Μάικλ Χάντσον: Το ελληνικό πείραμα και ο οικονομικός πόλεμος

Σε ένα οικονομικό πείραμα των Ευρωπαίων χρηματοπιστωτικών ιδρυμάτων αναφέρεται ο γνωστός οικονομολόγος Μάικλ Χάντσον σε συνέντευξή του στο "The Real News Network". Όπως αναφέρει, πρόκειται για ένα πείραμα με στόχο να διαπιστωθεί πόσο μπορούν να μειωθούν οι μισθοί, οι συντάξεις και οι παροχές του κράτους πρόνοιας μέχρι να αρχίσουν οι πολίτες να αντιδρούν. Το πείραμα ξεκίνησε στην Λεττονία τα τελευταία πέντε χρόνια, τώρα ήρθε η σειρά της Ελλάδας,

Ο Χάντσον μιλά ακόμη για το δημοψήφισμα που είχε προτείνει ο Έλληνας πρωθυπουργός, το ξεπούλημα κρατικών δομών, καθώς και για έναν οικονομικό πόλεμο που έχει πλέον αντικαταστήσει τον παραδοσιακό τρόπο υποδούλωσης μιας χώρας.

Οι απόψεις του Μάικλ Χάντσον θα παρουσιαστουν στο νέο ντοκιμαντέρ του Στέλιου Κούλογλου "Ολιγαρχία".

Ακολουθεί στα αγγλικά η απομαγνητοφώνηση της συνέντευξης:

JAY: So, Michael, what should we be learning from what's going on in Greece?

HUDSON: Well, we should be learning what the European bankers are learning, and that is what is the result of a great experiment that's going on. For the last five years in Latvia, they've—the neoliberals have lowered wages by about 30 percent. The basic premise of today's model builders are: you don't know how far you can lower wages and pensions until people begin to press back. Well, in Latvia they still haven't begun to press back when they've lowered for 30 percent. Now they're moving towards Greece on the way to Spain and Portugal and Italy, and they're trying to figure out how much can we lower wages, how much can we drain an economy until there is pressure to come back.And the right wing, who've essentially appointed, as you pointed out, a bank lobbyist, which is called a technocrat, in charge of Greece, is: let's try the experiment to just see how much we can squeeze out—because they've realized that the left in Europe is completely fragmented.

They don't have a defense available, they don't have a body of concepts available to say, wait a minute, this is crazy. When you're lowering wages, you're actually shrinking an economy. When you're cutting the budget deficit, you're reducing the amount of money that comes into the economy to promote demand. So in effect what Europe is doing is bleeding economies, very much like a medieval doctor would bleed blood on the ground, since this is going to make economies more productive.Well, the only response that the Greek people have, not simply the left, but the right and the Greek people, is, look, if you think you're going to increase the surplus, increase taxes by lowering our wages and cutting our pensions and cutting our health care, we're going to do what the Egyptians are doing and what the Arab Spring is doing. We're going to tear the economy apart, and there won't be anything for you. And the PASOK, the socialist party that inaugurated this whole austerity program, now has