Panagiotis Kondylis

We have now in Greece a special brand of crisis experts. Books are continuously coming out, with all sorts of crisis theories, explanations, suggestions, predictions.

The same on the TV channels. A brand new breed of experts has set out to make us understand what is going on.

Hardly any of them, however, even remotely predicted anything close to what is now and for the last two years going on.

But can there really be prediction in dramatic changes as those unfolding in Greece? Who predicted the one night collapse of the Soviet Union? Who predicted the real estate bubble of 2008?

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is a superb and inspirational book, authored by Nicholas Nassim Taleb. Taleb presents numerous examples, of important events, that nobody even closely predicted. He goes one step further. He lays down a complete theory, with a mathematical back up, to explain why disruptive and non evolutionary patterns cannot be predicted by any statistical method.

Is Greece's fate one of there unpredictable patterns that Taleb so meticulously deciphers and analyzes in his reference book? Were it for all our newbie experts really impossible to have spoken about all these before they happened?

A great, philosopher and political thinker of Greece, Panagiotis Kondylis, wrote in year 1991 a book titled “Reasons of Decay of Modern Greece”. Here are a few lines from this (page 64, Greek edition)

Clientelism in Greece is continuously selling off the country (it refers to sharply rising sovereign debt that period) and is now reaching a point where, in order to avoid its total collapse, it will have to somehow self restrain its spending habits (year: 1991)

Greece is not a case study for Taleb's new statistics. Greece is not about the improbable but about the predictable. As Kondylis excellently shows there has been nothing really unpredictable about Greece. Only condition was to stay clear in your mind, alert in your soul and away from the payroll of the Greek ruling political parties and idiocy of their non ruling peers.

Only perhaps the notion that the client state will show self restraint, only this, was not confirmed, as the political rogues will just-not-let-go whatever the cost.

Kondylis left us in year 1998, at the early age of 56, fortunate only not to see his country leaders redefining corruption, greed and power sickness.

Μη βιάζεστε Κύριε Σαμαρά

• Θέλει να μην ακουμπήσει για να μη λερωθεί.
• Προτιμά πρωθυπουργό ¨φούφουτο” όπως είπε ο βλαξ αρχισυνδικαλιστής του κόμματός του (Μανώλης), προκειμένου να διεκπεραιώσει όπως όπως κάποια διαδικαστικά ζητήματα για νάρθει μετά αυτός να μας ξανα"σώσει".
• Παριστάνει τον παλληκαρά στις Βρυξέλλες και τον τάχα μου αξιοπρεπή. Λες και η αξιοπρέπεια είναι αν θα υπογράψει ο Σαμαράς και όχι αν θα έχουμε ως έθνος την χείρα τεταμένη, λόγω των πολιτικών των τελευταίων 30 χρόνων με κορωνίδα τον προκάτοχό του και επανιδρυτή του (πελατειακού) κράτους μας.
  
  Είναι ποτέ δυνατόν να αναλάβουν άτομα παγκόσμιου κύρους, σαν τον Παπαδήμο, να διαχειριστούν τη χώρα εν μέσω τέτοιας αφασίας; 
  
  Τα ποσοστά σας Κύριε Σαμαρά θα τα δείτε να στενάζουν. Ιδιαίτερα τώρα που δε θάχετε χρήματα να ταϊζετε τους στρατούς σας. Γι΄ αυτό μη βιάζεστε!

Who wish to return to the Drachma?

Some polls (www.in.gr) in Greece show that 30-35 % prefer to exit the Eurozone.

Who are these people?

1. The usual baseline of nationalist and phobic people that exist in every country; these constantly see conspiracies coming from all sorts of directions. The Jews, the Pope, the West, the East. Any can do as long as adrenalin goes up and fantasy is carried away. This segment is is something like 3-5%.

2. People of essentially a similar psychological background which however have a strong inner drive, although little practical evidence, to believe that they care more about their fellow citizens and society in general. So they feel compelled to fight against capitalism, imperialism and further nonsense. Communists in Greece, although difficult to match in stalinist approaches and mentalities and utter disrespect to the democratic procedures (they always remind us openly that they don't care about constitutions and have their own agenda ending up to the dictatorship of the proletariat...). Rotating around them a number of other leftist groups coming and going now and then. This is a relatively strong segment, maybe 10- 15%.

3. Angered and uninformed people who have the capacity to understand what is at stake here but prefer to vent their anger in any possible way, something they will most certainly repent later. These, in the current circumstances can easily summon up something like 10- 15%.

4. Failed/ corrupt entrepreneurs, a large part of the client system meticulously built by the politicians for 30 years. These see the return to the drachma as an opportunity to remain in the game. Their hope is that things will start again and they hope, this time, to be better positioned. Most of them have already taken their EUROs abroad and will return powerfully back with shiploads of drachmas. Most of these are crippled by a long term sexual relationship with the fat and largely useless Greek public sector and are therefore impotent, incompetent and under-confident for any more natural approach to the issue. They know they will never succeed in doing business in the normal world. Not very big in size, but perhaps the most sinister and powerful of all. 2-3% of rotten businessmen and their puppets here and there

5. Arrogant, corrupt and illiterate trade unionists and their followers, the other side and complement to the Greek client system. All these well understand that their natural position, based on merit, is very very different from their current status and that their privileges are only built on the destruction of the country and the future generations. "Better first among the foxes than last among the lions" as the Chinese proverb, reversely, goes. Thats their motto! This can be up to 20% but it is unlikely that anything above the 3-5% of the leading people here (of the like of Photopoulos, the general, self appointed, manager of the electric company) would go for the drachma. They have children and grand children to think about and some tiny little privileges are worth the sacrifice

All and all the referendum could be very risky indeed, especially as the unbelievable Panandreou decided on this at a moment when segment (3) is growing and can prove decisive.

It seems there will be no referendum. There is also indication that there is some mobility for return to rationalism. Two such initiatives are currently unfolding at http://www.koinonikossyndesmos.org/ (GREEK) and http://www.dimiourgiaxana.gr/ (GREEK)

Mr. Papandreou against the world of rational species

Its more and more difficult to come in terms with our Greek reality.

G. Papandreou ambassador of the problems of Greece and seeking an urgent and huge financing for the Greek debt problem (created by him and his predecessors for 30 years) mobilized all the EU and beyond for a significant period of time in search of this solution. A process that makes the headlines for several months now and which seemed to converge last week to a tedious, early dawn solution. A few days after that G.P raised the referendum issue to the greatest astonishment of the world politicians, the global community, the press and the financial institutions, stock markets included. Rage and laughter has resulted at an unprecedented, massive, scale.

There is no way to debate politically all this. The initiative just-does-not-make-sense for any ordinary person of this world. It just shows infinite disregard for the efforts of so many prestigious leaders of the EU and beyond. It shows zero respect to the money of poor countries like Slovakia who were pressed to support the bailout plan. It exceeds any known level of arrogance and self catastrophic ignorance.

The idea that all this was made in the name of democracy is utterly laughable. Uninformed and angry citizens have no reason to make any right decision. That's not what democracy is about

There is only room to stay speechless, disgraced and wondering if this unending nightmare will ever end.