Greece sells Piraeus Port to China?

Hafen von Piräus: Kehrtwende beim Privatisierungsprojekt

Greece's creditors seem to be successful in pushing the government of Alexis Tsipras to yet go ahead with further privatising its largest port, Piraeus, while two months ago it still had announced it would maintain state control of Piraeus Port. The Greek government is expected to sell its majority stake of 67 percent to the Chinese company Cosco which already owns two container terminals of the partly privatised port. This is what Greek deputy prime minister Yannis Dragasakis told China's official Xinhua news agency on March 28, 2015. (The picture above is from Der Spiegel of 28 March and the caption says: Port of Piraeus: U-turn in privatisation project.)

According to Wall Street Journal of 29 March, Greece expects to raise at least 500 million euros from the sale of Piraeus Port. Greek officials also told creditors they will seek to privatise operating concessions at 14 regional airports, said Wall Street Journal.

Greece's creditors - European countries, ECB and IMF - are putting pressure on the Tsipras government to stick to 'reforms' agreed by the previous Greek governments with the Troika. 

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, has insisted his government will not carry out any recessionary measures to cut wages, jobs or pensions. But it seems that Greece's creditors insist Tsipras should stick as well to 'reforms' earlier agreed with respect to labour and pensions.

In reading this and other news about Greece it was ironic that another article I read this morning, about damage caused in Greece by Nazi Germany during the second world war, carried a picture of Piraeus as illustration. Below I copy that picture and the first part of the article, titled "Greece: debt and memory of war", written by Conn Hallinan.

Greece: debt and memory of war

Conn Hallinan

Damage from the German bombing of Piraeus, Greece, on April 6, 1941. Australian War Memorial Image/Wikimedia

March 23 2015

Memory is selective and therein lies an explanation for some of the deep animosity between Berlin and Athens in the current debt crisis that has shaken the European Union (EU) to its foundations.

For German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, "memory" goes back to 2007 when Greece was caught up in the worldwide financial conflagration touched off by American and European speculators. Berlin was a major donor in the 240 billion euro "bailout" - 89 percent of which went to pay off the gambling debts of German, French, Dutch and British banks. Schauble wants that debt repaid.

Millions of Greeks are concerned about unpaid debts as well, although their memories stretch back a little further.

In July 1943 Wehrmacht General Hubert Lanz, commander of the First Mountain Division, was annoyed because two of his officers had been threatened by civilians in the western Greek town of Kommeno. It was dangerous to irritate a German commander during the 1941-45 occupation of Greece.

Lanz first murdered 153 men, women and children - ages one to 75 - in Mousiotitsas, then surrounded Kommeno, where his troops systematically killed 317 people, including 172 women. Thirteen were one year old, and 38 people were burned alive in their houses. After the massacre, the soldiers ate their lunch in the village square, surrounded by the bodies of the dead, and then pushed on to other villages, killing more than 200 civilians.

It was not the first, nor the last massacre of Greeks, and most people in that country can recite them like the beads on a rosary: Kondomari (60 killed); Kardanos (180 killed); Alikianos (118 killed); Viannos (over 500 killed); Amari (164 killed); Kalavryta (over 700 killed); Distomo (214 killed). All in all, the Germans destroyed more than 460 villages, executed 130,000 civilians, and murdered virtually the entire Jewish population - 60,000 - during the occupation.

On top of that, Athens was forced to "lend" Germany 475 million reichsmarks - estimated today at 14 billion euros - to pay for the occupation. Adding interest to the loan makes that figure somewhere around 95 billion euros.

Greece's public debt is currently 315 billion euros.

