Why the powerful are punishing Greece

The flurry of proposals, threats and counteroffers in negotiations over Greece's debts has obscured the question: Just who is responsible for Greece's economic collapse--and why are the rulers of Europe insisting on austerity measures that will only compound the enormous suffering in a country that has already seen its economy shrink by 25 percent in five years?

It's easy enough to point to this or that villain. There's the hardline German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who relentlessly demands cuts in pensions and higher taxes on the impoverished working class; the haughty Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch Labor Party politician, finance minister and Eurogroup leader pushing anti-worker measures while posing as "progressive"; the duplicitous Barack Obama, who phoned Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipris to declare "the United States will stand to help Greek government to escape the politics of austerity," only to sic the Washington-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the left-wing SYRIZA government.

But Greece is in a vise not because of individual politicians or the free-market neoliberal dogma of bureaucrats. What's at play is a long-germ realignment of power relations in Europe, brought into the open by the Great Recession and its aftermath. The Greek debt crisis is a product of this new order--one in which Germany's economic dominance of Europe is expressing itself politically.

Yes, the money matters. But political power counts for more.

Read more: http://socialistworker.org/2015/06/18/the-powerful-are-punishing-greece