Heil Euro!

David Einhorn, a hedge funder, made a startling observation today about Europe’s showdown with Greece. Behind Europe’s stunningly vindictive take-it-or-leave-it proposal, which requires the Greeks to accept even more onerous terms for a continued bailout that Europe had offered them before their referendum last weekend unequivocally rejecting it, is a message the Germans and other Northern Europeans are sending to other weaker partners in the currency union: This is what happens when you elect a populist government.

What happens is what we’ve been watching for more than a week. The banks have abruptly closed and ATMs, if you can find one, won’t give you anymore than 60 euro — which will probably drop to 0 euro if the Greeks don’t accept the ‘revised’ European terms — terms punctuated with a little extra humiliation so we don’t miss the point. Stores are closed because people can’t buy, paychecks can’t be cashed, and 10 million people find themselves getting dizzier and more apprehensive by the day about where it all leads.

Is there really any question where it leads? Can there be any way out in the new Europe, or for that matter the whole new world, but to cave to the money? Lost is the fact that the banks (and all those moneyed interests they serve) were complicit in seducing Greece into an unsustainable orgy of consumerism with the gobs of new play money Brussels was only too happy to trade for their drachmas. Fat fees for the banks and a Mercedes in every other Greek driveway, wasn’t that the plan, Germany?

Short of a European Spring (and we know how those turn out!), the drama in Greece is demonstrating how in the 21st century even entire countries can turn into fiefdoms to be run for the pleasure of the global oligarchical class. As we saw all too clearly in the 2008 meltdown, governments in the West now find themselves in the business of cleaning up the mess for the money. Hear that, Italy, Spain, Portugal, even you France! Let that scruffy 99% soil your halls of power, and your ATMs could be the next to shut down.