Thursday, July 30, 2015

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is rightly exasperated by the oligarchy's attempt to criminalize Yanis Varoufakis


'It has come to this. The first finance minister of a eurozone country to draw up contingency plans for a possible euro exit is under investigation for treason.

'Greece's chief prosecutor is examining criminal charges against a five-man "working group" in the country's finance ministry for the sin of designing a "Plan B", a parallel system of euro liquidity and bank payments that could - in extremis - lead to a return of the drachma.

'It is hard to see how a monetary union held together by judicial power, coercion and fear in this way can have a future in any of Europe's ancient nation states.

'The criminalisation of any Grexit debate shuts off the option of an orderly return to the drachma, even though there is a high probability - some say a near certainty - that the latest EMU loan package for Greece will prove unworkable and precipitate the country's exit from the single currency within a year. As a matter of practical statecraft, this is sheer madness.'