Grisis 6/30

Anil KashyapGreece has not paid its IMF loans, which (the reporting says) is technically being in arrears, not in default. Reuters link.

Reading the mainstream reporting, I am struck by the total focus on finance and overwhelming sympathy to the interests of the Greece's creditors, to the exclusion of the suffering of the Greek people. It's very odd when one considers how widely-hated the banksters are in the West. I had to go to the Trotskyist World Socialist web site to find any recent coverage of that, and that doesn't even show up in Google News. WSWS link. I tried looking on the far right, but the Greek fascist Golden Dawn web site (find 'em yourself) has nothing—I suppose the fascist superman is strong and silent in the face of adversity. Likewise Stormfront (neo-Nazi) and Free Republic (fascist.) The Free Republic more-or-less supports the ECB position of further Greek austerity, not that they'll ever admit it.

Tsirpas and Syriza are between a rock and a hard place. So far as the reporting I've seen shows, the Greek public both wants Greece to stay in the Euro and wants an end to austerity, and that isn't a deal that the masters of the Euro are willing to make. Tsirpas and Syriza have failed in persuading a majority of the Greek public that Greece can have one or the other, but not both. As in the USA, the connection between policy and personal lives is hard to communicate. So the vote is (reportedly) balanced on a knife edge.

Postscript: "A Primer on the Greek Crisis: the things you need to know from the start until now." (PDF) A historical analysis of the Greek financial problems from Anil Kashyap of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

Postscript 2: "The Greek Crisis: Grandparents on the Table?" Laura Shannon. Coverage of the human cost. I believe some of the policy specifics are wrong.