May 22
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By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos Global Research, May 22, 2017 Defend Democracy Press The day Greek workers and employees went on general strike, protesting against a new barrage of so-called “reforms” imposed by the “creditors” in the context of a program that is destroying Greeks and their country, a statement on Greece was issued by the Presidents […]
Mar 13
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By Peter Koenig You are being slaughtered right in front of the world’s eyes and nobody says beep. Least the Greek elite. Your Government. A few, but a few too many, allow the slaughter because it doesn’t concern them. They are blinded by the false glamour of the euro and of belonging to the ‘elite […]
Feb 26
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By Defend Democracy Press Global Research, February 27, 2017 Defend Democracy Press 21 February 2017 German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Wednesday brought back the Grexit issue by saying that unless Greece implements reforms it cannot stay in the euro zone. The German finance minister spoke to the country’s broadcaster ARD in light of the stalled negotiations between […]
Feb 13
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By Robert Stevens Global Research, February 13, 2017 World Socialist Web Site 11 February 2017 Officials from the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed Friday to a take a unified hard line against Greece, as the country’s debt crisis worsens. The Syriza government must make a further €7 billion payment to its […]
Jan 9
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By Eric Toussaint Global Research, January 09, 2017 Coalition for the Abolition of Illegitimacy Debt 9 January 2017 The present study shows that the Greek crisis that broke out in 2010 originated in private banks, not in excessive public spending. The so-called bail-out was designed to serve the interests of private bankers and those of […]
Nov 20
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The IMF’s IEO Evaluation of the Greek Program: Going beyond a Mea Culpa? By Daniel Munevar Global Research, November 20, 2016 EReNSEP 26 September 2016 The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the IMF recently published its report on the response of the organization to the European crisis. The analysis focuses on the performance of the IMF in […]
Aug 25
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By Jack Rasmus August 24, 2016 “Information Clearing House” – This week marks the first anniversary of the 2015 Greek debt crisis, the third in that country’s recent history since 2010. Last Aug. 20-21, 2015, the ‘Troika’—i.e., the pan-European institutions of the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB), plus the IMF-imposed a third […]
Aug 15
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By Peter Koenig and Sputnik Global Research, August 15, 2016 Sputnik The Guardian reports: “Children as young as seven have been sexually assaulted in official European refugee camps, the Observer has been told. The claims come as testimony emerges suggesting that some camps are so unsafe that youngsters are too terrified to leave their tents at night.” The […]
Jul 5
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By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos Global Research, July 05, 2016 Defend Democracy Press 5 July 2016 “I call you to vote as sovereign and proud, just as the history of Greeks commands. I am engaging myself to respect the democratic choice of the people, whatever it will be.” —Alexis Tsipras on TV, announcing the referendum, 26.6.2015 A year ago […]
May 26
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By Stavros Mavroudeas Global Research, May 26, 2016 Stavros Mavroudeas Blog The new late night deal in the Eurogroup on the new bailout for Greece is another blatant hypocricy by the dominant European Union powers, their partner-cum-competitor IMF (aka the US) and the Greek establishment (now represented by the SYRIZA government). The new deal is […]
May 25
By Katerina Selin 25 May 2016 The final stages in clearing the Idomeni refugee camp on the Greek-Macedonian border began Tuesday morning. Macedonia closed its border at the end of February, preventing tens of thousands fleeing to Europe from war and poverty from continuing their journey. The pseudo-left Syriza government intends to transport all refugees […]
May 24
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By Sharmini Peries – Michael Hudson May 24, 2016 “Information Clearing House” – “Real News” – SHARMINI PERIES, TRNN: It’s the Real News Network, I’m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. Greece’s economic crisis has perhaps been eclipsed by Europe’s refugee crisis, terrorist attacks, and by the forthcoming Brexit referendum. But it has not […]
May 22
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By Dick Nichols Global Research, May 22, 2016 Defend Democracy Press 20 May 2016 It has taken only nine months for the third memorandum between the near-bankrupt Greek state and its creditors — the “Quartet” of the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Stability Mechanism (ESM) — to […]
May 11
