Oxi and Nai. What the Greek crisis tells us about financial power and politics, by Paul Tyson.

On the referendum of July 5, the Greek polity was asked whether they were prepared to surrender the anti-austerity policy agenda of their Syriza led government in order to get more loans. The Greeks answered this question with an emphatic OXI (NO). Prior to the referendum Yanis Varoufakis, then the Minister for Finance, argued that the stronger the NO vote, the more bargaining power the Greek government would have with her creditors to seek a viable re-structure of Greece’s debt. Surely, Mr Varoufakis seemed to believe, the Eurogroup would not shamelessly ride rough shod over a decisive expression of the political voice of a sovereign European state. Mr Varoufakis also claimed that the refusal of Eurozone financial institutions to extend normal operational terms to the Greek banks for the week prior to the referendum was an overt act of national intimidation, intending to influence the outcome of the referendum towards a YES vote. Mr Varoufakis implied that the anything but subtle subtext of this actions was ‘play by our rules or else we will kill your banks, and then what will you do?’ Before the referendum Alexis Tsipras also urged the Greek people to vote NO as a display of national pride in the face of the creditors demands for humiliating and damaging austerity terms.

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