Greece must be allowed to default
As the European economic crisis unfolds, it is becoming obvious that there are two distinct ideas out there about how to proceed. One is favoured by the international financial elite, the European Union and the political leaderships of member states - and the other is the approach that is gaining purchase outside the chancelleries.
The former is the creation of a true European nation, a fiscal and debt union; the latter is allowing market forces to work and letting Greece unpick its monetary handcuffs and find its own level. I ask whether we would prefer to live under a benevolent dictatorship now because the time for answering it is fast approaching, the fork in the road is upon us and we are going to have to choose. I am not going to argue that one answer is entirely good, and the other entirely bad, but that each has its positives and negatives. It depends on your perspective, that is all.
Those that favour the top-down approach can include almost everybody with political influence on the continent, and many off it. To that number must be added the acting Director of the International Monetary Fund, the American John Lipsky and his director of European operations Antonio Borges. To them stability of the system is all, and protection of the status quo overrules other values - which at other times they might trumpet. In Luxembourg, on Monday, they launched the IMF's latest statement on the eurozone. In the IMF's normal user-friendly way, this study is called the 2011 Article IV mission.
Incomprehensible in title, the importance of this document should not be overlooked. What this report states so baldly is that the interests of the European elite must and will take precedence over the wishes of the people. After all, as is generally accepted, the bailouts are currently transferring institutional and private banking debt from those institutions to the taxpayers. Those taxpayers must therefore have a choice.
But they are to be ignored. Listen to Borges state: "We really believe that many of the current problems result from incomplete integration. In the process of developing monetary union like the United States, which is a fully integrated monetary union, you have obstacles that magnify the problem." What he seems to forget is that final fiscal and monetary union in the US only happened after the then bloodiest war in history, in a country that was already united by language law and customs. It is extraordinary that the IMF is suggesting that this economic crisis is in any way synonymous with what was happening in the US in the 1840s. The only slavery here is of the people to the Eurocrats dream. For without democratic control, we are left with something akin to slavery.
The other option is for Greece to default, leave the euro, find its own level, set its own interest rates and trade itself out of its predicament. The Greeks are no less hard working than any other nation, but have been gulled through the application of economic policies that suit Thüringen not Thessalonica. A wall has been built around the minds of the elite, one in which there is no door marked "exit" merely the ability to build the walls higher. The wall is their political commitment to the euro at all costs; the bricks are their hectoring communiqués.
We must make no bones about it, according to the EU and the IMF there is no alternative. The people of Greece must do as they are told. They cannot countenance default and leaving the single currency. What then is the price of democracy in its birthplace?
Nigel Farage MEP is leader of the UK Independence Party
UKIP seems to be a party filled with anti-women sentient - it is a one man band and it is all about Nigel Farage, or so it seems, claims Labour Party MEP Mary Honeyball
People talk about this as a car crash. I think of it more like the sinking of the Titanic. We are at the stage where the damage is done but the ship is still floating and nobody in charge can quite believe that this is really happening and that such an unsinkable vast construction such as this can possibly be going down. Even a "Farage Of Common Sense" fired directly at them will probably not wake them from their reverie until it is too late. Lifeboats anyone?
Steve Boston - Fife, Scotland
This is a test of Greek sovereignty and whether the will of the people of Greece will prevail or the overarching political strength of the European Union and the monetary powers of the IMF. The simple fact is that the Greeks never did like paying their taxes and resent being given a "fait accompli" over their country's national debt crisis.
The EU should really have seen this coming before Greece was admitted into the "club" in the first place and should have been excluded on the basis of "infra dignitatem". But then of course the rules of exclusive membership when Charles de Gaulle called the shots about which nations were allowed in are long since past.
I regret to say that the eurozone may collapse like a pack of cards if Greece does eventually default on the IMF loans and with it one supposes the ambition of an EU super-state. We may not have very long to wait for the outcome.
Paul Latham - Ilkley, West Yorkshire, U.K.
I don't believe that the word "democracy" is part of the vocabulary in Brussels.
very worried Dutchman
Can we have the Civil War first, like the US?
Smoking Hot - Bulgaria
Default is the only way that reality will set in upon this world of unreality. The infinite round of borrowing must stop and innovation and production must take its place. If we're all borrowing money from one another, how on earth is it to be paid off? It's a corruption of the market.
Michael R. Brown - California, U.S.A.
A point missed: people will pay almost any price to remain within the currency union. Why? Because euros are the only means for energy-deficit countries such as Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Belgium can obtain fuel.
Middle East suppliers will accept "hard" euros, but not devalued drachmas, punts, pesetas, lira, etc. Exiting the euro strands the immense fleets of beloved automobiles the Greeks, Irish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians and Belgians took on such huge euro-debts to own.
What business exists in these countries orbits around automobiles - also stranded by devaluation, which means the "Argentine" solution of default and devaluation leads to an energy-driven debt compounding spiral.
Argentina, in the 1990s, was not an energy debtor. It did not need to borrow hard currency to buy fuel and cutting off international funding did Argentina a favour as its citizens could not borrow to buy more cars.
By the way, Iceland is an energy producer and is not an example for Greece, either. Outside of Norway, all of Europe is an energy debtor, far more so than the United States or China. Only Japan and Korea have a more straightened energy economy.
The hapless Europeans are like the crew of a sinking sailing ship trying to climb the mast, each elbowing the others out of the way. What they choose not to accept is the problem is at the end of the EU's collective driveway and the choice is between driving a car and having some kind of money with some worth in your pocket.
