I am profoundly disgusted and ask the European masses, why aren't you taking to the streets throughout Europe? Or are you parochial non-entities that could care less about a better Union?

But then Europe is no more than a captive market for German export, with petty states wagging behind in voluntary servitude à la De la Boetie. So now I can do little more than boycott all German produce as well as that of their lackies. Perhaps one may reproach me that the industrious German people are not responsible for the decisions of their rulers. Just as the Greeks are not responsible for the decisions of their past governments.

Economy is indeed the new god, the Troika is no more than the mystery of the Trinity, the economy of the Trinity. But unlike the Christian Trinity, there is no room for Grace in this new religion.

I watch DiBattista and DeMaio take on the present-day sewer of Italian politics with such drive and conviction it makes me proud to be half-Italian, and proud to be a European.

They have the medicine Europe needs, and I plan to stick around to watch them earn their due laurels as victors in this vile vector of humanity.

If there were only two like that I would not believe in their future success, but the MV is crawling with fine thinkers, speakers and activists. They have done their homework and have their Augean shovels ready.

Their passion for politics is undeniable, they represent a revolution long overdue. At their helm Italy could become a coherent entity showing a rational model for development in a powered-down age.

We are so lucky to have them, and I pray Renzi's reign ends soon as possible and we can go for the vote.

(Before the immigrant issue gives Salvini's thuggish bigotry any more of the electorate, preferably, though he like Farage has it right about the Euro!)

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

In all 31 European countries - all very different. Some countries are political dysfunctional and struggling with corruption (for example Romania or Turkey), while others are normally seen as relatively efficient economies with well-functioning labour and product markets and strong external balance and sound public finances like Denmark, Finland and the Netherland.

Overall we can differentiate between two groups of countries - euro countries and euro peggers (the `red countries') and the countries with more or less floating exchange rates (the `green countries').

...

The difference is striking - among the 21 euro countries (including the two euro peggers) nearly half (10) of the countries today have lower real GDP levels than in 2007, while all of the floaters today have higher real GDP levels than in 2007.

When finalizing my book European Spring last year, I hesitated before describing the Eurozone as a "glorified debtors' prison." After this weekend's brutal, vindictive, and short-sighted exercise of German power against Greece, backed up by the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank's (ECB) illegal threat to pull the plug on the entire Greek banking system, I take it back. There is nothing glorious about the Eurozone: it is a monstrous, undemocratic creditors' racket.

...

But this is much bigger than Greece. It is clearer than ever that Europe's dysfunctional monetary union has a German problem, too. As creditor-in-chief in a monetary union bereft of common political institutions, Germany is proving to be a calamitous hegemon. Paris may have tempered Berlin's petulant threat to force Greece out of the euro, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel undoubtedly calls the shots. The deal that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras capitulated to mirrored German demands, not the proposals he drafted with French help last week. By pointing out the futility of resistance if Greece wished to remain in the euro, Paris has, in a sense, acted as Berlin's agent in securing Athens' acquiescence.

...

The Eurozone as a whole remains an economic basket case and a democratic disgrace. It is trapped in a nightmarish limbo where politics precludes the creation of common institutions that would cage German power and put the ECB in its place, while fear prevents its victims from leaving. So much for the European dream.

A suggestion to all that are discovering that they are "done with the EU": maybe it is time to revisit some of your deeply seated views of the world that made you cheer all this lunacy. It is a painful process (know it first hand) but necessary.

Another suggestion: starting with "if they have done as I wanted" is neither democratic not realistic.

Another note: I have been noticing in my feeds back home (Portugal), which include mostly "normal" people, a massive amount of anger towards Germany and everything German. Comparisons with what happened in the 20th century are not only becoming acceptable, but are becoming the norm. This is not going to end well.

All in all a great day for Golden Dawn. As for the rest of us: I don't suppose that any other left wing party that may come to power in the future seeking to challenge the current European economic policy mix will be as feckless as the Tspiras government. The lesson that they will draw from this debacle is: negotiating with Germany is a waste of time; be willing to act unilaterally, be willing to default unilaterally, have a plan for achieving primary surplus if you haven't already achieved it, have a hard default and euro exit (now possible, thanks to the Germans) option in your back pocket, and be willing to use it at the first sign of hassle from the ECB. A deal could have been done today that would have strengthened the Eurozone, but instead it has just become a lot more fragile.

Update: Wolfgang Münchau is well worth reading, here.

Update: this is also well worth a read.

Update: Charles Wyplosz is well worth reading here. Good to see someone pointing out the obvious about this extraordinary programme, and also taking on the (to my mind bizarre) argument that the headline debt/GDP ratio is irrelevant.

Update: Dae Woong Kang and Ashoka Mody offer a historical perspective here.

In the years after the collapse of the Mediterranean world, Europe and Christendom were almost identical concepts; after that, Europe was defined by white skin and a habit of imperial massacre elsewhere in the world. Now, Europe is best defined as the place where they implement austerity.

The fundamental problem is that the conventional wisdom everywhere has become increasingly right wing, nationalist and nuts. The EU member states have all elected right wing parties except for the current Greek government, and they're only in power because the right so utterly screwed over the economy.

