Donald Trump Offers Ideas About Foreign Policy

Meanwhile, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump unveiled some of his foreign policy proposals during a speech at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. Trump pledged to significantly increase the size and funding of the U.S. military. He also promised to destroy ISIL, although he gave no details on his proposed strategy. Trump also repeated his pledge to reject trade deals.
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Donald Trump
Former House Speaker Hastert Sentenced to 15 Months in Prison

A federal judge has sentenced former House Speaker Dennis Hastert to 15 months in prison for financial crimes related to his attempts to cover up his sexual abuse of high school wrestlers decades ago. Hastert was the longest-serving Republican House speaker in history. In October, he pleaded guilty to breaking banking reporting laws while paying one of his victims millions in hush money to keep quiet about the sexual abuse.
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Sexual Assault
Prison
Oklahoma Court Rules Oral Sex with Unconscious Person is Not Rape
Meanwhile, an Oklahoma appeals court has sparked controversy after ruling that having oral sex with someone who is unconscious from drinking does not constitute rape. The ruling stems from a case in which a 17-year-old boy is accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl who had passed out from drinking. The court ruled that existing Oklahoma law did not specifically name incapacitation due to intoxication in its definition of forcible oral sodomy. In response, Michelle Anderson, dean of the City University of New York School of Law, called on Oklahoma to change the statute, which she said "creates a huge loophole for sexual abuse that makes no sense."
TOPICS:
Sexual Assault
White House Backs IMF Push for More Austerity in Greece

The White House has backed calls for Greece to continue to implement widespread austerity measures, following President Obama’s meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier this week. Greece and its international creditors are once again negotiating the terms of Greece’s bailout and the extent of the austerity measures creditors can impose. On Wednesday, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest told reporters the administration believes Greece must follow through on "structural reforms."
Josh Earnest: "Obviously, you know, we’re very supportive of the efforts that members of the EU have made to deal with the financial challenges posed by Greece’s finances. Part of that agreement included Greece following through on a number of structural reforms. And we certainly believe that—that Greece has a responsibility to do that."
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Greece
Syria: 14 Patients & 3 Doctors Killed in Airstrikes
Doctors Without Borders says at least 14 patients and three doctors have been killed during an airstrike on a hospital in the Syrian city of Aleppo on Wednesday. Residents said the airstrikes were carried out either by the Syrian regime or by Russia.
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Syria
Target: Workers & Customers Can Use Bathroom Corresponding to Gender Identity
The retail giant Target has announced employees and customers can use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity. This comes as a Missouri House committee has voted down an anti-LGBT bill that would have led to a ballot measure proposing to allow businesses, people and organizations to use their religious beliefs as a legal excuse to discriminate against LGBT people. Meanwhile, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam has signed a new law that allows mental health counselors to refuse service to LGBT patients on religious grounds.
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LGBT
NYC: 700+ Police and Feds Execute Mass Arrest in Bronx

In New York City, as many as 700 New York police officers and federal law enforcement agents swarmed residential neighborhoods of the Bronx Wednesday morning, arresting about 100 people in the largest mass arrest of suspected gang members in recent history. The massive operation included SWAT teams, police helicopters, and federal agents from the DEA, the U.S. Marshals and a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement known as HSI. Police say those arrested are part of two gangs that are linked to a number of murders. But some community members questioned the operation, especially the heavy involvement of ICE agents. Doris Salazar of the group ICE=Free NYC spoke out.
Doris Salazar: "If this was a local gang raid, then why were ICE and deportation officials involved in the first place? Local news is telling the story like this is exactly what Bronx residents needed. But, honestly, it seems very suspicious. We are a largely immigrant community. And, frankly, ICE does more to break up families and to create social unrest than the people who were arrested Wednesday morning in the raid."
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Police
New York
Baltimore Police Shoot 14-Year-Old Boy with BB Gun
In Baltimore, police have shot and wounded a 14-year-old African-American boy carrying a toy gun on the first anniversary of the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died from injuries sustained in police custody. On Wednesday, plainclothes police officers began chasing 14-year-old Dedric Colvin after they spotted him with a BB gun. Police say the officers opened fire, striking him, as he ran away. His mother says he was shot in the leg and in the shoulder. He is expected to recover. This comes two days after Cleveland officials agreed to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old African-American boy who was fatally shot by police in 2014 while playing with a toy pellet gun in a park.
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Police Brutality
Oliver Stone to Direct New Movie on Snowden

And legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone is directing a new movie about NSAwhistleblower Edward Snowden. This is a clip from the just-released trailer.
Edward Snowden: [played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt] "How is this all possible?"
NSA worker: "Think of it as a Google search, except instead of searching only what people make public, we’re also looking at everything they don’t—emails, chats, SMS, whatever."
Snowden: "Yeah, but which people?"
NSA worker: "The whole kingdom, Snow White."
Snowden: "The NSA is really tracking every cellphone in the world."
Unidentified: "Most Americans don’t want freedom. They want security."
Snowden: "Except people, they don’t even know they’ve made that bargain."
Lindsay Mills: [played by Shailene Woodley] "Are they watching us?"
Snowden: "There’s something going on inside the government that’s really wrong, and I can’t ignore it."
That’s a clip of Oliver Stone’s upcoming film, "Snowden." Stone’s previous films include "JFK," "Nixon," "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Platoon."
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Edward Snowden
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SPEAKING EVENTS

"Amid Media Megamergers, A Mosaic of Community Media Thrives" by Amy Goodman and Denis Moyhihan
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The business press is all atwitter with merger news, as federal regulators are set to approve a massive deal between cable giants Charter, Time Warner and Bright House Networks. The $78 billion transaction will create the second-largest cable TV/Internet company, dubbed “New Charter,” next to Comcast, and leave just three major cable providers in the U.S. Meanwhile, the Gannett Company, which owns more than 100 newspapers, including USA Today, is attempting to acquire Tribune Publishing, which owns several major newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.
This looming consolidation in the corporate media is happening as we celebrate “Democracy Now!” news hour’s 20th anniversary. We are on a 100-city tour of the United States, going from city to city, hosting fundraisers for community media outlets and broadcasting the news as we travel. Our travels confirm that a thriving, vibrant community media sector exists, serving the public interest, free from the demands to turn a profit at any cost.
On Feb. 19, 1996, “Democracy Now!” began as the only daily election show in public broadcasting. President Bill Clinton was running for re-election against Kansas Sen. Bob Dole and third-party candidate Ross Perot. The plan was for the show to run through Election Day. Our hope was that the issues in the presidential race were important enough and the audience cared enough that they would tune in to daily coverage that brought them voices and ideas not normally heard in the corporate media.
That’s how we started: giving a voice to the grass roots. When the election wrapped up, we thought that “Democracy Now!” would wrap up as well. But there was more demand for the show after the elections than before. Why? There is a hunger for authentic voices — not the same handful of pundits circulating through all the media networks who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong.
The show began on just nine community radio stations in 1996. Today, it’s carried on more than 1,400 outlets, a remarkable constellation of community media organizations: PBS, NPR and Pacifica public radio and television broadcasters, college and community stations, public-access television facilities, low-power FM radio stations, as well as online news organizations and, of course, the many newspapers that carry this column.
These outlets each serve their community uniquely, providing relevant, locally created and curated content. As we travel, we see the connection that local media institutions help forge, both within a community but also across traditional barriers of race, class and age.
Take, for example, the new low-power FM (LPFM) radio station that is being built in Albuquerque, New Mexico. LPFM is a noncommercial radio service that recently got a boost from the Federal Communications Commission after activists spent years pushing the federal government to allow more stations. This new station in Albuquerque is licensed to a long-standing media nonprofit called Quote...Unquote, which provides training in digital-media creation, to empower people to tell their own stories.
To launch the station, they have partnered with the Robert F. Kennedy High School, a remarkable school in the South Valley, one of the poorest neighborhoods of Albuquerque, with a population of students who are largely undocumented immigrants. “We serve students that traditional schools have given up on,” Robert Baade, RFK’s director, told us. “The radio station will be one more tool for them, to allow them to speak for themselves.”
This is just one of hundreds of innovative community media institutions that we are supporting as we travel the country. They are largely nonprofit, supported by enthusiastic volunteers, and are hyperlocal, beloved by the communities they serve.
Juxtapose this with increasingly consolidated major media corporations. “Thanks to this merger both Charter and Comcast now have unprecedented control over our cable and Internet connections,” Craig Aaron, of the media reform organization Free Press, said after the news broke that these two corporations will likely merge. “Their crushing monopoly power will mean fewer choices, higher prices, no accountability and no competition.”
Even in this high-tech digital age, all we get is static: that veil of distortion, lies, misrepresentations and half-truths that obscure reality. We need the media to give us the dictionary definition of static: Criticism. Opposition. Unwanted interference. We need a media that covers power, not covers for power. We need a media that is the Fourth Estate, not for the state. And we need a media that covers the movements that create static and make history. That is the power of independent media. That is a media that will save us.
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