Nice profit. With an interest rate of 3.6% the International Monetary Fund has made a 2.5 billion euro profit from the loans to Greece since 2010. Of curse, nobody lends money without profit, right? How much more when the majority of the IMF bailout goes to save banks and is paid back by people’s taxes.
Ahead of the payment of €462 million by Greece to the IMF on Thursday 9 April, figures released by non-profit organization Jubilee Debt Campaign show that the IMF has made €2.5 billion of profit out of its loans to Greece since 2010. If Greece does repay the IMF in full this will rise to €4.3 billion by 2024.
The IMF has been charging an effective interest rate of 3.6% on its loans to Greece. This is far more than the interest rate the institution needs to meet all its costs, currently around 0.9%. If this was the actual interest rate Greece had been paying the IMF since 2010, it would have spent €2.5 billion less on payments.
Out of its lending to all countries in debt crisis between 2010 and 2014 the IMF has made a total profit of €8.4 billion, over a quarter of which is effectively from Greece. All of this money has been added to the Fund’s reserves, which now total €19 billion. These reserves would be used to meet the costs from a country defaulting on repayments. Greece’s total debt to the IMF is currently €24 billion.
Tim Jones, economist at the Jubilee Debt Campaign, said:
“The IMF’s loans to Greece have not only bailed out banks which lent recklessly in the first place, they have actively taken even more money out of the country. This usurious interest adds to the unjust debt forced on the people of Greece.”
NGO Jubilee Debt Campaign is part of a global movement demanding freedom from the slavery of unjust debts and a new financial system that puts people first.
In the same talking, Germany has made a profit of 380 million euro from Greek loans and Austria 100 million euro, as I read recently. Not to mention the rest of the whining EU partners…
3.6% is ridiculously low for the risk when the market demands up to 20%.
How much did you save then thanks to the IMF when you were not able to balance your budget and needed fresh money?
How much do you owe the Troika when they are stretching payment targets over 40 years and minimizing interest to ridiculous levels (lower than GermanyÄs?) – How much haircut is this in present value? € 100 billion or more?
How much do you owe the European economy for triggering the Euro-crisis? – Go figure.
I personally do not owe anything to anyone.
You are asking this question of the wrong person…
The Euro crisis was writtin in to the flawed setting up of the Euro, as adnitted by amongst other Jacques Delors, Guy Verhofstadt, Philip Maystadt and many others.
What triggered the crisis is not, as you state, Greece, but the (mainly German) banks who flodded the European market with “cheap” money, culminating in some serious banking-events like Hypo, Defta, Dexia, Fortis, Anglo Irish, Santander, Rabo, BNP, Banque Generale, and many others. Instead of allowing the vultures to choke on their greed, the EU political fraternity decided to pass the cost to the European tax payer, who is now paying for the casino bankers. This triggered the crisis in the weakest links, commonly referred to as the PIGGS. If anything, the PIGGS are the victims. They are most definitely not the culprits…
No mater what government – the Greek state is spending since decades way more than ii generated in tax revenue and it always covered the deficit with debt. Always.
In your eyes the culprit is neither the high spending nor the too low tax revenues – no. It’s the cheap money from German banks that brute-forced you into a shopping frenzy. and a spending spree.
Your governments never asked for money. Never. It does not even do it today.
The Troika wants to spill € 7,2 Billion Euros over Greece, but you refuse to accept it. Just like you always did. Because you don’t need the money, as your economy will grow with ultra-productive pensioners and civil servants.
Funny how the PIGS suffered from the cheap money that Germany flooded Europe with.
My guess: this money was consumed instead of invested – just as European funds that were meant to finance infrastructure – by the way: how is Greece progressing with its cadastre?
Yes it started with the socialist Goverment( he ruled the Country 20 years) from Papandreou the old and runned it financial down.
Says the guy coming from a country which had -10,8% in 2009,-9,6% in 2010, -7,6% in 2011, -8,3% 2012, -5,8% in 2013 and -5,4% in 2014. How is it that “no mater what government – the British state is spending since decades way more than it generated in tax revenue and it always covered the deficit with debt. Always” ?!
