Greece: No Plan B

by Reverse Engineer, Doomstead Diner

Greetings Doomfans, and welcome to another edition of the Frostbite Falls Daily Rant, here on the Doomstead Diner.

Transcript:

I took a break from the Greek Souvlaki Kabuki Theater last week, after being thoroughly saturated with this nonsense for the last month, beginning about the time that Souvlakis stormed out of negotiations with the Euroclowns and then Tsipras called for an impromptu referendum on the terms being offered to them in order to get fresh input of Funny Money they would never see, but merely go to pay interest on old loans that are steadily accumulating over time here.

In what should have been a fairly predictable outcome, the Greek population soundly rejected the proposals in a 61-39% majority, but according to Brit Prep School Butt Boy Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Alex the Less than Great did not predict that, but rather thought they would lose this referendum and then Syriza could go ahead and sign the slavery contract with the approval of the slaves. Unfortunately for Alex, his pollsters got this wrong leaving him in the unenviable position of having to go back to the bargaining table once again, this time himself without Souvlakis running interference.

Why no more Souvlakis? Well, he pretty much cooked his own goose by blogging on the nonsense ongoing behind closed doors with the Euroclowns, and besides that made it pretty clear he wasn’t going to sign off on trash he knows won’t do a damn thing to resolve Greek monetary problems. His relationship with Wolfie Strudle, the Kraut Fin Min who pretty much runs the economic show in Europe is sort of like Charlie Sheen and Kim Kardashian in the last stages of a Divorce Settlement. No way these two can even talk to each other, they have to be kept in separate rooms with lawyers running back and forth between them.

So Alex the Less Than Great shit-canned Souvlakis as a fig leaf prior to returning to the bargaining table, where Frau Merkel and the rest of the Euroclowns subjected him to 17 hours of waterboarding, ending in his final capitulation to a deal even WORSE than the one originally rejected first by Souvlakis and then by the Greek population itself. Souvlakis got the better end of this deal, he went on Vacation with his loaded wife and Alex got the job of trying to negotiate with the Euroclowns.

What comes out of this 17 hour negotiating session? Basically Alex completely sells out, agrees to the Greeks being Greeked in perpetuity, mainly to just get those damn banks reopened because nobody can Do Bizness in Greece right now. Food importers can’t import food, hospitals can’t get medicine, and the typical Greek can only yank €60 a day from his account to pay his bills.

The main problem that both Souvlakis and Alex the Less Than Great had is that they never had a “Plan B”, as in WTF they would do if they couldn’t get a reasonable deal out of the Euroclowns. There never was any plan on how to issue out a New Drachma, because of course anyone with any CFS realizes that said currency will go worthless about 10 seconds after it leaves the printing press. They are completely trapped by the Euro, without it they can’t buy energy, they can’t import food or medicine, nada. The new Drachma they issue out to Greek Pensioners won’t buy jack shit, about all it will be useful for is Toilet Paper.

This on the Nation-State level is the same problem EVERYONE immersed in the industrial economy faces individually, you simply cannot EXIST without the money to buy the industrial produced goods & services, pay the taxes on your land, buy the fuel for you transportation to get to your job if you have one, etc.

“Opting out” is NOT option, difficult enough for the individual to pull off,impossible for the Nation-State to pull off in aggregate. How can Tsipras sell to the Greeks they have to give up all their carz, all their electric lights and all their pensions and at best go back to an agrarian peasant economy? He CAN’T sell that, which is why there never was a Plan B.

The Euroclowns knew there was no Plan B, and they stuck to their guns, waterboading Alex until he capitulated. Which he apparently did, but the Greek Parliament still has to accept this deal and sign off on it. Forget the Referendum, I can’t see HTF the Pols who are MPs in Greece can vote to accept this piece of shit deal without all being strung up by their Gonads directly after voting this way.

What Alex the Less Than Great has now done is a very interesting new Tactic, he publicly ADMITTED he is a Quisling and will do whatever his Masters in Brussels order him to do, and that any kind of “democracy” in Greece is HISTORY now. The vote in the Greek Parliament is supposed to take place on Wednesday, and I can’t see how these Pols can vote to accept this deal and still keep their heads attached to their necks. The NEW Deal is WORSE than the OLD Deal that the referendum deemed was Unacceptable by 61% of the Greek Population, and this was AFTER their banks were put on Holiday and the max any Greek could pull out of a Cash machine to pay his bills on any given days was sucked down to €60. Just to pay your fucking RENT, you gotta queue up every day and hope there is enough cash in the machine when you finally get to it to collect up enough of your own little pile of saved Euro digibits to pay the rent, much less buy some food, which the importers can’t bring in because THEIR accounts are frozen ALSO.

