Euro Bosses Beat Back Threat Of Democracy Breaking Out In Greece

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou didn't even have the decency to wait half a week before reneging on his offer of allowing the Greek people to vote in a referendum on the economic holocaust being imposed on them. "Summoned to explain himself" (as all media reports phrased it) by his political superiors to the G-20 meeting site in lovely Cannes, France, he was handed an ultimatum to decide if Greece was in or out of the Eurozone (i.e. the euro currency bloc). Oh, and no more money until after that referendum.

Back in Greece, Papandreou revealed that all he really cared about was staying Prime Minister as long as possible. That's all that matters to him. But let him tell you. Here's what he said to the Greek Parliament:

"I will be glad even if we don't go to a referendum, which was never a purpose in itself. I'm glad that all this discussion has at least brought a lot of people back to their senses," he said in the text of his speech released to media. Can you get more nakedly cynical than that? He says it right out in the open.


All he wants is a "unity" government with his bourgeois opposition party. He wants to hang on to his pathetic job as underboss of Greece for High Finance. Facing a no-confidence vote tomorrow, his "referendum" offer was just a ploy to save his own job. What he wants is to force the opposition to sit in the same sinking boat he's in. The right wing opposition party wants early elections, which they will cynically win by pretending to seek a "better deal" from the financiers and political bosses of Greater Europe.


This is the trouble with bourgeois class dictatorships. There is actually no electoral choice in places like Greece and the U.S., where no real alternative is organized as a political party that can genuinely compete for state power.


The Greek people need to overthrow their current rulers and go the Argentine route: go back to their own currency and default on "their" debts- the debts run up by the misrulers who listened to the siren song of Goldman Sachs et al and piled up reckless, feckless, irresponsible debt. The "investment bankers" made a killing "financing" Greek government spending, and now the banks stuck holding the bag want bailouts and rescues. Once again Goldman conned the other financiers, just as it did when it peddled bum bundled junk mortgages as AAA investments to its suckers- I mean, "clients."