Few Americans understand the reasons for European Sovereign Debt Crisis. The "Troika" consisting of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monitary Fund (IMF) decide to make loans to economically failing EU member countries in the full knowledge that countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal cannot possibly pay them off. Why would they do that? Well you have to know how it works. The IMF immediately takes the promised loans and uses them to pay off the creditors. Then the IMF requires that the people of those countries pay the IMF back every red cent by taking additional cuts in their salaries and pensions and requiring their government to sell off services such as water and electricity to foreigners who will raise the prices. How to escape starvation? Why resign from the European Union and default on all current loans! Of course, they would still need loans. But they would need to be long term so that those loans can be paid back after they are first used to improve their economies. Who would grant them such loans? Why Russia, China, and the BRICS!

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Paul Craig Roberts – As Greece Pivots, Putin Unleashing Ultimate Move To Crush The EU And NATO

With people around the world worried about the escalating crisis in Greece and conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, today former U.S. Treasury official, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, warned King World News that as Greece pivots, Putin is unleashing the ultimate move to crush the EU and NATO.

Eric King:  “Dr. Roberts, I find the foresight you have is fascinating.  You were the only person in the world who talked (on KWN in January) about Greece and the new Greek government getting close to (Putin and) the Russians.  And here we are in the month of April and we’ve got the Greek government officials meeting with Vladimir Putin.  How did you know that it would end up in this place?  What possibly made you dream up this scenario that’s (now) unfolding?”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts:  “The former (Greek) governments were all interested in being accepted in the West, (being) paid off, taken care of, having comfortable bank balances in Switzerland or wherever, and so they went along with this notion that we will drive the Greek people into starvation in order to pay the people who have speculated on Greek debt (the banksters)….

“This current (Greek) government isn’t willing to do that, or at least so far has not been willing to do that.  And they understand that the debt cannot be repaid.  The Greeks can’t pay the bailout and so the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, who has been accepting indignity after indignity from the EU and Washington, lie after lie, sanction after sanction, he saw an opportunity.  He said, ‘Look, come do business with us Greece.'

So the possibility is there now that the Greeks will simply default on the entire debt.  If I was the Greek government that is exactly what I would do.  I would tell the West: 

"You’re trying to drive us into the ground — to force starvation on the Greek people.  You go to hell, we’re not paying you one nickel.  In fact, we’re not having anything else to do with you.  We’re out of NATO, we’re out of the EU, we’ve got our own currency back, and if we need any financing, our Russian friends are going to finance us."

That Would Set Off A Chain Reaction In The West

Now this would begin the breakup of NATO, which is necessary if there is to be peace in the world.  There can be no peace as long as NATO exists because NATO is a mercenary force for Washington’s aggressions.  And without NATO, Washington doesn’t have any cover.

Well, if they lose the cover of Europe, Washington is standing there alone in its aggression.  So the minute NATO were to breakup, the threat of war with Russia and China would be over because Washington alone wouldn’t be able to pursue this type of enterprise.

 

Greek And Russian Alliance Spells The End Of NATO

So Greece and Russia (together) is the beginning of the possibility of the breakup of NATO because if the Greeks were to default on the debt, that would leave Greece debt free.  It would have zero debt to GDP, and if they needed financing for some reason, the Russians could finance them.

Italy And Spain Would Be Next After Greece

Now, if this happens with Greece, it’s bound to happen with Italy and Spain because Italy and Spain are in the same situation — they’ve got more debt than they can service.  And the United States has been very active to make sure that the governments of Italy and Spain are governments that Washington controls — who will ruin their own people and their own country in order to pay off Washington and the New York hedge funds, Germany, Netherlands, and the European big banks (banksters).

Spain And Italy May Also Look To The Russians, Chinese Or The BRICs

But if Greece were to leave, then that shows the politicians in Spain and Italy that they can do the same thing — they could default and have a debt free balance sheet.  And if they needed to have any kind of financing, they can turn to Russia, or Russia and China, or the BRICS bank (AIIB), which is now funded with $100 billion.

Greedy Banksters May Cause The Fall Of The Empire

So what we see possibly happening here is that the greed of the West and the Western financial interests (banksters), the hedge funds, the EU, Washington, this greed to loot countries, even their own members like Greece, could end up breaking up the empire.