You can see here how the Greeks are TRAPPED, “democracy” is a meaningless concept here when somebody else controls the MONEY you need to do any kind of commerce. Greeks can vote all they want for “no more austerity”, but they don’t have control over their own bank account, and until they exit the industrial economy they never will. They DEPEND on resources that can only be acquired with Dollars or Euros at the moment, and the likelihood is that if they do go ahead and issue new Drachma, it won’t buy anything imported in at all. After some 17 hours of Waterboarding with the Euroclowns, Tsipras realizes this, and he doesn’t want to be the guy that sends Greece back to the Dark Ages. Like just about everyone else, Alex the Less than Great wants to remain in the EZ, remain a part of the Industrial Economy. At this point, Alex will bend over and take it Greek style for any chance whatsoever to keep the lights on in Greece another week.

The whole problem here boils down to access to ENERGY. Participation in the Euro allows Greeks to access Oil, but they can only get those Euros by borrowing them from the people who both create the Euros to begin with and control the Oil resources as well. The value of the Euro is just like the value of the Dollar, it gains its value because it can purchase Energy, at least at the moment it still can.

The problem of course is that the folks who “control” the energy are in control of less of it all the time, it’s getting more expensive in real terms to extract all the time, and they can’t keep issuing out Infinite Credit on a Finite Resource they can no longer extract at cheap cost. Well, they can keep issuing out the Credit, the problem though is that said credit buys less of the resource all the time if they do it that way. So instead, you just CUT OFF credit to various countries like Greece that you no longer need or want as part of the system. Unlike the Chinese, who despite being enormous consumers now of energy also provide a lot of dirt cheap slave labor to produce industrial toys and waste, the Greeks don’t produce too much besides olives and feta cheese. While nice to eat, these items don’t do much for the Market Cap of AAPL. Greeks have been deemed as Expendable.

The remarkable thing to me as this process works its way forward is how people in the center economies don’t perceive or believe this will eventually come to their doorstep also. Not just Amerikan Exceptionalism, there is Brit Exceptionalism, Kraut Exceptionalism and Chinese Exceptionalism also in play here.

“Those stupid Greeks! They brought it on themselves!”. “Those dumb Liberals running Detroit! They brought it on themselves!” Those idiot Ukrainians, they brought it on themselves!” Every time one of these organizations, be it a nation-state or municipality goes belly up, the blame is immediately dropped on whoever was running the show there at the time of the crisis. Nobody pays attention to all the shit that went down leading up to that. Nobody pays attention to the fact the whole damn ball of wax is not sustainable, and they certainly don’t think Greek problems will ever hit the FSoA! We’re EXCEPTIONAL! The Donald will Save Us! Shutting down Border Immigration will Save Us! Gold will Save Us!

Sorry, no, none of the above will do a damn thing to Save Us. The only question here is how long it will take for what is occurring at the periphery to work its way inward to the core. The problem isn’t a political one of who is running the show, it’s a resource problem of not enough to go round for 7B people to live the Happy Motoring lifestyle, which nobody who has it wants to give up and everybody who never got it still aspires to get.

Whats the timeline before the FSoA resembles Greece, and Greece resembles Somalia? That remains a riddle wrapped in an enigma buried in a question. The spin down is accelerating though, that much is obvious watching both Europe and China circle the toilet bowl.

Meanwhile, prep up while you enjoy the last good days of Happy Motoring, if you still have a job and some cash to spend. Savor a nice thick & juicy rib eye steak from a GMO corn fed cow slathered in high fructose corn syrup BBQ sauce and wash it down with a nice cold beer from your electric powered refrigerator. If you are lucky enough to make it through the zero point, you will be able to tell your grandchildren about how once it was, with planes that flew hundreds of fat people to Hawaii for vacation and huge superstores filled with Chinese manufactured junk nobody needed. They will laugh at your stories, they won’t believe you but they will be entertained.

And that’s all the Doom, this time until next time, here on the Doomstead Diner.