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By Stathis Habibis Global Research, May 11, 2016 Defend Democracy 10 May 2016 The economic and social situation in Greece day by day is getting worse, after SYRIZA’s capitulation on the 13th of July 2015. Greeks have seen their hopes for resistance to fade away, as Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the radical left changed camp […]
May 6
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By Ekathimerini Global Research, May 06, 2016 Ekathimerini 4 May 2016 Some 95 percent of the 220 billion euros disbursed to Greece since the start of the financial crisis as loans from the bailout mechanism has been directed toward saving the European banks. That means about 210 billion euros was eventually channeled to the eurozone […]
Apr 30
By Alex Lantier 30 April 2016 The European Union (EU) and the Washington, DC-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) are set to demand fresh austerity measures on top of those accepted by Greece’s Syriza government as part of the country’s €86 billion bailout plan agreed last summer. Syriza (the “Coalition of the Radical Left”) agreed last […]
Apr 29
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By Sofiane Ait Chalalet and Chris Jones Global Research, April 29, 2016 Samos Chronicles These are strange days on Samos. Unlike the previous 11 months the flow of refugees to the island has slowed down dramatically since the EU/Turkey pact came into force at the end of March. Days pass now with no new arrivals. […]
Apr 12
By John Vassilopoulos 12 April 2016 A leaked transcript published April 1 by WikiLeaks of a March 19 teleconference between leading International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials Delia Velculescu, head of the IMF Representative Mission to Greece and Poul Thomsen, director of the IMF’s European Department, lifts the lid on the underhand and criminal methods employed […]
Apr 5
5 April 2016 With the sailing Monday of ferries packed with hundreds of refugees and migrants expelled from the Greek Aegean islands of Lesbos and Chios to the Turkish coastal town of Dikili, an international crime of historic dimensions has begun to unfold. Refugees, the great majority of them fleeing the murderous violence unleashed by […]
Apr 4
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“Hypocrisy, the most protected of vices.” Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673.) On 18th March the twenty eight European Union leaders reached: “an agreement that has an irreversible momentum”, according to German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. From Monday 4th April, all refugees and economic migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey after 20th March – the majority Syrian and Iraqis fleeing […]
Apr 4
By Robert Stevens 4 April 2016 Protests continued in Greece over the weekend as the Syriza government finalised the mass deportation of Syrian refugees to Turkey, where they are to be herded into concentration camps. The refugees are being deported from Greece to Turkey as part of the recent European Union/Greece/Turkey deal to hermetically seal […]
Apr 2
By Katerina Selin 2 April 2016 On Wednesday evening, about 2,000 refugees and aid workers demonstrated in Athens against the recent agreement between the European Union and Turkey. The agreement finalizes the closing of the Balkan route and allows thousands of refugees in Greece to be deported to Turkey. A law spelling out the implementation […]
Feb 22
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By Mario Candeias Global Research, February 22, 2016 Socialist Project 22 February 2016 One year after the victory and six months after the coup, we shouldn’t fool ourselves: This was a defeat, of the Greek government. But it’s not only Syriza that has failed (for now). The whole left has failed in Greece – […]
Feb 12
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By Pepe Escobar February 12, 2016 “Information Clearing House” – “RT” – Europa, in classical Greek mythology, was this Phoenician princess babe that drove lusty Zeus absolutely bonkers. A trickster par excellence, Zeus turned into a white bull, lured Europa into riding him, and before she could escape, dove into the Aegean Sea and carried […]
Feb 10
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By John Vassilopoulos Global Research, February 10, 2016 World Socialist Web Site The announcement that the armed forces and the Ministry of Defence have been assigned the leading role in the pseudo-left Syriza government’s handling of the refugee crisis is part of a deliberate and systematic expansion of the domestic role of the military in […]
By Yanis Varoufakis -Ted Talk
Have you wondered why politicians aren’t what they used to be, why governments seem unable to solve real problems? Economist Yanis Varoufakis, the former Minister of Finance for Greece, says that it’s because you can be in politics today but not be in power — because real power now belongs to those who control the economy. He believes that the mega-rich and corporations are cannibalizing the political sphere, causing financial crisis. In this talk, hear his dream for a world in which capital and labor no longer struggle against each other, “one that is simultaneously libertarian, Marxist and Keynesian.”