The Greeks "remember" a few other things about those massacres. Gen. Kurtl Student, the butcher of Kondomari, Kardanos, and Alikianos, was sentenced to five years after the war, but got out early on medical grounds. The beast of Mousiotitsas and Kommeno, Gen. Lanz, was sentenced to 12 years, served three, and became a major military and security advisor to the German Free Democratic Party. In 1954 he wrote a book about his exploits and died in bed in 1982. Gen. Karl von Le Suire of Kalavryta fame was not so lucky. Captured by the Soviets, he died in a Stalingrad POW camp in 1954. Lt. Gen. Friedrich-Wilhelm Muller, who ordered the Viannos massacre, was tried and executed by the Greeks in 1947.

It is not hard to see why many Greeks see a certain relationship between what the Germans did to Greece during the occupation and what is being done to it today. There are no massacres - although suicide rates are through the ceiling - and no mass starvation, but 44 percent of the Greek people are now below the poverty line, the economy is shattered, and Greeks feel they no longer control their country. Up until the last election, they didn't. The Troika - the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund - dictated the price of the loan: layoffs, wage and pension reductions, and huge cutbacks in health care. True, their occupiers did not wear the double thunderbolts of the SS or the field green of the Wehrmacht, but armies in pinstripes and silk ties can inflict a lot of damage.

(...)

Yanis Varoufakis - Of Greeks and Germans: Re-imagining our shared future

A few days ago Yanis Varoufakis published a post on his blog "thoughts for the post-2008 world" that he later withdrew and published in a revised and extended version with Project Syndicate. Below are the Syndicate version and a copy of his original blog post that I saved in my computer. There is also a German translation of the original blog post published by Markus Wichmann "Yanis Varoufakis: Von Griechen und Deutschen – Unsere gemeinsame Zukunft neu überdenken".

Deescalating Europe’s Politics of Resentment

MAR 25, 2015

ATHENS – A German television presenter recently broadcast an edited video of me, before I was Greece’s finance minister, giving his country the middle-finger salute. The fallout has shown the potential impact of an alleged gesture, especially in troubled times. Indeed, the kerfuffle sparked by the broadcast would not have happened before the 2008 financial crisis, which exposed the flaws in Europe’s monetary union and turned proud countries against one another.

When, in early 2010, Greece’s government could no longer service its debts to French, German, and Greek banks, I campaigned against its quest for an enormous new loan from Europe’s taxpayers to pay off those debts. I gave three reasons.

First, the new loans did not represent a bailout for Greece so much as a cynical transfer of private losses from the banks’ books onto the shoulders of Greece’s most vulnerable citizens. How many of Europe’s taxpayers, who have footed the bill for these loans, know that more than 90% of the €240 billion ($260 billion) that Greece borrowed went to financial institutions, not to the Greek state or its people?

Second, it was obvious that if Greece already could not repay its existing loans, the austerity conditions on which the “bailouts” were premised would crush Greek nominal incomes, making the national debt even less sustainable. When Greeks could no longer make payments on their mountainous debts, German and other European taxpayers would have to step in again. (Wealthy Greeks, of course, had already shifted their deposits to financial centers like Frankfurt and London.)

Finally, misleading peoples and parliaments by presenting a bank bailout as an act of “solidarity,” while failing to help ordinary Greeks – indeed, setting them up to place an even heavier burden on Germans – was destined to undermine cohesion within the eurozone. Germans turned against Greeks; Greeks turned against Germans; and, as more countries have faced fiscal hardship, Europe has turned against itself.

The fact is that Greece had no right to borrow from German – or any other European – taxpayers at a time when its public debt was unsustainable. Before Greece took any loans, it should have initiated debt restructuring and undergone a partial default on debt owed to its private-sector creditors. But this “radical” argument was largely ignored at the time.

Similarly, European citizens should have demanded that their governments refuse even to consider transferring private losses to them. But they failed to do so, and the transfer was effected soon after.

The result was the largest taxpayer-backed loan in history, provided on the condition that Greece pursue such strict austerity that its citizens have lost one-quarter of their incomes, making it impossible to repay private or public debts. The ensuing – and ongoing – humanitarian crisis has been tragic.

