What is Europe doing?

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the Troika of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF really want to force Greece’s government out of office. Paul Krugman seemingly thinks along the same lines: he notes that the troika has issued yet another ultimatum to Greece and its Prime Minister, and rather than grovel the man has scheduled a referendum of his voters to see what they’d like to do.

This is leading to much hand-wringing and declarations that he’s being irresponsible, but he is, in fact, doing the right thing, for two reasons.

First, if it wins the referendum, the Greek government will be empowered by democratic legitimacy, which still, I think, matters in Europe. (And if it doesn’t, we need to know that, too.)

Second, until now Syriza has been in an awkward place politically, with voters both furious at ever-greater demands for austerity and unwilling to leave the euro. It has always been hard to see how these desires could be reconciled; it’s even harder now. The referendum will, in effect, ask voters to choose their priority, and give Tsipras a mandate to do what he must if the troika pushes it all the way.

If you ask me, it has been an act of monstrous folly on the part of the creditor governments and institutions to push it to this point. But they have, and I can’t at all blame Tsipras for turning to the voters, instead of turning on them.

Yep. They seem to want to dictate domestic policy to Greece (I’d like to see them try to do that to Germany or one of the Northern Euro members) by telling it to cut more pensions and make other spending cuts rather than raise taxes on the wealthier Greeks. Sounds like the party of the 1% is trying to run things in Europe too.