The latest request to restructure Greece's debt has been denied. with a quote from the ECB that should be classic:
A Greek debt restructuring is not the appropriate way forward -- it would create a catastrophe” because it would damage the banking system, ECB Executive Board member Juergen Stark said today in Lagonissi.
Look at this quote on their demand to privatize:
“Privatization makes a real difference,” said Poul Thomsen, head of the IMF’s Greek mission, which is in the process of reviewing the country’s progress on the bailout conditions. “If targets can be met, it will make a change to debt sustainability.”
Oh really? And that is why the US deficit is so small today, or other nations who privatized?
Seems The Greece Prime Minster, George Papandreou, is all for denying Greece any debt restructuring as well.
Greece must avoid debt restructuring and push on with budget cuts and privatisations to overcome its debt crisis, the country's Prime Minister George Papandreou and senior ECB officials said on Saturday.
Papandreou also said:
Henceforth, the European Union will escort Greece's privatisation programme as if we were conducting it ourselves
Needless to say Greece is up in arms, and Spain is also protesting. Of course, it's all about the banks, it always is. People be damned.
These social democrats nowadays are ...
neo-liberal IMF/ECB minions. Let me add my 2 cent from a European perspective. I don't want to complain about the IMF. Basically the IMF is doing what it has done the last 30 years. Bullying nations with insane austerity and structural "reform" programs. These programs never worked as advertised and were always a disaster and complete failure. But past experience (facts) doesn't hinder the IMF to try harder and come up with the same nonsense again and again.
What I find really shocking watching the € drama is the response of debtor nation's politicians. They are traitors to their people. They seem intend to walk together with their citizen like sheep to the slaughter. Instead of using the enormous leverage the mountain of debt presents to them in negotiations with creditor nations and drive a hard bargain they behave like hostages. Even IMF officials concede that debtor nation's politicians display strong symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome.
Stockholm Syndrome
and the message is the banks are more important than nation-states and the people. How did so much debt accrue in the first place, is it not the banks themselves?
In other words, while Greece has problems isn't it the bond yields and the financial crisis that started this entire mess and why it is credit rating agencies, bond yields, bonds trading can literally collapse a nation-state, almost overnight?
Sure there are structural problems but this "austerity" is pure philosophical bunk.
They should be putting a lid on these CDS and bonds traders, rating agencies. Who has more power, a bank or a nation?
Now, it seems...the banks.
You got that right
That's the truth, in particular, about the debtor nation leaders. It's also a general truth. How else can we explain the failure of the Democrats to put forward any meaningful programs for the vast majority of the people? National leadership is locked down throughout the G-20. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Michael Collins