US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is attending the meeting of the EU Finance Ministers in Poland to convey the alarm of the US ruling class that Greece is about to default on its multi-billion euro debt, and will be followed by Ireland and Portugal, bringing down the EU banks and ushering in a deep worldwide slump.
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said said last Friday that the eurozone’s situation was ‘grave’, and that ‘time is short’ and eurozone leaders must ‘recognise the gravity of the situation’.
The demand of the hour is that the Greek government must be forced to accelerate its austerity measures of mass privatisations, continuing wage cuts and the building up of a vast army of the unemployed, as a condition for receiving billions more EU debt aid.
However, there are two camps emerging in the EU between the different countries, and even within the different governments and central banking institutions, as the recent resignation of European Central Bank’s chief economist Juergen Stark shows.
One camp sees the purchasing of Greek debt as a bottomless pit that will lead to a complete collapse of the euro, and are prepared to see Greece forced out of the European Union, along with Ireland, Portugal and even Spain.
The other trend sees the situation as one for driving forward to a single European government, and a single central bank, that will be able to establish the political and financial dictatorship of the dominant French and German bourgeoisie over Europe.
Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said on Thursday that now is not the time ‘to rebuild walls,’ but to use the crisis to give new foundations to political integration in Europe leading to a single EU government with a single financial ministry.
Last Thursday, after a panic attack, a run of sharp falls on the stock markets that lasted for several days was only halted when the leading central banks, including the US Federal Reserve and Bank of England, agreed to flood the financial system with dollars.
The US is warning that this must not be allowed to happen again.
Greece is therefore expected to come under the hammer once again, as the EU finance ministers, under orders from the US and President Obama, show just how tough and determined they are to defend the EU and the euro.
However, Greece is already well down the road to a revolutionary uprising.
The country is in a state of rebellion, with students occupying the universities and workers organising mass strike actions and openly calling for an uprising to overthrow the Papandreou regime and the dictatorship of the European Central Bank.
Within the Greek government there have been calls for a new constitution that will enable the savage cuts prescribed by the ECB to be forcibly implemented.
Workers however state that they have already experienced one regime of colonels heading a military-police dictatorship and that they will never allow another one to come to power.
The essence of the situation is that more Greek austerity measures to secure more ECB bail-out money may well be the last straw that will touch off a workers insurrection to overthrow Papandreou and establish a revolutionary government.
Meanwhile in Italy, Portugal and Spain the working class and the youth are already treading along the ‘Greek Road’ and are adamant that they will not pay the price of the bankers crisis, while the UK is heading for a revolutionary autumn.
Now is the time to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International all over Europe, to lead the developing European socialist revolution to its victory.