I think we need to be very hopeful that this does occur because the United States has kept the world at war and there have been millions of people killed, displaced, maimed, and wounded.  And now that they (the U.S.) are running out of easy enemies, they are seizing on Russia.  Well, Russia is not an easy enemy and the Russians keep telling Washington: 

"We’re not Gaddafi.  We’re not Saddam Hussein.  If you mess with us, it’s the end of the world.  What are you doing?  Don’t you have any sense?  Do you really want war with nuclear powers?  Why can’t you be intelligent and why don’t we work out these things diplomatically?"

But Washington doesn’t hear.  Washington just goes on about its business.  These people are committed to a war with Russia, but that’s not a war that anybody can win.

So I think that the Greeks are fortunate to have gotten a new government.  I think the Greeks were silly not to have given the new government a massive majority.  I think if they had given the new government a massive majority then the Europeans would have made an adjustment in their demands.

But since the Europeans are still determined to loot Greece for their own gain, the Greeks may turn away from Europe.  And if they do, it will be the beginning of the unraveling of the EU, the euro, and, thank goodness, of NATO.” KWN has now released the incredible audio interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, where he discusses one of the greatest periods of crisis that the world has ever seen as well as the dangerous events taking place around the globe and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE

Blogger's Remark: If clicking above fails, you may go to the original here:

http://kingworldnews.com/paul-craig-roberts-as-greece-pivots-putin-unleashing-ultimate-move-to-crush-the-eu-and-nato/

The photographed version below is not functional

Uber economist Bill Black, has been a great critic of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times's coverage of the Greek debt crisis, i.e., they've mentioning austerity very little, if at all. Bill, like Paul Craig Roberts, sees Greece as being victimized by the European Union, headed by Germany. At the end of WW2, more than half of Germany's debts were written off, not simply due to compassion for those suffering austerity, but also the fastest way to put people back to work and recover their economy. Ironically, it is Germany that is now resisting debt write-offs for Greece (as well as for Italy and Spain), thus damning their citizens to further austerity (while profiting the criminal banks that caused the problem). In this context, Bill mentions that "...what you have to remember is that most of the nations of Europe were occupied by Germany. And they do not have good memories of being occupied by Germany."

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                                                                                        Original Here






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Will the SYRIZA Victory Spark a Broad Anti-Austerity Struggle in Europe? 

Professor William Black says the mainstream media has failed to explain the ordinary Greek's experience of austerity policy - January 30, 2015

http://youtu.be/rWkKQvy-TMY

Bio                                                                                                                                           .

William K. Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement.

Black developed the concept of "control fraud" frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management.

"Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America on 'suspicion' that it was carrying a political refugee to safety..." "Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the 'international community', as the governments of the west call themselves."

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Forcing down Evo Morales's plane was an act of air piracy

Denying the Bolivian president air space was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world

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John Pilger

The Guardian, Thursday 4 July 2013 14.00 EDT
Original Here

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President Morales arrives back in La Paz, Bolivia. ‘Imagine the response from Paris if the French president's plane was forced down in Latin America.’ Photograph: Zuma/Rex Features

Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America on "suspicion" that it was carrying a political refugee to safety – and not just any refugee but someone who has provided the people of the world with proof of criminal activity on an epic scale.

Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the "international community", as the governments of the west call themselves. To a chorus of baying indignation from Whitehall to Washington, Brussels to Madrid, heroic special forces would be dispatched to rescue their leader and, as sport, smash up the source of such flagrant international gangsterism. Editorials would cheer them on, perhaps reminding readers that this kind of piracy was exhibited by the German Reich in the 1930s.

The forcing down of Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane – denied airspace by France, Spain and Portugal, followed by his 14-hour confinement while Austrian officials demanded to "inspect" his aircraft for the "fugitive" Edward Snowden – was an act of air piracy and state terrorism. It was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world and the cowardice and hypocrisy of bystanders who dare not speak its name.

In Moscow, Morales had been asked about Snowden – who remains trapped in the city's airport. "If there were a request [for political asylum]," he said, "of course, we would be willing to debate and consider the idea." That was clearly enough provocation for the Godfather. "We have been in touch with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country," said a US state department official.

The French – having squealed about Washington spying on their every move, as revealed by Snowden – were first off the mark, followed by the Portuguese. The Spanish then did their bit by enforcing a flight ban of their airspace, giving the Godfather's Viennese hirelings enough time to find out if Snowden was indeed invoking article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."

