{"id":48595,"date":"2014-10-13T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=48595"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:40","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:40","slug":"argentina-and-wall-streets-vulture-funds-economic-terrorism-and-the-western-financial-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/10\/argentina-and-wall-streets-vulture-funds-economic-terrorism-and-the-western-financial-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Argentina and Wall Street\u2019s Vulture Funds: \u201cEconomic Terrorism\u201d and the Western Financial System"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cToday you pretend making a coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), but in fact you\u2019re their allies,\u201d Those are the frank words by Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, the Argentinean President, spoken in a calm and secure voice at the UN General Assembly last Friday, 3 October 2014.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Argentina<\/a>

Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner<\/p><\/div>\n

Similarly, she referred to the western financial system as economic terrorism, as in vultures \u2013 the vulture funds that thanks to New York judge Griesa have put Argentina \u2013 a solvent country, willing and capable of paying their debt, in default. He ruled that the vulture funds, Griesa\u2019s clients and paymasters, needed to be paid in full, i.e. 100%, equal to US$ 1.5 billion, when close to 93% of all creditors agreed on a restructured reimbursement rate of about 20%.<\/p>\n

Without any international right to interfere in the affairs of a sovereign country, Griesa would allow the vultures reaping in a profit margin well in excess of 1,000%. \u2014 Paul Singer, king of the \u2018vulture capitalists\u2019, knows no merci. He is in bed with Wall Street and Griesa \u2013 and with whomever other financial hooligans who share his greedy endeavors. Greed is their prayer. It\u2019s knocked around the world. Exploits poor nations, makes them poorer, and keeps them dependent on the powers of money, being well aware that the poor are too weak to defend themselves.<\/p>\n

Except for Argentina. Her able President Cristina Fernandez, speaks not only for her country, when she talks about victims of economic and financial terrorism, but for all those African, Latin American and Asian countries which are oppressed by the killing boots of Wall Street and the IMF. It cannot be said often enough \u2013 the IMF is a mere extended arm of the US Treasury and the FED.<\/p>\n

Vulture capitalism exerted by these usual villains and the European Central Bank, a mere puppet of Wall Street and led by a former Wall Street banker, are responsible for the economic collapse of the western economy. They have driven countries like Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain \u2013 and lately also Ukraine \u2013 into misery.<\/p>\n

They have stolen their social safety nets, pensions, employment, housing, education, health care, water supply and other public infrastructure \u2013 by privatizing public capital for their private benefits. They could do so thanks to the connivance of corrupt leaders they first put in place with sham elections \u2013 or no elections at all.<\/p>\n

\"vultures<\/a><\/p>\n

Case in point is Greece, where the Parliament decided to dismiss the socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou, who attempted to launch a referendum in December 2011, asking the people whether they wanted the troika\u2019s (IMF, ECB, European Commission) imposed second \u2018rescue\u2019 package of \u20ac 130 billion (after a first one on \u20ac 110 billion) that would drastically increase Greece\u2019s sovereign debt and force literally a killer austerity program upon its people. At the onset of the manufactured crisis, in May 2008, Greece\u2019s debt to GDP ratio was a manageable 105%. In 2014 the ratio is 175%.<\/p>\n

Under the structural adjustment program social health care was basically abolished. Many cancer and other chronically ill patients were deprived of their free medical attendance, unemployed and destitute could not afford to pay full price for their medication and treatment \u2013 and quietly died.<\/p>\n

Under extreme pressure from Germany and France \u2013 the infamous tandem Sarkozy \/ Merkel called Papandreou to meeting in Nice at the beginning of November 2011, literally ordering him to withdraw the referendum \u2013 or else. Papandreou went home, canceled the referendum on 3 November and resigned. He was promptly replaced by Parliament \u2013 without a public vote \u2013 by the neoliberal Lucas Papademos, former deputy head of the ECB and \u2013 a former Goldman Sachs executive, who allowed the dance of debt and destruction to continue.<\/p>\n

