Sunday, January 15, 2012

Greece’s PSI is Dead on Arrival: An error in search of a rationale but also a failure that may prove a harbinger for the Modest Proposal

by Pr. Yannis Varoufakis
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu

A brief history of Greece’s PSI


In the beginning there was Wholesale Denial. Then the Denial began to subside under the weight of circumstances. It did so slowly, agonizingly so, with the result that, in the process, Greece lost any capacity it might have had to rebound. It also caused the Crisis to spread like a bushfire throughout the eurozone, turning liquidity problems into unyielding insolvencies first in Ireland, then in Portugal. Still, to this day, Denial is in the air. But it cannot remain intact, without the whole eurosystem crashing and burning. The Greek PSI may be the harbinger of denial’s end. If not, it is hard to see what will stop the juggernaut of the Crisis from destroying the few chances the euro has of survival.

Taking things from the top, the Wholesale Denial began life two years ago when imploding Greece was issued a triple ‘Nein’:...