Five years after the first bailout was issued, Greece remains in crisis. Animosity among Europeans is at an all-time high, with Greeks and Germans, in particular, having descended to the point of moral grandstanding, mutual finger-pointing, and open antagonism.

This toxic blame game benefits only Europe’s enemies. It has to stop. Only then can Greece – with the support of its European partners, who share an interest in its economic recovery – focus on implementing effective reforms and growth-enhancing policies. This is essential to placing Greece, finally, in a position to repay its debts and fulfill its obligations to its citizens.

In practical terms, the February 20 Eurogroup agreement, which provided a four-month extension for loan repayments, offers an important opportunity for progress. As Greece’s leaders urged at an informal meeting in Brussels last week, it should be implemented immediately.

In the longer term, European leaders must work together to redesign the monetary union so that it supports shared prosperity, rather than fueling mutual resentment. This is a daunting task. But, with a strong sense of purpose, a united approach, and perhaps a positive gesture or two, it can be accomplished.

This is an updated and extended version of a post at yanisvaroufakis.eu.

Of Greeks and Germans: Re-imagining our shared future

Posted on March 20, 2015 by yanisv

Any sensible person can see how a certain video[1] has become part of something beyond a gesture. It has sparked off a kerfuffle reflecting the manner in which the 2008 banking crisis began to undermine Europe’s badly designed monetary union, turning proud nations against each other.
When, in early 2010, the Greek state lost its capacity to service its debts to French, German and Greek banks, I campaigned against the Greek government’s quest for an enormous new loan from Europe’s taxpayers. Why?
I opposed the 2010 and 2012 ‘bailout’ loans from German and other European taxpayers because:

• the new loans represented not a bailout for Greece but a cynical transfer of losses from the books of the private banks to the weak shoulders of the weakest of Greek citizens. (How many of Europe’s taxpayers, who footed these loans, know that more than 90% of the €240 billion borrowed by Greece went to financial institutions, not to the Greek state or its citizens?)
• it was obvious that, at a time Greece could not repay its existing loans, the austerity conditions for giving Greece the new loans would crush Greek nominal incomes, making our debt even less sustainable
• the ‘bailout’ burden would, sooner or later, weigh down German and other European taxpayers once the weaker Greeks buckled under their mountainous debts (as moneyed Greeks had already shifted their deposits to Frankfurt, London etc.)
• misleading peoples and Parliaments by presenting a bank bailout as an act of ‘solidarity to Greece’ would turn Germans against Greeks, Greeks against Germans and, eventually, Europe against itself.

In 2010 Greece owed not one euro to German taxpayers. We had no right to borrow from them, or from other European taxpayers, while our public debt was unsustainable. Period!
That was my ‘controversial’ point in 2010: In 2010, Greece should have borrowed not one euro before entering into debt restructuring procedures and partially defaulting to its private sector creditors.
Well before the May 2010 ‘bailout’, I urged European citizens to tell their governments not to even think of transferring private losses to them.
To no avail, of course. That transfer was effected soon after[2] with the largest taxpayer-backed loan in economic history given to the Greek state on austerity conditions that have caused Greeks to lose a quarter of their income, making it impossible to repay private and public debts, and causing a hideous humanitarian crisis.
That was then, in 2010. What should we do now, in 2015, that Greece remains in crisis and our people, the Greeks and the Germans, have, regrettably but also predictably, descended into a mutual ‘blame game’?
First, we should work towards ending the toxic ‘blame game’ and the moralising finger-pointing which benefit only the enemies of Europe.
Secondly, we need to focus on our joint interest: On how to grow and to reform Greece rapidly, so that the Greek state can best repay debts it should never have taken on while looking after its citizens as a modern European state ought to do.
In practical terms, the 20^th February Eurogroup agreement offers an excellent opportunity to move forward. Let us implement it immediately, as our leaders have urged in yesterday’s informal Brussels meeting.
Looking ahead, and beyond current tensions, our joint task is to re-design Europe so that Germans and Greeks, along with all Europeans, can re-imagine our monetary union as a realm of shared prosperity.
—————————–
[1] Whose showing derailed an otherwise constructive discussion on German television.
[2] First in May 2010 (€110 billion) and then again in the Spring of 2012 (another €130 billion).