Those paid to keep the record straight have played their part with a cat-and-mouse media game that reinforces the Godfather's lie that this heroic young man is running from a system of justice, rather than preordained, vindictive incarceration that amounts to torture – ask Bradley Manning and the living ghosts in Guantánamo.

Historians seem to agree that the rise of fascism in Europe might have been averted had the liberal or left political class understood the true nature of its enemy. The parallels today are very different, but the Damocles sword over Snowden, like the casual abduction of Bolivia's president, ought to stir us into recognising the true nature of the enemy.

Snowden's revelations are not merely about privacy, or civil liberty, or even mass spying. They are about the unmentionable: that the democratic facades of the US now barely conceal a systematic gangsterism historically identified with, if not necessarily the same as, fascism. On Tuesday, a US drone killed 16 people in North Waziristan, "where many of the world's most dangerous militants live", said the few paragraphs I read. That by far the world's most dangerous militants had hurled the drones was not a consideration. President Obama personally sends them every Tuesday.

In his acceptance of the 2005 Nobel prize in literature, Harold Pinter referred to "a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed". He asked why "the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities" of the Soviet Union were well known in the west while America's crimes were "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged". The most enduring silence of the modern era covered the extinction and dispossession of countless human beings by a rampant US and its agents. "But you wouldn't know it," said Pinter. "It never happened. Even while it was happening it never happened."

This hidden history – not really hidden, of course, but excluded from the consciousness of societies drilled in American myths and priorities – has never been more vulnerable to exposure. Snowden's whistleblowing, like that of Manning and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, threatens to break the silence Pinter described. In revealing a vast Orwellian police state apparatus servicing history's greatest war-making machine, they illuminate the true extremism of the 21st century. Unprecedented, Germany's Der Spiegel has described the Obama administration as "soft totalitarianism". If the penny is falling, we might all look closer to home.

www.johnpilger.com

Latin America furious over U.S., France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal colluding to "kidnap" the Bolivian head of state, Evo Morales.

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theREALnews                                                                               Permalink

Bolivians Indignant at European Treatment of President Morales

South American bloc UNASUR holds emergency meeting condemning European and U.S. actions - July 5, 13

ELLEN BROWN EXPLAINS HOW GREECE, SPAIN, AND OTHER EUROPEAN NATIONS PRESENTLY BEING CRUSHED BY EXPONENTIALLY INCREASING NATIONAL DEBTS CAN *LEGALLY* RESTART THEIR ECONOMIES INSTANTLY, RESTORE EMPLOYMENT, AND WORK THEIR WAY OUT OF DEBT IN JUST A FEW YEARS

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Greece and the Euro: Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Ellen Brown

The problem is all inside your head she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.

–Lyrics by Paul Simon

The Euro appears to be a marriage of incompatible partners. A June 1^st article in the UK Telegraph titled “Why Europe’s Love Affair with the European Project Is Ending” reported that two-thirds of 9,000 respondents thought that having the euro as their single currency was a mistake.

For Greece, it was a tragic mismatch from the beginning; and like many a breakup, it is really about money.  Greece is a vivacious young woman chained to a tyrannical old man.  She yearns to be free to dance on her own; but breaking up is hard to do.  Defaulting on her debts will force her out of the Eurozone and back to issuing drachmas, and she could get brutally beaten by speculators on foreign exchange markets for her insolence.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to an ugly divorce.  The treaties binding the 17 member nations are just a set of rules, entered into by mutual agreement; and rules can be bent or broken, especially in crises.  The ECB (European Central Bank) broke a litany of rules to save the banks, and so did the Federal Reserve to save Wall Street in 2008.  Rules that can be bent for banks can be bent for people and nations—not just Greece, but all the other Eurozone countries threatening to file for divorce.

Paul Simon says there are 50 ways, but here are five creative alternatives.

1.     The Open Marriage: Return to the Drachma Without Abandoning the Euro

James Skinner, former chairman of NEF (the New Economics Foundation in the UK), suggests that the Greek government could start issuing drachmas without abandoning the euro.  Drachmas could be reserved for domestic use—to pay the government’s budget, hire workers, build infrastructure and expand social services.  He writes:

Greece is suffering from a lack of money because the only source, the single currency, has dried up. But there is no law that states that there has to be only one currency.
. . . By enabling the Government, monitored by the Central Bank, to spend newly created money directly into the economy, bypassing the banking sector, the burden of increasing national debt can be avoided. . . .