This is probably the failure mode of 20th C democracies in a 21st C media environment.

You sound like Republicans threatening to secede from the US because they lost the debate on Obamacare.

He was taken aside multiple times by Schauble in a private way and Schauble spoke to him openly about his plans. Clearly, Varoufakis despises Djisselboem here. And I don't know if this is just V's bias, but how can it be that in private, Jeroen fulfills every stereotype cast at him in his public caricature?

The two reporters are well versed and they are touching all the bases, especially when it comes to Grexit plans. Varoufakis is making a really good case that he and the others worked through the problems of even preparing for Grexit. It is pretty convincing. It has more to do with the power and reach of a liberal democratic gov't inside the eurozone. You cannot prepare for Grexit without Grexiting shortly thereafter.

AND, if you recall the Lapavitsas piece in Jacobin back in March, he claimed that Schauble would offer Greece a soft exit. I was one of the people who ridiculed Lapavitsas here as a dreamer, saying that I was fairly certain Germany would try to undercut Greece. But I think, listening to Varoufakis here, it was an actual offer, and Lapavitsas got the info from Varoufakis.

What more, Varoufakis reported back about his talk and it was hardly believed. Varoufakis himself admits he fell into a  kind of trap, having been the person to whom Schauble uttered this, because he became afraid that any move by Greece toward Grexit would be seized on and create momentum. I don't know if this was Schauble's intention, to scare Varoufakis, but it worked. It's likelier that it wasn't actually a tactic, but a real plan by Schauble.

It shows that Varoufakis and Tsipras are as much prisoners of their distrust of the German team as the German team are prisoners of their distrust of the Greek team.

So, in other words, 6 months of prisoners' dilemma.

And though Varoufakis hasn't analyzed it as such, this is certainly how it sounds like to me, having heard him here.

I do have to say that I find Varoufakis infinitely more convincing than Tsipras, but this is my bias since I credit Varoufakis's experiences outside Greece quite a bit.

http://www.thepressproject.gr/article/79198/G-Baroufakis-sto-TRR-Den-tha-psifiso-tin-protasi-tis-Sun odou-Korufis

The list goes on, and it is growing. The more leftwing opponents of the EU come out, the more momentum will gather pace and gain critical mass. For those of us on the left who have always been critical of the EU, it has felt like a lonely crusade. But left support for withdrawal - "Lexit", if you like - is not new. If anything, this new wave of left Euroscepticism represents a reawakening. Much of the left campaigned against entering the European Economic Community when Margaret Thatcher and the like campaigned for membership.

It would threaten the ability of leftwing governments to implement policies, people like my parents thought, and would forbid the sort of industrial activism needed to protect domestic industries. But then Thatcherism happened, and an increasingly battered and demoralised left began to believe that the only hope of progressive legislation was via Brussels. The misery of the left was, in the 1980s, matched by the triumphalism of the free marketeers, who had transformed Britain beyond many of their wildest ambitions, and began to balk at the restraints put on their dreams by the European project.

The left's pessimism about the possibility of implementing social reform at home without the help of the EU fused with a progressive vision of internationalism and unity, one that had emerged from the rubble of fascism and genocidal war. It is perhaps this feelgood halo that has been extinguished by a country the EU has driven into an economic collapse unseen since America's great depression. It was German and French banks who recklessly lent to Greece that have benefited from bailouts, not the Greek economy. The destruction of Greece's national sovereignty was achieved by economic strangulation, and treatment dealt out to Alexis Tsipras likened to "extensive mental waterboarding". Slovakia's deputy prime minister, Peter Kažimír, may have deleted his tweet calling this modern-day Versailles "the results of their `Greek Spring'", but he is right: this was all about crushing a rebellion.

Jürgen Habermas, one of the intellectual figureheads of European integration, has launched a withering attack on the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, accusing her of "gambling away" the efforts of previous generations to rebuild the country's postwar reputation with her hardline stance on Greece.

Speaking about the bailout deal for the first time since it was presented on Monday, the philosopher and sociologist said the German chancellor had effectively carried out "an act of punishment" against the leftwing government of Alexis Tsipras.

Greece, in fact, has a lot of tanks, because the German and French arms industries, eager to get rid of surplus hardware in a world where wars are fought by bombers and drones, bribed the politicians. During the first decade of this century Greece was among the top five importers of weapons, mainly from the German companies Ferrostaal, Rheinmetall and Daimler-Benz. In 2009, the year after the crash, Greece spent €8 billion - 3.5 per cent of GDP - on defence. The then Greek defence minister, Akis Tsochatzopoulos, who accepted huge bribes from these companies, was convicted of corruption by a Greek court in 2013. Prison for the Greek; small fines for the German bosses. None of this has been mentioned by the financial press in recent weeks. It didn't quite tally with the need to portray Greece as the sole transgressor. Yet a Greek court has been provided with conclusive evidence that the largest tax avoider in the country is Hochtief, the giant German construction company that runs Athens airport. It has not paid VAT for twenty years, and owes 500 million euros in VAT arrears alone. Nor has it paid the contributions due to social security. Estimates suggest that Hochtief's total debt to the exchequer could top one billion euros.