But within hours of Saturday's decision, Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker warned Greeks that help from the EU and International Monetary Fund would have unpleasant consequences.
"The sovereignty of Greece will be massively limited," he told Germany's Focus magazine in the interview released on Sunday, adding that teams of experts from around the euro zone would be heading to Athens.[1]
The debt-based money system has been around for centuries, and using debt to ensnare governments and gain control of their national economies goes back decades, but what is happening in Greece is new.
In addition to the usual privatizations and social services cuts, Greece is being forced to hand over the keys to its treasury. As I write, Greece is being subjected to the worst form of neocolonialism yet seen. The traitorous bourgeois government has essentially agreed to let the ECB run the economy. This will be, to my knowledge, the first time that a national treasury will be run by the accounting department of a private bank. When Greeks pay their (increased) taxes, they will be sending their money to the ECB's accounts receivables! This is unprecedented capitalist control, Greece is now owned by a bank.
Heretofore capital subverted governments, but didn't subsume them. The illusion of sovereignty and popular control was maintained. Now the ruling class has devoured a government, assumed its functions, and relegated it to an office in its bureaucracy. Greece is no longer a nation-state such as we conventionally think of them, nor is it a colony in the traditional sense, it's now a corporate franchise.
[1]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/03/us-eurogroup-greece-idUSTRE76219J20110703