Posted January 31, 2016
Jan 22
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By Eric Toussaint Global Research, January 22, 2016 Comittee for the Abolition of Third World Debt 21 January 2016 There follows the summary of a talk given at the European Parliament in Brussels by Eric Toussaint on 14 January 2016 on the occasion of the international meeting organized by the left-wing European Parliamentary Group GUE/NGL […]
Jan 11
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By Sofiane Ait Chalalet and Chris Jones Global Research, January 11, 2016 Samoschronicles.wordpress.com 11 January 2016 “When the message reaches Morocco that Moroccans are not being allowed to cross into Europe but are being held and repatriated, the flows will drop.” Yiannis Mouzalas [the minister responsible for refugees] said that around half of the people […]
Dec 26
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By Eric Toussaint Global Research, December 26, 2015 Comittee for the Abolition of Third World Debt 18 December 2015 In August-September 2013, I drafted a course of measures to be implemented in Greece in case the radical left won the election. On 10 September, 2013 I sent this draft to the activists of Greece and […]
Dec 16
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By John Vassilopoulos Global Research, December 16, 2015 World Socialist Web Site On the instructions of the Syriza government, Greek riot police forcibly removed 2,300 migrants from the camp they had set up in the village of Idomeni on the Greek-Macedonian border. The squad of 350 police stormed the camp on December 9. The migrants […]
Nov 28
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By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, November 28, 2015 Alexis Tsipras who led the “left wing” SYRIZA movement against neoliberalism has revealed his true face in his recent visit to Israel. He has joined the pro-Israeli EU political bandwagon, which pays lip service to Netanyahu. As we recall Syriza confirmed as part of its election platform […]
Nov 9
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By Stavros Mavroudeas Global Research, November 09, 2015 Stavros Mavroudeas Blog 3 November 2015 The recent Greek elections (25/9/2015) offer some valuable lessons for not only the Greek Left and the popular movement. SYRIZA – the darling of the Western Left that has been portrayed as a model – performed a blatant somersault and unashamed […]
Oct 8
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By Truth Committee on the Greek Public Debt Global Research, October 08, 2015 Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt 25 September 2015 In August 2015, the Tsipras (SYRIZA/ANEL) government agreed to a new MoU and a Financial Assistance Facility Agreement [loan agreement]. The terms of the August 2015 MoU [Third MoU) and loan […]
Oct 8
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By Caroline Lucas Global Research, October 08, 2015 Huffington Post 6 October 2015 Over the last few days I’ve been in Greece as part of a delegation with the Greece Solidarity Campaign. The scale of the challenge facing the Greek people, though already at the forefront of my mind, has been amplified by the many […]
Oct 2
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By Takis Fotopoulos Global Research, October 02, 2015 The “victory” of the globalist “Left” in Greece The second victory of SYRIZA in Greece within eight months was celebrated by many in the European and US “Left” as a victory for the Left in general, following its almost total political and ideological bankruptcy of the last […]
Sep 27
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By Richard Fidler Global Research, September 27, 2015 Socialist Project 27 September 2015 In the wake of the September 20 Greek election SYRIZA has once again formed a coalition government with a small right-wing party, ANEL. Both parties lost votes and seats but their standing, like those of most other parties, was not very dissimilar to the […]
Sep 25
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By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos Introduced by Peter Koenig September 25, 2015 “Information Clearing House” – “It is [….] a triumph of the empire to have the victims elect their executioners.” These are the words of Dimitris Konstantakopoulos this Monday morning, 21 September, the morning after the Greek ‘snap’ elections, when the Greek people re-elected Syriza and […]
Sep 23
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By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos and Peter Koenig Global Research, September 23, 2015 Introduced by Peter Koenig “It is [….] a triumph of the empire to have the victims elect their executioners.” These are the words of Dimitris Konstantakopoulos this Monday morning, 21 September, the morning after the Greek ‘snap’ elections, when the Greek people re-elected Syriza […]
Sep 22
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By Binoy Kampmark Global Research, September 22, 2015 Greeks are the victim[s] of anti-democratic and criminal policies that carry with them the threat of a humanitarian crisis. Zoi Konstantopoulou, The Daily Beast, Sep 20, 2015 Alexis Tsipras of Syriza has clearly decided that the election is one of the best ways of sanctifying controversial programs. […]
Sep 21
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By Bill Van Auken Global Research, September 21, 2015 World Socialist Web Site With over 93 percent of the vote counted early Monday, Greece’s Syriza had returned to power in Sunday’s snap election called last month by the party’s leader, former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Tsipras returns to office based on a political program that […]
First published in July 2015
By Truth and Satire
Every single mainstream media has the following narrative for the economic crisis in Greece: the government spent too much money and went broke; the generous banks gave them money, but Greece still can’t pay the bills because it mismanaged the money that was given. It sounds quite reasonable, right?
