{"id":73478,"date":"2016-05-16T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=73478"},"modified":"2016-05-12T16:04:33","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T15:04:33","slug":"the-ugly-truth-behind-the-greek-bailout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/the-ugly-truth-behind-the-greek-bailout\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ugly Truth Behind the Greek Bailout"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Yiorgos<\/a>

Yiorgos GR | Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n

10 May 2016 – <\/em>Christine Lagarde, the Queen of Troika and the Head Honcho of the IMF, on May 6th, threatened to pull the IMF out of the Greek rescue plan, with a straight face, calling it a \u201crescue plan.\u201d Oh, please!<\/p>\n

Yet, it is extremely doubtful the IMF would ever entirely pull out since the plan really bails out its own constituency of banks at an unfathomable expense to the Greek people.<\/p>\n

Meantime in Greece, transportation and civic services throughout the country grind to a screeching halt, full stop, as the people hit the streets.<\/p>\n

Queen Christine\u2019s backroom stratagem, described in a WikiLeaks\u2019 leaked confidential letter exclusive to Troika members, preceded the three-day nationwide strike in very strong protest against more and more, infinitely more, austerity measures burying the Greek people as quid pro quo for bailout money, which almost exclusively (95%) serves to service creditors. This is insanity of the highest order. How can Greeks at all accede to a measly 5%?<\/p>\n

Anyway, the Troika bailout ruse is finally hitting the proverbial \u201c you can\u2019t squeeze blood out of a turnip\u201d stage, which is when citizens go berserk, ballistic, fighting mad, screaming, kicking and scratching, all kinds of turmoil and hubbub, maybe carnage. Who knows?<\/p>\n

The ugly sequence of events started on May 6th when Greece\u2019s shipping, public transport, and civil service departments included the days Friday and Saturday to their planned nationwide strike for Sunday, May 8th, the day when Greece\u2019s Parliament votes on tax changes, as imposed by Troika, meaning higher taxes and lower pensions. Robotically, this is all the Brussels bureaucrats know.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreece\u2019s largest labour union, the private sector GSEE, said the changes, were the \u2018last nail on [sic] the coffin\u2019 for workers and pensioners. A spokesman said: \u2018They are trying to prove to the Eurogroup that they are good students but they are destroying Greece\u2019s social security system,\u201d Greece Hit by General Strike Over Pension and Tax Change<\/em>, BBC News, May 6, 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019They are the worst so far,\u2019 said Odysseus Trivalas, president of the public sector union ADEDY. \u2018At some point, Greeks won\u2019t be able to take anymore and there will be a social explosion,\u201d IMF Threatens to Pull Out of Greek Rescue, The Guardian, May 6, 2016.<\/p>\n

Hark! The Greek bailout is the epitome, the essence of neoliberal practices, i.e., slash and burn social welfare, grind people into the ground, hammer\u2018em, to save capital. But, then again, that\u2019s how the neoliberal brand of capitalism functions the world over, and it sucks!<\/p>\n

The Greek rescue plan, in real time, is equivalent to stepping inside the pages of The Shock Doctrine, similar to The Truman Show, experiencing life in a reality TV program.<\/p>\n

The Shock Doctrine\u2013The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, the title of Naomi Klein\u2019s wonderful 2008 New York Times\u2019 bestseller says it all, laying out for everybody the hideous details behind capitalism\u2019s newest wrinkle circa 1980s, neoliberalism, a destructive heat-seeking-missile aimed at unions, social welfare programs, and governmental regulations, let the free market reign supreme!<\/p>\n

Greece- \u201cThe Mouse That Roared\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Assuming negotiations break apart, which could happen, a Grexit has broad-reaching negative implications for neoliberalism\u2019s unrelenting penchant for slashing and burning and stomping on social welfare programs.<\/p>\n

Forget the fact that Greece is only 2% of Eurozone GDP. Regardless, a pushback against Troika-imposed austerity may ripple throughout the EU, as other anti-austerity parties, like Podemos in Spain, closely follows.<\/p>\n

Not only is the sanctity of Troika\u2019s unseemly anti-austerity measures at stake. Additionally, an extremist threat, a fierce anti-EU stance by right-wingers like France\u2019s National Front and Britain\u2019s Ukip will feast upon a broken Greek\/EU relationship, strengthening their argument that European integration is a passing fad doomed to utter failure.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, adding kindling to the probability of a raging brush fire, Vladimir Putin stands in the shadows with sharpened fangs deliciously smacking lips over the juicy prospect of a Russian\/Greece relief package, walloping NATO and the U.S. with the fallen sword of Damocles.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the Troika\u2019s brutal austerity measures, designed exclusively to protect creditors, could backfire, flaring up like roman candles on the 4th, perhaps dismantling the EU, a crumbling house of cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Greek people have been living through hell during the last six years, and unfortunately they trusted that Tsipras [PM] would put an end to the extreme austerity measures, which are combined with a total undemocratic regime. Unfortunately, instead of putting an end, he put his signature to a third memorandum, which is even worse than the previous two\u2026 People are back on the streets protesting for their rights and dignity because right now they\u2019re being asked to pay taxes which amount to almost the totality of their revenue. They\u2019re asked to give up their homes\u2026 They\u2019re asked to surrender public property, which is privatized at very, very low prices. And, they\u2019re also asked to give up democracy\u201d (Zoe Konstantopoulou (40), lawyer and former, youngest ever, Speaker of Hellenic Parliament).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the Ugly Truth Behind Foul Greek Rescue Plan(s):<\/strong><\/p>\n

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. In other words, about 210 billion euros was eventually channeled to the eurozone credit sector while just 5 percent ended up in state coffers, according to a very recent study by the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin.<\/p>\n

\u201cEurope and the International Monetary Fund have in previous years mainly saved the banks and other private creditors,\u201d concluded the report, published in German newspaper Handelsblatt. According to ESMT director Jorg Rocholl, \u201cthe bailout packages mainly saved the European banks,\u201d (Jan Hildebrand and Thomas Sigmund, Study: Bailouts for Banks, Not Greeks, Handelsblatt Global Edition, May 4, 2016.)<\/p>\n

Economists studied each loan separately to establish where the money ended up, and concluded that just 9.7 billion euros, or less than 5 percent, went to the Greek budget for the benefit of citizens.<\/p>\n

A Greek Rescue Plan?<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/a><\/p>\n

Robert Hunziker <\/em>lives in\u00a0Los Angeles and can be reached at roberthunziker@icloud.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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

IMF Queen Christine\u2019s backroom stratagem, described in a WikiLeaks\u2019 leaked confidential letter exclusive to Troika members, preceded the three-day nationwide strike in very strong protest against more and more, infinitely more, austerity measures burying the Greek people as quid pro quo for bailout money, which almost exclusively (95%) serves to service creditors. This is insanity of the highest order. How can Greeks at all accede to a measly 5%?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73478","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=73478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}