{"id":4905,"date":"2015-01-27T07:06:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T12:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4905"},"modified":"2015-01-27T07:06:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T12:06:27","slug":"greece-at-the-crossroads-the-oligarchs-blew-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4905","title":{"rendered":"Greece at the Crossroads: the Oligarchs Blew It"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oftwominds.com\/blogjan15\/Greece-oligarchs1-15.html\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><i><b>Greece at the Crossroads: the Oligarchs Blew It<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><i>Once one oligarchy falls, it will threaten to topple a long line of oligarch dominoes.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>A great many narratives invoking Greece are being tossed around, but only one really encapsulates the unvarnished truth: the Oligarchs blew it.<\/b>\u00a0The oligarchs in both Greece and the European Union\/ECB had the opportunity a few years ago to trade some of their outsized wealth and political power for stability and sustainable expansion.<\/p>\n<p><b>Instead, they chose to not just cling to every shred of their outsized wealth and power but to actively increase it.<\/b>\u00a0Their greed and hubris has now put their entire system of parasitic wealth extraction at risk of collapse. Their political stranglehold on power has been weakened, and there&#8217;s no going back: they blew it, and now it&#8217;s too late. The debt-serfs have finally had enough.<\/p>\n<p>If you enter\u00a0<i>Greece<\/i>\u00a0in the custom search box on this site, six pages of blog entries come up. I have addressed the situation in Greece many times; this summarizes my conclusion:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oftwominds.com\/blogjune11\/greece-please-default6-11.html\" target=\"resource\">Greece, Please Do The Right Thing: Default Now<\/a>\u00a0(June 1, 2011)<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, many in Greece have reached the same conclusion, for the same reasons:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2015-01-25\/greeces-new-finmin-warns-we-are-going-destroy-greek-oligarchy-system\" target=\"resource\">Greece&#8217;s New FinMin Warns &#8220;We Are Going To Destroy The Greek Oligarchy System&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>The basic problem is that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.oftwominds.com\/blogjune11\/Greece-kleptocracy6-11.html\" target=\"resource\">Greece Is a Kleptocracy<\/a><\/b>\u00a0(June 28, 2011). Greece has shown the world how oligarchies can expand their wealth and power even as their populace slides deeper into poverty. A recent article,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/142196\/pavlos-eleftheriadis\/misrule-of-the-few\" target=\"resource\">Misrule of the Few: How the Oligarchs Ruined Greece<\/a>, lays out the key dynamics.<\/p>\n<p><b>Writer Pavlos Eleftheriadis pulls no punches:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greece at the Crossroads: the Oligarchs Blew It Once one oligarchy falls, it will threaten to topple a long line of oligarch dominoes. A great many narratives invoking Greece are being tossed around, but only one really encapsulates the unvarnished truth: the Oligarchs blew it.\u00a0The oligarchs in both Greece and the European Union\/ECB had the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[233,279,282,284,1167,2957,599,642],"class_list":["post-4905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-ecb","tag-eu","tag-european-central-bank","tag-european-union","tag-greece","tag-kleptocracy","tag-oligarchs","tag-poverty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4906,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905\/revisions\/4906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}