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Time for Bold Action from the people of Greece

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by Dick Eastman

The Greek people voted against austerity and the debt structure the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Greece’s International Creditors and the European Union governments were imposing. In retaliation these interests have inflicted upon Greece a policy of near total deflation, allowing only bare subsistence incomes at present prices and availability of goods foreign and domestic, prices – which of course will not remain obtainable as producers no longer have the revenue to pay employees or to order new factor inputs. Make no mistake, Global Finance has declared total war against the people of Greece and the weapon they are using is as terrible a killer and destroyer as any you can name outside of bombing of cities and villages. The Greeks must face this fact, maintain their resolve not to give in and, most important, offer a response that is both just and measured and sufficiently aversive that it will make the EU sorry t it chose to resort to the conomic terrorism of money sanctions.

Here is what the Greek people must do — with the Tsipras government or a better one:

1. To alleviate the immediate cash shortage in the household and business sectors, declare, in this national emergency, that all mortage payments, business loan payments to lending banks or international lenders be suspended for the duration of the crisis. And as part of that move the payments that are suspended will be either delayed with no additional interest or they will be payments that are forgiven and forgotten in the eyes of the Greek government, depending on the duration of the money sanctions against Greeks.

2. The government will, for the duration of this emergency (and perhaps permanently), stop taxing the people in Euros but will begin taxing the people with a money-like device called a “tax-payment coupon” or more precisely “a negotiable tax-paying coupon”. These coupons will resemble money and will have the value of one Euro in the payment of taxes according to the already existing tax rate that is already denominated in Euros. The government will allow these coupons (let’s call them “Apollos” after the well known figure of ancient Greek beliefs). The government will provide to every citizen on their tax rolls an amount of the Apollo which people can spend into circulation exactly as they would a dividend of Euros that they had received. The government during the emergency will allow the Apollo the status of “legal tender” — which Greeks may spend at stores or in their transactions with each other — and to their employees and churches and charities. This substitute money, this negotiable (spendable, transferable) Apollo Coupon, will circulate freely and, because all Greeks will accept it because it allows them to buy things and to pay taxes, even dealers in foreign goods will accept them, because they can be used to buy Greek goods for which foreigners still have demand.

3. Greeks must propose to Iran and Russia that these countries send their own currencies to Greece for free circulation as the international money of Greece. Iceland may also wish to join in such arrangements with Greece.

Through these devices, especially through introduction of the Apollo Coupon, the Greek economy will be able to continue its market system.

Let it be understood by all that the EUB and the EU governments are attempting to inflict mass privation on large numbers of the Greek population through deflation. By doing this they have forfeited all right to consideration of prior contract. They have imposed a system on Greece –their money bought the media and the salesmen who sold the EU system and their money bought the legislators and bankers who set it up and made the decisions. Now that the system has hurt the Greek people, they are awake and paying attention and are ready to take back control of their own country and its systems of money and lending. It is a matter of survival now that they do so.

No one in the present Greek govenment is thinking like this — but I believe the Greek people are thinking like this. They understand what is at stake. They now feel the pinch of hunger and fear from an economy intentionally ground to a halt by international finance because international finance has been frustrated in its plan for the continued plundering of Greece and the debt slavery of almost all Greeks.

And these measures, the suspension of all debt payments to banks, the providing of the Apollo coupon that is declared legal tender throughout the emergency, that can be used to pay taxes and that is completely negotiable so that hiring and food buying and rent paying can continue.

The odds are that the the ECB and the other EU governments will not consent to revision of their system to the satisfaction of Greek debtors. That will only mean that the swindlers are not willing to undo their swindle and launch more honest understandings. In that case, Greece will be free to repudiate all debts to international lenders — on the grounds that the contracts were entered into were fraudulent, that the impoverishment of Greece, the transfer of Greek wealth to international bankers and investors was the heart of the EU plan. That is legal justification for repudiation of all such debt.

When any one loans money it must always be at the lenders risk. The lender was an equal member of the contract and it was his duty as well as the borrowers to make sure that the venture being undertaken was a viable one — that there was a reasonable chance that the borrower could use the money to create goods profitable so that repayment could be made.

But of course the fraud of the system was that the only money allowed was the Euro and all Euros were borrowed into existence so that every euro of loan was co-created with a debt of principal equal to that amount, and interest payments over time that often total more than one euro. S that there was never really enough money in the system to allow debts to be repaid while still having money continuing in circulation sufficient sustain a market economy.

The EU’s system was rigged so that the peoples of each EU nation would be forced into default one way or another sooner or later, drained by their own debt payments, by high prices which contain the interest burden of producers and suppliers of producers, plus the tax burden of government that must pay taxes in its own ever worsening debt. It is all together right and proper that debts incurred under such a system, debts to the bankers responsible for the existence of exactly that system, should be repudiated with no penalty.

The Greek economy, if faced with an EU that refuses to reform its criminal system, will be justified in creating a far better system — simply by converting the Apollo coupons into the new Greek money. The government will simply continue sending a healthy ration of new money to each citizen for the citizen to freely spend into circulation. The result will be that there will be strong demand for goods, that stores will fill — that Greeks will be employed so that Greece can use its own resources to provide for itself. And there is another benefit — a social benefit that may be the best benefit of all of the new system.

The new demand caused by abundant Apollo coupons (functioning as money in every sense) will cause Greeks to hire other Greeks to find way for Greece to provide more for itself. Suddenly all of the foreigners will be welcomed workers — because all Greeks and all foreigners will be put to work providing for each other and paid by the best money in the world — money made by an honest government for the good of the people and which the people themselves are the first to spend this money into existence to raise the standard of living of all Greeks at once.

In that way, Greece can initiate a new Golden Age.


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Filed under: empire watch, EU, Greece, latest
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