This programme for creating a new Greek Drachma, bypassing the private banking sector, could start tomorrow. Its immediate effect would be to get the unemployed back to work. All existing Euro transactions can continue as before, quite separately from the new currency. The two currencies can perfectly well co-exist and run alongside each other. . . . Foreign banks will continue to deal in Euros and other currencies as usual.

This solution was successfully used in Argentina when its currency collapsed in 2001. The government walked away from its debts and started issuing its own Argentine pesos.  Three years after a record debt default on more than $100 billion, the country was well on the road to recovery.  Exports increased, the currency was stable, investors returned, unemployment diminished and the economy grew by 8 percent for 2 consecutive years.

2.  Separate Bank Accounts: Fire Up the Printing Presses at the Greek Central Bank

In a March 19 article on Seeking Alpha, George Kesarios observed that the Greek central bank has the power to issue more than just drachmas.  The ECB is not an ordinary central bank:

Rather, it is a confederation of central banks. Each European national central bank can theoretically do the same types of market operations as the ECB and then some. The forefathers of the euro have left many monetary windows open, which, if used correctly, can solve the European debt crisis in a very short period without taxpayer funds.

He cited article 14.4 of the Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks, which provides:

14.4. National central banks may perform functions other than those specified in this Statute unless the Governing Council finds, by a majority of two thirds of the votes cast, that these interfere with the objectives and tasks of the ESCB. Such functions shall be performed on the responsibility and liability of national central banks and shall not be regarded as being part of the functions of the ESCB.

That means the National Center Banks can do whatever the ECB can do—and even things it can’t.  The Greek central bank could step in and start issuing euros itself.  Again, there is precedent for this.  It was under Article 14.4 that the Irish Central Bank was able to print 80 billion euros as “emergency liquidity assistance,” and the Greek central bank has already printed 44 billion euros itself.

The Greek government could print euros, refinance its sovereign debt, and pay the interest to itself, effectively eliminating the interest burden.  Among other precedents, there is Canada, which borrowed from its own central bank from 1939 to 1974 to fund major infrastructure projects and social programs.  It pulled this off over a 25-year period without hyperinflating the currency, driving up prices, or increasing the public debt, which remained low and sustainable.

There is the concern that the euro might suffer by devaluation if other Eurozone members followed suit.  But Kesarios points to the Japanese experience, “where one can print and print and then print some more, without the value of the currency being marked down (due to positive trade flows).”   The euro might be equally resilient.

3.  Divorce: Just Walk Away

According to the May 29^th New York Times, the 130 billion euro bailout that was supposed to buy time for Greece is now mainly just servicing the interest on the debt.  The “troika”—the ECB, IMF, and European Commission—which holds three-fourths of the debt, is sequestering the bailout funds to be paid right back to themselves in interest payments. This is merely going to compound the debt to disastrous levels, without a single cent going to the Greeks or their comatose economy.

Interest rates on Greek ten-year bonds have gone to nearly 30 percent recently.  Under the Rule of 72, at 30% compounded annually, debt doubles in 2.4 years.  If the Greeks can’t even pay the interest on the debt today except by borrowing, how are they going to repay double the principal in a mere 2.4 years?  At 30%, the Greeks could be paying over 100% of their GDP in interest charges.  Legally, a contract that is impossible to perform is void.

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the radical left-wing Greek party Syriza, which is now in second place in the Greek parliament, calls it an “odious debt,” a legal term for a national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation.  An odious debt under international law need not be repaid.

4.  Spousal Support: The Public Bank Option

If divorce is too much to contemplate, Greece’s crippling interest burden can be relieved by taking advantage of the ECB’s very generous 1% rate for bankers.  Article 123 of the Maastricht Treaty forbids member governments from borrowing directly from the ECB, but it makes an exception in paragraph 2 for “publicly-owned credit institutions”—something Greece will have plenty of when it nationalizes its banks.  They can line up at the ECB’s window for its bargain-basement 1% banking rate and use the borrowed funds to buy up the national debt.

Researcher Simon Thorpe wrote to the ECB and asked whether they would object if a publicly-owned credit institution were to borrow from the ECB and use the funds “to supply the money to a government such as the Greek government in order for that government to pay off its debts to financial markets.”  The ECB replied:

According to the Treaty—as you have just quoted—such publicly owned credit institutions “shall be given the same treatment by national central banks and the ECB as private credit institutions.”  It is up to the banks to decide how to use the money they have borrowed from the central bank system.

