Greece: The Demos Waits For Kratos

So Greece finally wrote down some of its debt. They must be out of the woods, no?

Nope. The pain is just beginning.
 Greece's debt problems are due to the madness of Euroliberalism, the ideology of European-style neoliberalism which saddled the EU's semiperipheral economies (countries like Portugal, Spain and Greece) with a core currency, but no compensatory fiscal stimulus.

Those countries couldn't compete against the industries of the core, so they borrowed from the Eurobanks. Basically, what high-yield mortgages were to Wall Street, semiperipheral debt was to Eurocapital: grist for speculative games. In the words of the inestimable Yanis Varoufakis:

"The greatest achievement of the Bailouts was to buy the financial sector two long years during which to unload their Greek bonds onto the official sector. Henceforth it is the official sector, alongside the crushed Greek people, that will bear the costs of a forthcoming Default 2.0." (Varoufakis)

Even after the latest bloodletting, Greece will still have a huge stockpile of debt, a shrinking economy which is entering its fifth year of recession, and no way to finance fresh domestic growth or even to repay the re-negotiated debts (none of the new financing goes into the real economy, it just shores up existing reserves).

Finally, this little gem for the Department of Stuff You Cannot Possibly Make Up: and who, pray tell, arranged for this exquisite monument to rentier venality and financial crime? Why, an alumnus of the JP Morgan and the Vampire Squid!