They are cornering Greece

It makes me angry that they are cornering the new Greek government. It may be that it was not tactical and not according the agreement with its creditors (the Troika of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) that the Greek government presented yesterday in the Greek parliament a bill to help the poorest Greeks, and it may be that, according to the rules (who set the rules?), it should have consulted the Troika before adopting this bill, because of their budgetary costs, but I perfectly understand why the Greek government has not done that. 

The Greeks are tired of being humiliated and not being allowed to fulfill the electoral promise of helping the poorest. But the technocrats of the Troika, who were accustomed to commanding and being obeyed, are upset that the new Greek government does not behave like previous governments. And the technocrats know they have a lot of power.

Do they want the attempt of the new Greek government to conduct non-neoliberal politics becomes a failure? Do they want to warn the new Spanish party Podemos and those who intend to vote for it, that a government of Podemos would be a failure?

It may be that the new Greek government has committed diplomatic and tactical mistakes, but my esteem for it is much larger than for the Troika.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in Parliament, where he presented the bill to help the poorest, that it was the first bill in five years that was adopted in Athens rather than ordered by technocrats of the European Union. He criticized a senior EU official who had written a letter to the Greek government saying that it should not adopt the law before consulting its international creditors. The EU official said that the bill should be discussed first to see if it were in accordance with the agreed reforms. "Doing otherwise would be proceeding unilaterally". 

According to a BBC article Tsipras told the Greek parliament: "If they're doing it to frighten us, the answer is: we will not be frightened. What else can one say to those who have the audacity to say that dealing with a humanitarian crisis is a 'unilateral action'?"

Will Germany pay war reparations to Greece?

EU Observer reported today on Germany's discussion about war reparations to Greece:

Prominent German politicians side with Greece on war reparations

Angela Merkel meeting Alexis Tsipras at last month's EU summit - since then tensions between Germany and Greece have increased (Photo: European Council President)

By Honor Mahony

BRUSSELS, 18 March 2015 Greece's increasingly frequent calls that Germany needs to pay it compensation for crimes committed by the Nazis in WWII have been supported by prominent politicians in Berlin.
Two leading Social Democrats - part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government - on Tuesday (17 March) called on Berlin to start talks on the reparations issue with Greece.
In an op-ed for Spiegel Online, Gesine Schwan, a former presidential candidate, said Germany "needs to clean before its own door" when it comes to its Nazi past, noting that victims and descendants have longer memories than perpetrators and descendents.
"It looks awkward when well-off Germany demands the repayment of debts from poor Greece but is itself not prepared to even speak about the repayment of a forced loan by Nazi Germany on Greece," she wrote.
SPD’s Deputy President Ralf Stegner made similar comments by saying “we should hold a discussion about reparations" but urged that the matter not be linked to the current euro crisis. "There are still international legal questions to be resolved," he added.
Green politician Anton Hofreiter said Greece's demands cannot simply be "swept from the table" and that "morally and legally" the question remained open.
The statements put Chancellor Merkel in a tough position. Until now she has argued that the question of reparations is legally and political closed.
Berlin's position was helped by Greece's overt linking of its current cashflow problems with Germany's "moral" duty to pay billions of euros in reparations.

