WATERLOO and a GAME OF BONES

WATERLOO and a GAME OF BONES… the current, endless, ‘Greek [bail out] Drama’ moves to what may be a pre-denoument climax: or simply the end of Act 27th. In my once role as Plato’s Socrates i would have to conclude that it is time for a new ‘gig’: and perhaps Mr Veroufakis is the man to deliver it… or NOT.
 

Yesterday I lucked into and watched a completely spellbinding Bloomberg interview with Mr. Yanis Veroufakis, the finance minister of Greece, who bluntly rejected what he called ‘extend and pretend’ bail- outs in what, after listening to him [and many others over the past few years… ], I call ‘a Game of Bones’.
 

The Greeks are presented with a classic Greek tragedy drama dilemma… Take the Hemlock now or die in the desert later. Reason suggests, according to Mr Veroufakis, taking the hemlock now. And that therefore the Greeks should vote NO.
 

And I agree. For precisely the reasons he gave. I was initially scepticl of Mr Veroufakis when he first burst in on the scene some months ago now. In yesterday’s interview he laid all doubt about him to rest. He made his point with rare clarity and forcefully constructed [if subtly obfucscated] logic.
 
The country is bankrupt. It is being humiliated routinely and the terms are [allegedly] approximate to a violation of human rights. Why it is bankrupt may be debatable and is routinely and vociferously debated: and there are many sides and nuances therein too. Nonetheless i am not a Greek, notwithstanding my prized role as Socrates. So the myriad countervailing rages that murk the entire exercise are, well ‘Greek… to me’ as the cliche avers.
 
The past is the past and cannot be unmasked with clarity.

 
So terminate the implicit, informal ‘Chapter 11’ status and bite the bullet.Vote YES: and you bite the bullet in slomo… Vote NO: and you move rapdly into the afterlife. It wont be the first time.
 
So where to go…YES/NO and why therefore is he right … to vote NO. [?]
 

NO ends the game… With NO the creditors walk out empty handed and have to claw their way back in… at a time when interest rates are still favourable to tjhe debtor.
 

It is only money after all and the logic of restructure is obvious.

 
As Mr Veroufakis pointed out: the kind of proposals he has made would have been ‘meat and drink’ to an average New York trader: What’s with the locals!!!
 

NO means that the creditors are facing reality. They are not going to be paid.
 
Therefore what can they do…. walk away empty handed and fume… maybe
 
Perhaps [though] at heart they are the Dealers this new age has prepared them to be.
 

Simply agree to convert the debt into a 100-year annuity at a rate favourable enough to guarantee a return but amortised over sufficient time to unhinge the shackles breaking the Greek economy. The Greeks would wish to honour their word but at a price that can be managed in a way that stimulates growth, which is/was after all, the entire purpose of the union in the first place: isn’t it?
 

In the mysterious ways of the multiverse, this past forthnight has seen many commemorations of the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, by all accounts one of history’s bloodiiest. Then, the country later called Great Britain, facing reality again after the defeat of Napoleon [not to mention their defeat by the USA in the same year at the Battle of New Orleans] were bancrupted and had to pay the debt to retain the “Greatness” they assumed to be their destiny. Simultaneously however, while handling a post-conflict recession that turned slowly into a severe depression. Perhaps politicians had more power in those days or reality was more obvious then than in our’gotitall’ world of today.
 

They chose to consolidate all the debt into one big package, which is of course something taking place now in an increasingly routine and evolutionarily effective way thereby increasingly to a massive [by 19th century standards] variety of packages.
 

Of course in the case of what the ‘Brits’ still call “Consols” [Consolidated Annuities]: currently yielding 4.4% [apparently], issued two centuries ago at 2.5% [par], debt was simply stretched out forever… and after all: if anyone has been around forever it is the Greeks.
 
Mr. Veroufakis certainly presented the almost pathological Greek sense of “place in history” that I have come to associate with those persons of an Hellenic persuasion, with whom I needed to become acquainted in order to rehearse Plato’s interpretation of Socrates, in in my own performance of that great man’s legacy.
 

One cannot help but suspect a circumstance brewing, that may be likened to the “English” moment recently; when to everyone’s shock… a party with which it was/is fashionable to avoid being associated, won by a significant margin. People, it seems, lied to the omnipresent ‘pollsters’ then: and may be doing so again.
 

So it certainly would not surprise me to read that Greece voted by a landslide against the idea of indentured servitude in the new digital serfdom. and voted NO.
 

Simply put: the evolution of the new “Extreme Money*” logic [as propounded by Mr. Satyajit Das for instance] could fully embrace the concept of [redeemable] one hundred year ‘Consols’; although it would be more sensible of the Greeks to offer [for a more attractive rate] an ‘in perpetuity’ annuity, subject to the EU amending its rules to accept that a venture that will take another century to bring to even marginal fruition, should surely anticipate being around in 2200 AD at least… or don’t they? … And if not… What do they know tht we don’t?
 

Consider how much more effective the flow of energy unleashed by the era of unlimited money would be were we to eradicate some of the confidence denting road bumps that do, in all sensibility, proliferate. Of course how one deals with the ‘TRUST me’ factor is the real road bump: with each party having its own agenda; and deeply embedded, smoking demons.
 

Notwithstanding this though, and in the full knowledge that the EU negotiators may accept NO as a rejection of their dream; not to mention that NO could be the apocalypse that awaited Greece at Marathon had they faulted then. They must follow the Veroufakis logic and reject servitude now.
 
No. The EU negotiators need to apply what i call Rule #8… “Take no thing personally” and lift their eyes from the plate for the moment and; stop interpreting the European vision through the hindsight spectacles of myopia. They have to review and check out what barriers need to be moved aside to reach the vista beyond.
 
For if there is no vista beyond servitude then there is no purpose to the venture.