Except that it is a big fat lie … not only about Greece, but about other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland who are all experiencing various degrees of austerity. It was also the same big, fat lie that was used by banks and corporations to exploit many Latin American, Asian and African countries for many decades.
Greece did not fail on its own. It was made to fail.
In summary, the banks wrecked the Greek government, and then deliberately pushed it into unsustainable debt … while revenue-generating public assets were sold off to oligarchs and international corporations. The rest of the article is about how and why.
If you are a fan of mafia movies, you know how the mafia would take over a popular restaurant. First, they would do something to disrupt the business – stage a murder at the restaurant or start a fire. When the business starts to suffer, the Godfather would generously offer some money as a token of friendship. In return, Greasy Thumb takes over the restaurant’s accounting, Big Joey is put in charge of procurement, and so on. Needless to say, it’s a journey down a spiral of misery for the owner who will soon be broke and, if lucky, alive.
Now, let’s map the mafia story to international finance in four stages.
Stage 1: The first and foremost reason that Greece got into trouble was the “Great Financial Crisis” of 2008 that was the brainchild of Wall Street and international bankers. If you remember, banks came up with an awesome idea of giving subprime mortgages to anyone who can fog a mirror. They then packaged up all these ticking financial bombs and sold them as “mortgage-backed securities” for a huge profit to various financial entities in countries around the world.
A big enabler of this criminal activity was another branch of the banking system, the group of rating agencies – S&P, Fitch and Moody’s – who gave stellar ratings to these destined-to-fail financial products. Unscrupulous politicians such as Tony Blair joined Goldman Sachs and peddled these dangerous securities to pension funds and municipalities and countries around Europe. Banks and Wall Street gurus made hundreds of billions of dollars in this scheme.
But this was just Stage 1 of their enormous scam. There was much more profit to be made in the next three stages!
Stage 2 is when the financial time bombs exploded. Commercial and investment banks around the world started collapsing in a matter of weeks. Governments at local and regional level saw their investments and assets evaporate. Chaos everywhere!
Vultures like Goldman Sachs and other big banks profited enormously in three ways: one, they could buy other banks such as Lehman brothers and Washington Mutual for pennies on the dollar. Second, more heinously, Goldman Sachs and insiders such as John Paulson (who recently donated $400 million to Harvard) had made bets that these securities would blow up. Paulson made billions, and the media celebrated his acumen. (For an analogy, imagine the terrorists betting on 9/11 and profiting from it.) Third, to scrub salt in the wound, the big banks demanded a bailout from the very citizens whose lives the bankers had ruined! Bankers have chutzpah. In the U.S., they got hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers and trillions from the Federal Reserve Bank which is nothing but a front group for the bankers.
In Greece, the domestic banks got more than $30 billion of bailout from the Greek people. Let that sink in for a moment – the supposedly irresponsible Greek government had to bail out the hardcore capitalist bankers.