But now that centre-left politicians have broken ranks, the issue becomes harder to ignore.
Greece is seeking compensation on three accounts - general war reparations, a claim resulting from a massacre of 214 people in the Greek village of Distomo in 1944 and the repayment of the forced loan that the Nazis got from the Greek central bank in 1943. The total amounts to hundreds of billions of euros.
Germany, for its part, says it has honoured its obligations, having paid Greece 115m Deutchmarks in 1960. It also argues that the matter was closed by the 1990 'two plus four treaty' signed by West and East Germany, as well as the Soviet Union, Britain, France and the US.
But this has been disputed in a 2013 report by the German parliament's research service which argued that these agreements do not necessarily fully close the matter.
Spiegel Online reports that Merkel is keeping a hard course on Greece because she fears similar demands from other countries.
The reparations question has become a flashpoint in the increasingly bitter relations between Berlin and Athens over what reforms Greece needs to undertake to secure the next tranche of bailout money.
The far-left Syriza Party under PM Alexis Tsipras was elected in January on a promise of ending austerity and debt restructuring - but has run up against opposition from its euro zone partners.
Tsipras is due to meet Merkel in Berlin on Monday (23 March) - a meeting that comes after German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that trust in Greece had been "destroyed" by the behaviour of the Greek government.
However the Tsipras government is not the first Greek administration to bring up the reparations issue. It was also raised by Antonis Samaras, Tsipras' centre-right predecessor, as well as in the 1990s.

Tsipras sees Merkel on Monday... and what did Varoufakis say two years ago in Zagreb?

Amid all the heated news coming from Germany today about Yanis Varoufakis raising his middle finger against Germany, more than two years ago at a conference in Zagreb where he promoted his book "The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy" (see what he said, in this video), the announcement I just read of Angela Merkel inviting Alexis Tsipras for a visit to Berlin, is a welcome counterweight, especially because of the nice photograph that illustrates the article in Deutsche Welle, "Tsipras kommt nach Berlin".    

Griechenland

Tsipras kommt nach Berlin

Kanzlerin Merkel hat den griechischen Ministerpräsidenten für kommenden Montag nach Berlin eingeladen. Über mangelnde Themen werden die beiden sicher nicht klagen.

Merkel und Tsipras bei ihrem bislang einzigen Treffen auf dem EU-Gipfel Mitte Februar

Merkel und Tsipras hätten telefoniert, sagte ein Regierungssprecher in Berlin. "Dabei hat die Bundeskanzlerin den Ministerpräsidenten zu einem Besuch in Berlin eingeladen und er hat die Einladung angenommen." Merkel hatte den Linkspolitiker aus Athen bisher erst einmal getroffen, auf dem EU-Gipfel am 12. Februar. Am Donnerstag werden beide an dem zweitägigen EU-Treffen der 28 Staats- und Regierungschefs in Brüssel teilnehmen. (...)

Rough translation:

Chancellor Merkel has invited the Prime Minister of Greece for next Monday in Berlin. The two are certainly not complaining about a lack of topics. (title below picture: Merkel and Tsipras in their only previous meeting at the EU summit in mid-February)

Merkel and Tsipras had telephoned, said a government spokesman in Berlin. "The Chancellor has invited the Prime Minister to visit Berlin and he accepted the invitation." Merkel had previously met the left politician from Athens only once, at the EU summit on 12 February. On Thursday, both will attend the two-day meeting of the EU-28 Heads of State and Government in Brussels.

Remarkable interview on Greek debt with IMF executive director Paulo Nogueira Batista

Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Charles Wyplosz (see, for example, Wyplosz' excellent article "Messing up the next Greek debt relief could endanger the Eurozone"), Paul de Grauwe and Yanis Varoufakis are among the well known, thoughtful economists who have criticized the way European policymakers and the IMF have handled Greece's debt problems (and that of other European countries). One of their criticisms is that Greece's debt should have been reduced in 2010 rather than increased, as was done when the first EU-IMF 'rescue' loan package for Greece was put in place. Rather than helping the Greek people, these new loans helped European private banks to survive.

