German state broadcaster ARD aired a documentary that shocked many conservatives, neoliberals and hardliners accord the German country. The documentary with the title “The trail of the Troika – Power without Control” , a documentary produced by RBB from network ARTE showed to Germans a different approach to the Greek debt problem.
The story went more or less like this:
The euro member states did not want Greece to go bankrupt in 2010 in order to protect German and French banks, which were exposed to almost €40 billion Greek debt and were afraid to lose the money.
Therefore, the international community was pumping taxpayers’ money into the Greek financial system. Billions of money that did not reach the common people. In the same course, the documentary said that the Greek people have been incapacitated up to the current day by the non-democratically legitimate bureaucrats of the Troika, have been systematically ruined, cut off from health care – in a word, humiliated.
The documentary shows interviews with Greeks and Portuguese jobless, bankrupt tradesmen, unionists etc. And an interview with Greek finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who described the bailout over bailout as a crime against humanity:
“Clever people in Brussels, in Frankfurt and in Berlin knew back in May 2010 that Greece would never pay back its debts. But they acted as if Greece wasn’t bankrupt, as if it just didn’t have enough liquid funds.”
“In this position, to give the most bankrupt of any state the biggest credit in history, like third class corrupt bankers, was a crime against humanity.”
Video: ARD/ART Documentary in German
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
Some conservative German media, criticized the documentary as a “training on SYRIZA” [ideology].
But what is interesting is that some of the interviews seems to have been conducted some time in summer 2014 and before elections of January 25th, that brought SYRIZA in power.
OK, complaining about the Troika and the austerity makes you “SYRIZA”…
But Greek with or without SYRIZA is not alone with its debt. On the possibility that if the Nationalists of Marie Le Pen may win the March elections in France, German media started already to beat the drums against France.
German magazine FOCUS published an article with Title “High Debt, No Growth: Forget Greece – France is the problem zone of the Euro” and described the trillion-debt country as “Greece with Eiffel Tower.”
Analysts expect Italy to be next on the eurozone countries list with trillion debts that neither the eurozone nor Germany can solve. Ops! The European Central Bank prints now money – 60 billion euro per month – to buy Bonds from the debt-ridden countries, mainly Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
PS and we will all live happily ever after in the much-beloved Eurozone…
Sources on the ARD/ARTE documentary Die Welt, Forbes
1000% correct.
True. There was also another reason: Credit Default Swaps (CDS), which have been sold by many companies to hedge against sovereign defaults at discount price (extremely cheap ones.) These are typically sold for five years, and so many was still in place during 2010 that it would have easily knocked down many insurance companies. If you wonder why AIG was about to fall in the United States, you didn’t look any further.
But bailing out German banks was uttermost stupidness of eurozone leaders. Finland had €26-27 million exposure of Greek debt that would have gone sour and on the first turn, Finnish taxpayers were loaded on €1,000 million of these risks.
This policy they have been doing (debt transfer union) has only postponed the inevitable, it has burdened Greek government into more debt, the problem is spreading and turning countries against each others.
I also critisided the invalid notion that Greece is facing only liquidity problems, while it was completely clear case of insolvency. I am only relieved that mr. Varoufakis tells the same story. He is still the only honest finance minister in whole euro area.
thanks for the info. we hardly hear anything on Finland.
Well, I can only read what’s on the news lately, but it seems that in Finland politicians have noticed things are looking bleak and dire.
They keep saying they are spending too much, although the real reason is that the income has fallen on private sector. When companies fail it turns down also the tax revenues.
Instead of driving policies that returns the private sector they are more focused on austerity. Until now they have compensated the lack of tax revenues with issuing debt. But now both the criteria of Stability And Growth Pact (more than 3% structural deficit and more than 60% of public debt to GDP) are triggering.
Finland also fell into deflation recently.
There are general elections on April. I think I am voting at Thessaloniki’s embassy. 🙂
austerity is the German dogma
It’s a very useful dogma. Self-enriching.
Oh, and might add that postponing bankruptcy is illegal and any such company who would try this would be jailed. So, there would be not one eurozone leaders, the ECB officials walking free if justice would be served.
In my opinion, this is much worse than the Soviet Union. It collapsed because the truth has a habit to win in the end.
Interesting OpEd by an economics professor on what amounts to German propaganda as applied to accounting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/opinion/greeces-accounting-problem.html?emc=eta1
very interesting article.
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/revealed-more-myths-about-the-eurozone-why-theyre-perpetuated/
This is old news, everyone knows that the bailout was to save the mainly German & French banks from their massive exposure to Greek debt. It always was a bank bailout rather than a Greek bailout. The debt hasn’t gone away but has been passed on to the European tax payer. Now that this has been achieved Greece has lost any bargaining power it might have had with the EU.
I disagree with Bez; the German people did not know what this documentary shows. Slowly with documentaries & the decline of the Euroland economies, the actual decisions are being revealed–including the extent of euroland tax evasion organized by many of the top men in Brussels. So the fiscal crisis of Italy will follow soon. Sooner would be better because a united mediterranean will bring the changes needed.