Driving a car or having a job, driving a car or having something to eat, driving a car or living in a gulag or being killed in a riot. Driving a car or chaos. Shouldn't be a choice, but so many are having problems with it.
steve from virginia - economic undertow
It is so sad that the people of Greece have been misled by their leaders who continue to ignore the fundamental truth explained by Nigel Farage. The EU seeks to use a crisis which was foreseen when the euro was launched to take ever more power away from the people and their elected national governments.
A great deal of effort went into this debate in Britain and finally enough people understood that a currency cannot exist separately from political control. Importantly, Jimmy Goldsmith strong-armed the party leaders into promising a referendum on it.
Despite Britain's decision not to join, we still have to pay and pay again. At last some in Germany, who seem to have more votes than anyone else in this matter, have realised they can either subsidise Greece forever or make a choice: bail-out Greece repeatedly or bail-out their banks once and let Greece free. The people of Germany may yet speak.
Greece needs to be free to rebalance the economy during a large devaluation. Among other benefits, their important holiday and food businesses can flourish again and their young people can get jobs - maybe the first one in their lives.
Andrew Smith - Epping, UK
Freedom and democracy are entering a crossroads in Europe. The elites have made it clear that we, the people, are collateral to their grand schemes - so the people must decide that enough is enough. When that obvious conclusion is met, revolution becomes the only option. Imagine one million people marching on Brussels, just they try and escape that.
V - Liberty
Nigel Farage for Prime Minister. The only UK politician who tells it like it is. These European Union politicians should be hung for treason against the people of Europe - they are the lowest of the low.
Oliver Cromwell - Cambridge, UK
The EU and elites continue to show that they're more interested in securing finacial dominance over the will and choice of the people of Greece and other countries.
Benjamin - England
Steve from virginia argues that by using the euro, Greece and others can have international buying power they would not otherwise have. Given Greece and others cannot run their economy while inside the euro, his case does not stand.
Perhaps what steve imagines is a continuous bail-out or subsidy from Germany. I doubt that is possible and, in any event, it would be as illegal as the current scheme.
If Greece et al could generate enough euros to buy commodities, it could do so after leaving the single currency by selling drachmas.
Andrew Smith - Epping, UK
I would like to see some other views on this as given Mr Farage's track record he doesn't seem like the most informative person on this matter.
Tobias Menses - London
Nigel Farage is the man who lets us know the truth, and for me he should lead the UK from its mother parliament. All those we've elected over the decades have betrayed us. As for Greece, he's right, it should be allowed to default and leave the euro. Ireland was forced into to surrender and we all saw what happened there. These EU bullies, unelected, should be put into their place once and for all. Cameron will have to face them sooner or later, the problem is as he got the mettle to face them or will he add to our betrayal further?
Barbara - Dudley UK
This man really should be standing outside No.10 as Prime Minister. Why the hell people believed Cameron, I will never know. The comical lib-lab-con parties are redundant.
Darren - Southampton/ Britain/no organisation
I accept the default concept for Greece, other solutions create too much paternalism that never ends. Relying on the values created by others makes a mentality that cannot stand and overcome burdens and problems, a mentality behaviour of dependence and non-abbility to survival.
I find this dangerous because applying union paternality measures will lead to instability even there, where it seems to be impossible. No - paying their bills, or giving them grants, we teach them to rely on the other's efforts and achievements, on the value that other's create to their benefit.
So, we, people of efforts to contribute to the problem. We create communities and societies that have the grants to live on our value without even thinking of their own change, of managing their own situation. We do not solve the problem. The workable solution is in teaching such communities, societies how they can manage their own problems and solve them. Governments are not babies to be fed five times a day, but products of the mentality of their voters.
Living on their own will teach those voters and their governments how to manage and solve the problems that are their internal ones, their own problems. It will inspire a change in mentality, in approach and they will learn on experience how to plan and act strategically for their well being.
When a family teaches its children financial intelligence and to take the responsibility to their actions, to their own wishes and desires by seeking how to find the proper and legal way to fulfill some of them, the result is thinking of solutions. If the child gets all its desires fulfilled on spot, it has no need to seek any solution, to overcome any burden and as a result of such a paternalistic approach - it stops relying on its own creativity. Even worse - it stops thinking how to achieve its own small goals.
State behaviour is similar, but in macro aspect. The workable solution I see is to leave the states tot their own responsibility and to give them opportunity to change the mentality of their people, to teach them how to manage their problems and on how to survive. Difficult is change, but it results in steady outcomes for people and states.
Margarita Nikolova - Sofia, Bulgaria
It's like Greece sees this fast racing team and joins in. But it didn't - and still doesn't - realise that it itself is not that fast enough and finds really hard to catch up, so now it has exhausted itself by barely catching up with the euro team - and finally falling apart.
So it's quite obvious here that Greece should quit the eurozone and give itself more freedom and time to develop and strengthen its own economy.
Charlie - Oxford, UK
Nigel, what the hell do you and your country have to do with Europe and the eurozone? Why don't you just pull out of the EU, pull your little island in the other side of the Atlantic and stop bothering us all?
Petros Houhoulis
God help the people of Greece. They must come to their senses and abandon the EU if they hope to have a future that doesn't see all of them as serfs for lords sitting in other countries.
Thomas Lowe - Columbus, Ohio USA
Let's all get onto the streets of the UK and demand to come out of the EU.
Peter Patrick Glancy Campbell - Greenock, Scotland
Today, most modern first world countries trade money instead of soldiers lives. Soon, if countries cannot trade monies, it will be land and other commodities. Then if there is no land or commodites to trade, many countries will once again resort to trading the lives of their soldiers.
Conscription (which still exists in Greece) will happen in many countries, and the balance of power will shift to those who have the biggest and best miliatarised armed forces. In todays world for every five non-Chinese persons, there is one Chinese person. I find this a frightening statistic.
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