Paulo Nogueira Batista, executive director of the IMF

Their criticism was shared by Brazilian economist Paulo Nogueira Batista, executive director of the IMF, who said in a prepared statement to the May 9, 2010 IMF board meeting discussing an IMF loan to Greece: "The risks of the [Greek] program are immense…As it stands, the program risks substituting private for official financing. In other and starker words, it may be seen not as a rescue of Greece, which will have to undergo a wrenching adjustment, but as a bailout of Greece’s private debt holders, mainly European financial institutions."

Recently, in a television interview by Thanos Dimadis for Alpha TV, published on March 4, 2015, Paulo Nogueira Batistsa added:

"I was critical of the way the Greek issue was handled by the Troika including the IMF. One of the major problems of the IMF program was that they put too much of a burden on Greece and not enough of a burden on Greece’s creditors. The first program of 2010 was presented as a bailout for Greece, but in reality was more a bailout of the private creditors of Greece. Greece received enormous amounts of money but the money was basically used to allow the exit of, for example, French and German banks, without any contribution to the restructuring of the Greek economy. (...)

In my opinion, the debt is way too large and a solution to the Greek crisis should include a restructuring of the debt of Greece with its official creditors. If you look at the situation in Greece, it’s difficult to see how Greece will extricate itself from this serious economic and social crisis without some debt restructuring. The largest part of Greece’s debt is now with its European partners. (...)

The Troika or the institutions as they are now called, should respect the sovereignty of the Greek nation. The IMF and the European partners cannot behave as though the elections did not happen. It would be wrong to say that Greece should stick to all the commitments made by the previous government. This has to be reviewed. The IMF should consider the fact that the targets for the fiscal adjustment and the targets for the primary surplus need to be revised downward and substantially."

The future of Greece and Spain

Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Charles Wyplosz (see, for example, Wyplosz' excellent article "Messing up the next Greek debt relief could endanger the Eurozone"), Paul de Grauwe and Yanis Varoufakis are among the well known, thoughtful economists who have criticized the way European policymakers and the IMF have handled Greece's debt problems (and that of other European countries). One of their criticisms is that Greece's debt should have been reduced in 2010 rather than increased, as was done when the first EU-IMF 'rescue' loan package for Greece was put in place. Rather than helping the Greek people, these new loans helped European private banks to survive.

Paulo Nogueira Batista, executice director of the IMF

Their criticism was shared by Brazilian economist Paulo Nogueira Batista, executive director of the IMF, who said in a prepared statement to the May 9, 2010 IMF board meeting discussing an IMF loan to Greece: "The risks of the [Greek] program are immense…As it stands, the program risks substituting private for official financing. In other and starker words, it may be seen not as a rescue of Greece, which will have to undergo a wrenching adjustment, but as a bailout of Greece’s private debt holders, mainly European financial institutions."

Recently, in a television interview by Thanos Dimadis for Alpha TV, published on March 4, 2015, Paulo Nogueira Batistsa added:

"I was critical of the way the Greek issue was handled by the Troika including the IMF. One of the major problems of the IMF program was that they put too much of a burden on Greece and not enough of a burden on Greece’s creditors. The first program of 2010 was presented as a bailout for Greece, but in reality was more a bailout of the private creditors of Greece. Greece received enormous amounts of money but the money was basically used to allow the exit of, for example, French and German banks, without any contribution to the restructuring of the Greek economy.

In my opinion, the debt is way too large and a solution to the Greek crisis should include a restructuring of the debt of Greece with its official creditors. If you look at the situation in Greece, it’s difficult to see how Greece will extricate itself from this serious economic and social crisis without some debt restructuring. The largest part of Greece’s debt is now with its European partners.

The Troika or the institutions as they are now called, should respect the sovereignty of the Greek nation. The IMF and the European partners cannot behave as though the elections did not happen. It would be wrong to say that Greece should stick to all the commitments made by the previous government. This has to be reviewed. The IMF should consider the fact that the targets for the fiscal adjustment and the targets for the primary surplus need to be revised downward and substantially." 