5.  The Dowry: Impose a Financial Transaction Tax

Thorpe notes that the ECB has issued and lent nearly one trillion euros to the banks at 1% since December 2011—three times the total Greek debt of 355 billion euros.  If Greek public banks borrowed from the ECB at 1% and bought Greece’s sovereign debt, the debt could be paid off in 10 years just from the returns on a very modest Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) of 0.3%.

Imposing a tiny FTT on all financial trades would not only be a lucrative source of revenue but would prevent the attacks of speculators, both on the newly-issued drachma and on the sovereign debt of Greece and other Eurozone countries.  The FTT has already been implemented in many countries.  In 2011, there were 40 countries that had FTT in operation, raising $38 billion (€29bn).

Where There Is a Will, There Is a Way

The problem is finding the will, particularly among the Eurocrat leaders holding the reins of power, who may not be looking for an amicable workout. The marital problems of Greece and the Eurozone stem from an arbitrary set of rules that were entered into and can be changed by agreement.   But as Mike Whitney maintained in a June 3 article titled “Europe Moves Closer to Banktatorship”:

These people are not interested in fixing the EZ economy. They are engaged in a stealth campaign to . . . solidify the power of big finance over the individual states . . . .

To avoid that dire scenario, the popular majority needs to grab the reins of power.  It is fitting that Greece, the birthplace of European culture and democracy, is the focus of the struggle against bondage to an elite banker class.  Greece can dance again if she can set herself free.

About the Author: Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Brown developed an interest in the developing world and its problems while living abroad for eleven years in Kenya, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. She returned to practicing law when she was asked to join the legal team of a popular Tijuana healer with an innovative cancer therapy, who was targeted by the chemotherapy industry in the 1990s. That experience produced her book Forbidden Medicine, which traces the suppression of natural health treatments to the same corrupting influences that have captured the money system. Brown's eleven books include the bestselling Nature's Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, which has sold 285,000 copies.

SPANIARDS DEMONSTRATE IN CENTRAL MADRID AGAINST IMF AUSTERITY DEMANDS (55 sec VIDEO)

  theREALnews

May 19, 2011

Social networks used to call thousands to protest in Spain

EuroNews: Hoping to repeat the success of Egyptian people power, various groups in Spain have occupied Madrid's main square of "Puerta del Sol"

IN SPAIN THE POPULATION TOOK TO THE STREETS IN 50 CITIES LAST SUNDAY TO PROTEST IMF-IMPOSED AUSTERITY MEASURES. IN THE U.S. THE PEOPLES' OWN GOVERNMENT IS MOVING TO IMPOSE THE VERY SAME AUSTERITY MEASURES, YET THE U.S. POPULATION'S REACTION IS "FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE WISCONSINANS BUT I DIDN'T LIVE IN WISCONSIN, SO I DIDN'T HAVE TO PROTEST..."

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AlterNet / By Nomi Prins

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Sits in Prison While the IMF Keeps Ravaging Entire Economies Every Day

The IMF can do far more damage trashing global economic well-being than the man behind the sex abuse scandal.


May 18, 2011  |  The sex scandal surrounding the head of the International Monetary Fund has thrust the organization into the media's glare. Yet, the man behind the scandal is far less relevant to trashing global economic well-being than is the institution itself.

Regardless of who takes over for the IMF's disgraced leader, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), it’s unlikely he or she will bring about a philosophical shift in the IMF’s MO. For the IMF doesn’t care what caused devastating financial hardship to its current "focus" countries like Ireland, Greece and Portugal, nor what deal is struck in return for its aid. Saving the superpower notion of Europe and the euro as a pan-European currency by bailing out (read: lending money in return for "austerity measures" and holding fire sales of national companies) is a goal bigger than DSK.

This ideal is more important to the IMF than the financial security of ordinary citizens. Thus, the IMF will remain the validating and financing arm of the European Union (EU) and maintain the euro’s cohesiveness, no matter the cost to ordinary people. By doing so, it will continue to create debt to pay for bank screw-ups and extract repayment from innocent local populations.

Indeed, any concerns about the IMF altering its method of swapping loans for austerity measures just because its chief is facing felony charges, were alleviated the day he was denied bail. On Monday, Portugal, the third European country in the past year to get a bailout, was approved for a 78-billion-euro rescue package. The price? Public spending cuts. The benefactors? The private Portuguese banks that turned around to raise cash backed by bailout-guarantees a moment later.