Argentina would not allow such financial terrorism on its shores \u2013 not since they dared to counter the economically suffocating peso-dollar parity in 2001, allowing the country to start breathing and growing again; a highly distributive GDP growth allowing to cut poverty from above 60% in 2001to below 10% today.<\/p>\n

The same escape from the western kleptomania was \u2013 and still is \u2013 open to Greece and all those southern European countries in the fangs of greed capitalism. But their leaders and finance ministers are goose stepping to the financial marching orders of Washington\u2019s money masters, Wall Street, FED and IMF.<\/p>\n

Ms. Fernandez did not mince her words. She also talked openly about \u00a0western military terrorism, \u201cYou killed many innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan under the name of war against terrorism,\u201d or as the new refrain goes \u2013 \u201cMaking war for Peace\u201d. She referred to the West in general and to Washington in particular, for whom war and conflicts, weapons sales, is a means of economic survival, as the US economy depends to more than 50% on the military \/ security industrial complex and related industries and services.<\/p>\n

Shamefully, many western leaders and representatives left the assembly hall when Ms. Fernandez spoke, of fear they may be associated with her views if they listened to her calling a spade a spade. Perhaps they feared the ridiculous western sanctions, if they don\u2019t behave. It is sad to see spineless world leaders; so-called leaders (sic), who bend over backwards to please the powers that utterly exploit them, stealing their natural resources, putting their people and the environment in peril.<\/p>\n

A terrorist is whoever does not conform to the western doctrine, whoever insists on national sovereignty \u2013 whoever defends their national interests over the voracious interference of Washington and its European puppets \u2013 and their killing bulldozer, NATO.<\/p>\n

The UN should make it an obligation and expression of mutual respect that every country leader and representative attending the UN General Assembly must listen to all the speeches. Each country has a message to give \u2013 a message that in one way or another concerns all of us, as we are all connected as humans in a solidary union, regardless of political alliances.<\/p>\n

The latest economic terrorism inflicted on Russia by the US supported Wall Street et al financial cabal is the down manipulation of the ruble vs the US dollar and other \u2018western\u2019 currencies. The ruble has lost 22% of its value since the beginning of 2014 and 15% in the last quarter alone. Call it \u2018sanctions\u2019 \u2013 if you will \u2013 for not bending to the political demands of Washington on Ukraine. The western MSM would like you to believe it has to do with the chaos and continuous murderous atrocities in Ukraine\u2019s Donbass area, for which \u2013 of course \u2013 Russia is made the culprit, not Kiev\u2019s gang of thugs, a Nazi government, created and funded by Obama and his western puppets.<\/p>\n

Russia is now forced to buy dollars and Euros \u2013 what they least want and need \u2013 to stabilize her currency, the ruble. Buying dollars \u2013 playing even more into the sledgehammer of the empire \u2013 is certainly the last thing Russia wants to do. Currency manipulation is only possible due to the predatory US dollar system, where all international transactions have to be channeled through Wall Street and cleared through the privately owned BIS \u2013 Bank for International Settlements, whose owners are a similar lot of financial shenanigans as are those owning the FED. The expected outcome is a devalued ruble, shunned by investors.Little do they know that this usual western shortsightedness is but accelerating the process of Russia and China issuing a new combined currency, delinked form the dollar-euro fiat money and its SWIFT exchange system. In fact, it has already begun. The Central Bank of China has recently offered a hand to the EU, inviting the Euro as one of several currencies that will no longer need the western clearing system for transactions with China.President Fernandez puts the finger right on the wound when she refers to the entire western monetary system as vulture economics. She knows that such an economy is bound to falter and be replaced \u2013 gradually as may be \u2013 by one that is based on fairness, integrity and that respects nations\u2019 sovereignty.<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Peter Koenig<\/em> is an economist and former World Bank staff. He worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, the Voice of Russia, now Ria Novosti, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of <\/em>Implosion \u2013 An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed \u2013 fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 globalresearch.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Argentina\u2019s able President Cristina Fernandez speaks not only for her country, when she talks about victims of economic and financial terrorism, but for all those African, Latin American and Asian countries which are oppressed by the killing boots of Wall Street and the IMF.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}