The history of public debt in Greece and Spain

The Greek debt saga still goes on. Recently, Spanish economist Vicenç Navarrro put it in a broad historical perspective, in an article published by Counterpunch on January 9-11, 2015 ("What is going on in Spain?"). Navarro is a professor of political sciences at the Pompeu Fabra University in Spain and a professor of public policy at the Johns Hopkins University in the USA, who has become well known in Spain being one of the authors of a best-selling book presenting an alternative to the current neoliberal economic policies. He has also gained prominence being one of the two authors of a wide-ranging plan recently adopted by the new political party Podemos to change course in Spain: Un  Proyecto Económico para la Gente (An Economic Project for the People).

Navarro has written extensively (see, for instance, “Capital-Labor: The Unspoken Causes of the Crises,” www.vnavarro.org, Economic Section and "Crisis and Class Struggle in the Eurozone") about the historical reasons why Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland are in trouble. In the January 2015 Counterpunch article he summarised his view as follows:

"All these countries, referred to rather unkindly in the Anglo-Saxon economic literature as PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain), have had ultra-right-wing dictatorships (fascist or fascistoid), except Ireland, governed by a very conservative party close to the Church. These dictatorships were the result of military coups (in the case of Spain, supported by Hitler and Mussolini in 1936) against democratically elected governments that had initiated meaningful reforms affecting the privilege of the oligarchy, i.e., the agricultural, financial, and (in the case of Catalonia and Basque Country in Spain) industrial bourgeoisie, in addition to the Catholic Church and the Army. The Spanish fascist coup established one of the most brutal repressions that has ever taken place in Western Europe during the 20th century. (...) Franco’s dictatorship was a class dictatorship against the working population. That dictatorship was responsible for the enormous economic and cultural underdevelopment in Spain. When the military coup took place in 1936, Spain’s Gross National Product (GNP) per capita was similar to Italy’s. In 1978, when the dictatorship ended and the democracy was established, Spain’s GNP per capita was only 62% of Italy’s. That was the economic cost of having a fascist dictatorship."

According to Navarro one of the reasons Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland have huge public debts is that the income of their states is much less than that of other Eurozone countries. This, again, has its historical roots, as Navarro explained in a recent interview with him held by students of the Pompeu Fabra University:

"...históricamente han sido muy dominados por fuerzas profundamente conservadoras representantes de los mayores poderes financieros y económicos del país, así como de sus clases dominantes, que configuraron unos Estados que favorecieran sus intereses, entre los cuales predominaban unas políticas fiscales muy regresivas. Es decir, que las rentas del trabajo pagan impuestos mucho más altos que las rentas del capital sin olvidar que son Estados en los que existe una enorme impunidad y tolerancia hacia el fraude fiscal en el que incurren predominantemente aquellos grupos y aquellas clases. Esto ocurre en España y en Grecia, y también en Portugal e Irlanda, donde los ingresos al Estado, incluso hoy, han sido más bajos que el promedio de la Eurozona."  

The future

It is positive that we have thoughtful economists. But it would be even better if some of their good ideas are put into practice. In Greece the new government is trying to do that. Hopefully, the Greeks will receive support in the near future from a new government that Spain may get when Podemos wins the elections. According to polls the chances are high that Podemos would win if elections were held today.

Navarro ended his January 2015 Counterpunch article looking at the future. He said:

"The success of Podemos has become a major threat to the Spanish (and to the European) establishment. Today, the Spanish financial, economic, political, and media establishments are on the defensive and in panic, having passed laws that strengthen the repression. The heads of the major banks in Spain are particularly uneasy. Mr. Botín, president of the major bank Santander, indicated four days before he died (a few weeks ago) that he was extremely worried, indicating that Podemos and Catalonia were very threatening to Spain. He, of course, meant his Spain. And he was right. The future is quite open. As Gramsci once indicated, it is the end of a period without a clear view of what the next one will be. Europe, Spain, and Catalonia are ending an era. This is clear. What still is unclear is what will come next. We will see."