"The People of Greece Are Fighting for the Whole of Europe": Tariq Ali and Mark Weisbrot Discuss Greece's Economic Crisis and Popular Uprising

TARIQ ALI: Well, Amy, it’s exploded in Greece, very violently, as many could have predicted, because trade unions in Greece have remained strong. They feel that a lot is at stake, and they know that if these measures, which should never be called reforms—if these measures, anti-working-class measures, are pushed through by the government, their living standards of the average citizen of Greece will just go right down. They will suffer. And people are asking, in Greece and elsewhere, “How come we are being victimized? All the cuts in public spending affect us; they don’t affect the rich. And why are the bankers not being punished? Well, why is this system, the system created by neoliberalism, of deregulation, of actually legalizing financial speculation, why is this not being stopped?”

And we see in Germany, just last night, the ruling coalition suffered very heavy defeats in regional polls, and there’s pressure on Angela Merkel, the—Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to resign, because she’s now lost a majority in the Senate, and they can’t push through their so-called reforms. And the Social Democrats, who are now in opposition, are saying that the financial system has to be thoroughly reformed. It’s the strongest statement from a Social Democrat in Europe I’ve heard. And it’s an indication that the system is in a complete mess. The reason the EU are putting in so much money is to reassure the markets and to prevent them from carrying out—from similar things happening in Spain and Portugal, which are on the brink.

So the Greeks really—the people fighting on the streets of Greece are fighting for the whole of Europe. And they held up a huge banner a few days ago on the Acropolis, this historic building in the center of Greece, saying, “Europe, join us.” And if the European workers’ movement were to join the Greeks, then we would have serious change.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Tariq, I want to thank you for being with us. Tariq Ali, joining us from London, as we turn now to Mark Weisbrot in Washington, DC.

Mark, you’ve been writing about Greece, following it carefully. What do you assess has happened there, and what needs to take place?

MARK WEISBROT: Well, I think Tariq is right in terms of the injustice of trying to restructure these economies on the basis on, you know, really punishing the workers and the vast majority of people. But there’s also an irrationality to it, even from the point of view of the bondholders themselves and the financial sector and the, you know, whole system, because what they’re doing is they’re making the recession worse in Greece. And this is quite deliberate.

The economic theory which they’re using is called an internal devaluation, because they’re keeping the euro, and they want to keep the euro, and so what they’re trying to do is create enough unemployment so that wages and prices will fall, and then Greece can become competitive, even keeping the same nominal exchange rate with the euro. So this is a process that goes on quite a long time, and it’s very brutal, and it doesn’t usually work. In fact, the projections from the Greek government say that, you know, their debt is now 115 percent of GDP, and if they go through the program and it works, then two-and-a-half years from now they have a debt of 149 percent of GDP. So this is really irrational, and you can really see the irrational—irrationality of the financial markets, because they’re demanding more cuts, which of course make the economy worse. And the same is true for Spain and Portugal and Ireland and Italy, which all have similar problems, and they’re all being pushed further into recession by this kind of program. So it’s really wrong.

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