In Ireland, where a swish of hot money entered the country during the years leading up to the 2008 crisis, the $113 billion IMF/EU bailout did nothing to bring down the 14.7 percent unemployment rate, even as $23 billion of pension money was requested as a condition of the loan.

It’s the same story in Greece. There, the IMF has backed the EU in exacting austerity measures running the gamut from pension and wage cuts to privatization demands. To comply with its bailout agreement, Greece must continue to sell off its functioning and solvent national companies, such as its electric companies, to the highest international bidder. You know, the bidder that will care about what happens to the local cost of power. (Think Enron and California power plants a decade ago.)

But that’s what the IMF has always done. It provides loans at cheaper rates than countries would receive any other way during times of economic distress, in return for forcing them to open their economies to hot money looking for a good deal. This is based on the premise that public infrastructure and social safety nets are the cause of financial woes, and not the over-leveraged banks that funneled in the hot money to begin with.

As Andy Robinson, a journalist stationed in Athens, who writes for the Spanish paper, La Vanguardia, put it, “The IMF wants the country to sell off its grandmother’s silver to make room for more luxury beachfront hotels.”

Unfortunately for Greece, what the IMF wants more of, is exactly what caused its debt crisis -- hot money that turned cold. External investment banks and funds extracted profits from the country and then headed for the hills.

Three years ago, in May 2008, Bear Stearns was handed to JPM Chase on a Fed-backed platter in Phase I of the great US bank bailout and subsidization strategy. Meanwhile, the Greek finance ministry proudly proclaimed US investment interest (i.e. hot money from banks, hedge funds or private equity funds) was strengthening.

At the time, Greek Economic and Finance minister, George Alogoskoufis further noted, “international financial organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund, also acknowledged the significant progress made by the Greek economy.” At the time, he said “an international credit crisis has not affected the Greek banking system” and “that economic conditions would return to normality in 2009.”

It didn’t work out that way. Five months later, in October, 2008, the global banking crisis arrived in Greece. The Bank of Greece had to pony up 28 billion Euros to bail out its banks (for starters). Blindly optimistic, a month later, the Greek embassy promised that the country's economic growth would exceed the EU average for 2009-2010.

Then, things collapsed. By May, 2010, the EU and IMF pushed a $141 billion euro rescue package on Greece, with strings attached, but on the people of Greece, not the banks whose behavior trashed its economy. The result was widespread street protests.

Now, a year later, with the looming possibility of a default on it debt, and talk of more bailouts in the works, the Greek people are again taking to the streets.

The fact that public austerity measures don’t secure an economy remains lost on the IMF and EU. Instead, they want countries to sell whatever they can at rock bottom "crisis" prices, and extract the rest of the money to repay loans from citizens. The IMF and EU have just asked Italy and Spain to do more of this antiquated policy.

In retaliation, Spain’s population took to the streets in 50 cities last Sunday, protesting national austerity measures. Their chants made it clear they knew that the banks and enabling politicians caused their pain. Spanish banks are sitting on 113 billion euros of bad loans, an overhang from an international housing speculation boom gone wrong. The population faces a 21.3 percent unemployment rate, 40 percent among its youth. Austerity measures don’t create jobs.

This IMF notion of opening a countries’ doors to hot money to demonstrate economic worthiness is completely misguided. The flow of fast money does not, by any measure, help the well-being of a country's population at large. The recent uprising in Egypt, a country given gold stars by the IMF for opening its boundaries to unrestricted, irresponsible hot money to erect luxury condos and beachfront homes, is another obvious sign of this tactic’s failure.

And, yet, again and again, the IMF instills surefire economic destabilization through unaltered money-interested policies, sucking the financial life out of unarmed citizens. The IMF will soon choose a new leader to take the reigns from acting head and former JPM Chase chief economist, John Lipsky. There is talk that for the first time since its inception, this leader may come from outside the core European fold. Chances of that are remote. But, unfortunately, no matter who leads the IMF next, its legacy will continue to impart pain on the people of the countries it vows to assist. And that means more uprisings to come.

Nomi Prins is a senior fellow at the public policy center Demos and author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street.

  theREALnews

May 17, 2011

Anti-Austerity Rallies in Spain

EuroNews: Police in Madrid made several arrests after a peaceful protest against government austerity measures ended in violent clashes.