Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Paul Krugman at The New York Times writes—Ending Greece’s Bleeding:

But the campaign of bullying — the attempt to terrify Greeks by cutting off bank financing and threatening general chaos, all with the almost open goal of pushing the current leftist government out of office — was a shameful moment in a Europe that claims to believe in democratic principles. It would have set a terrible precedent if that campaign had succeeded, even if the creditors were making sense.

What’s more, they weren’t. The truth is that Europe’s self-styled technocrats are like medieval doctors who insisted on bleeding their patients — and when their treatment made the patients sicker, demanded even more bleeding. A “yes” vote in Greece would have condemned the country to years more of suffering under policies that haven’t worked and in fact, given the arithmetic, can’t work: austerity probably shrinks the economy faster than it reduces debt, so that all the suffering serves no purpose. The landslide victory of the “no” side offers at least a chance for an escape from this trap.

But how can such an escape be managed? Is there any way for Greece to remain in the euro? And is this desirable in any case?

There's more pundits on the Greek referendum and other topics below the fold.

And because you're no doubt eager to know what The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board had to say about the Greek referendum, here it is—The Greeks Say No:

It’s true the Greeks were given two bad choices, but they still chose the worst. Europe was offering more money to forestall a crisis in return for pension cuts and other reforms. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras claimed a “no” vote would help him extract better terms—by which he means even higher growth-killing taxes in return for fewer pension cuts. The Greeks chose the Tsipras ultimatum strategy, so they can’t blame the Germans for what comes next.

The big question now is whether German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other Europeans will flinch. Mrs. Merkel has not wanted to be seen as driving Greece from the eurozone, and the referendum means that the Greeks will have driven themselves out, if that’s what happens in the coming weeks. Mr. Tsipras will claim he has a mandate to demand more European concessions, but that mandate ends at the Greek border. He has no open-ended claim on the other taxpayers of Europe.

Robert Naiman at Common Dreams writes—Bernie Sanders Will End the IMF's Economic Violence in Greece and Africa:

I'm all for pushing Bernie to talk more about downsizing the Pentagon to be an institution focused on actually defending the United States, as opposed to running around the world overthrowing other people's governments - a Pentagon that "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy," as President John Quincy Adams put it.

But we should also take advantage of the new opportunity that now presents itself; it's not only with bombs that U.S. foreign policy kills and injures innocent civilians.

We should recognize and publicize the fact that Bernie Sanders is the only presidential candidate who is talking about what the IMF is doing to Greece, the only presidential candidate who has a track record of opposing the IMF, the only presidential candidate who, if elected, is likely to do anything to end the economic violence of the IMF.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/06/1399468/-Abbreviated-pundit-round-up-Greeks-declare-a-loud-no-liberation-and-the-black-church?showAll=yes