Stage 3 is when the banks force the government to accept massive debts. For a biology metaphor, consider a virus or a bacteria. All of them have unique strategies to weaken the immune system of the host. One of the proven techniques used by the parasitic international bankers is to downgrade the bonds of a country. And that’s exactly what the bankers did, starting at the end of 2009. This immediately makes the interest rates (“yields”) on the bonds go up, making it more and more expensive for the country to borrow money or even just roll over the existing bonds.
From 2009 to mid 2010, the yields on 10-year Greek bonds almost tripled! This cruel financial assault brought the Greek government to its knees, and the banksters won their first debt deal of a whopping 110 billion Euros.
The banks also control the politics of nations. In 2011, when the Greek prime minister refused to accept a second massive bailout, the banks forced him out of the office and immediately replaced him with the Vice President of ECB (European Central Bank)! No elections needed. Screw democracy. And what would this new guy do? Sign on the dotted line of every paperwork that the bankers bring in.
(By the way, the very next day, the exact same thing happened in Italy where the Prime Minister resigned, only to be replaced by a banker/economist puppet. Ten days later, Spain had a premature election where a “technocrat” banker puppet won the election).
The puppet masters had the best month ever in November 2011.
Few months later, in 2012, the exact bond market manipulation was used when the banksters turned up the Greek bonds’ yields to 50%!!! This financial terrorism immediately had the desired effect: The Greek parliament agreed to a second massive bailout, even larger than the first one.
Now, here is another fact that most people don’t understand. The loans are not just simple loans like you would get from a credit card or a bank. These loans come with very special strings attached that demand privatization of a country’s assets. If you have seen Godfather III, you would remember Hyman Roth, the investor who was carving up Cuba among his friends. Replace Hyman Roth with Goldman Sachs or IMF (International Monetary Fund) or ECB, and you get the picture.
Stage 4: Now, the rape and humiliation of a nation begin. For the debt that was forced upon them, Greece had to sell many of its profitable assets to oligarchs and international corporations. And privatizations are ruthless, involving everything and anything that is profitable. In Greece, privatization included water, electricity, post offices, airport services, national banks, telecommunication, port authorities (which is huge in a country that is a world leader in shipping) etc.
In addition to that, the banker tyrants also get to dictate every single line item in the government’s budget. Want to cut military spending? NO! Want to raise tax on the oligarchs or big corporations? NO! Such micro-management is non-existent in any other creditor-debtor relationship.
So what happens after privatization and despotism under bankers? Of course, the government’s revenue goes down and the debt increases further. How do you “fix” that? Of course, cut spending! Lay off public workers, cut minimum wage, cut pensions (same as our social security), cut public services, and raise taxes on things that would affect the 99% but not the 1%. For example, pension has been cut in half and sales tax increase to more than 20%. All these measures have resulted in Greece going through a financial calamity that is worse than the Great Depression of the U.S. in the 1930s.
Of course, the ever-manipulative bankers demand immediate privatization of all media which means that the country now gets photogenic TV anchors who spew propaganda every day and tell the people that crooked and greedy banksters are saviors; and slavery under austerity is so much better than the alternative.
If every Greek person had known the truth about austerity, they wouldn’t have fallen for this. Same goes for Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and other countries going through austerity.The sad aspect of all this is that these are not unique strategies. Since World War II, these predatory practices have been used countless times by the IMF and the World Bank in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
This is the essence of the New World Order — a world owned by a handful of corporations and banks.
So, it’s time for the wonderful people of Greece to rise up like Zeus and say NO (“OXI” in Greece) to the greedy puppet masters, unpatriotic oligarchs, parasitic bankers and corrupt politicians.
Dear Greece, know that the world is praying for you. Vote NO to austerity. Say YES to freedom, independence, self-government, and democracy. Yes, democracy, the word that was invented by YOU!
P.S. (You can also watch this video where John Perkins – author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” – talks about exploitation of Latin American and Asian countries using the same tools of debt-austerity-privatization. He used to do this for a living!
Copyright Truth and Satire, 2015
http://www.globalresearch.ca/greece-the-one-biggest-lie-you-are-being-told-by-the-media/5460508
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