And with this you show your total ignorance of what brought on the crisis… As in every economic union, the periphery is always the first to suffer when things go wrong. Europe is no exception. The burden was put on the periphary in order to save the centre from going down as well. Meanwhile, if you want to know how the mechanics of how this serves the centre in real numbers, here you go. The first figure is the current debt to GDP, the second is the previous debt to GDP % Who is paying, who is gaining?
Austria 74.50 74.40
Belgium 101.50 101.10
Denmark 44.50 45.40
Finland 59.30 55.80
France 92.20 89.20
Greece 174.90 156.90
Ireland 123.30 121.70
Italy 132.10 128.50
Netherlands 73.50 71.30
Poland 57.00 55.60
Portugal 130.20 129.70
Spain 97.70 92.10
Sweden 40.60 38.30
United Kingdom 90.60 89.10
And low and behold, who is “bucking” the trend
Germany 76.90 79.00
Why? Because it is abusing its position of power (Created by the cheap money trick) within the EU to suck the other member states dry. The mechanics of this? In part “bailout” programs which save their banks, in part the dismantling of social and labour laws in the different countries through Troika dictat, in part pure and simple economic colonialism, etc. But…
As mentioned above, this is done by design. When the Euro was introduced, both France and Germany knew this would back fire. They knew it could not work. They also knew it could be a powerful weapon to force on Europe what would otherwise be impossible, an United States of Europe. And they put the cart before the horse and introduced the Euro without any of the other very necessary unified systems in place. In fact, in 2001, Romano Prodi, then President of the EC admitted as much when he stated
(Source: Financial Times). Which “new” instruments is he talking about? Fiscal Union, Military Union, Legal Union, etc. Iow,the instruments that were “politically impossible to propose now”, meaning a United States of Europe.
The German political elite (not the German people!) is, based on this, waging a vicious economic and social war on the rest of Europe, abily assisted by the world of finance who see massive profits. What we are looking at is a real-life, much bigger and far more devastation enactment of “The Third Man” scenario. The objective is to dismantle every sovereign state in Europe and then build up a United States of Europe, with of course Germany, the powerful nation being the driving (and deciding!) force. For the USE to work, it needs a tranfer economy, something the German political elite vehemently opposes. Their economic model is the neo-liberal model, which is also it’s archilles heel. This model is, to put it bluntly, based on nothing else but pilferage of neigbouring economies to artificially grow the home economy. Hence the creation of economic wastelands at the periphery of Europe. Currently Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece. Shortly Italy as well. And then there are of course the never mentioned Baltic States (far worse off then the PIIGS), and the likes of Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria etc. These are also never mentioned, but in reality already totally “conquered”, with the necessary political p(m)uppets in place.
This, by the way, is also the driving force behind the shambles the EU/US have created in the Ukraine. Another vast economy ready to be plundered, to thus extend the lifetime of the bloodsucking EU/US neo-liberal system with many more years…
This money went to banks, who were supposed to manage it “prudently”. What did they do? Creit cards, pre-approved loans,sub-prime lending, 110% mortgages, buy-to-let mortages without checks, etc. Although produced way before all this blew up, check this out. The man was a visionary and saw this coming. In his own, inimitable way,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5y_gE1Rb1Y
No need for a conspiracy theory. It is way simpler:
Before the Euro, the economies at the periphery constantly devalued their currencies in order to stay competitive and thus avoided structural reforms. – The inflation made everyone poorer and especially the not-so-well-off. The result: too few savings, too few investments, too much consumption and the competitiveness was lost.
With a relatively “hard” currency, competitiveness would be established by a decrease of prices (salaries, pensions, …) to a level that is in balance with the productivity of the nation’s economy. If don’t let this happen (strong unions in Europe’s south), your exports will shrink and your imports will skyrocket. – This deficit needs to be balanced by loans then. Which works for 5 or even 10 years. But not for 20+.
In other words: lifestyle like Germans and productivity like South/East Europe does not work for long.
The baltics have understood this soon. Greece didn’t and still doesn’t.
It is not a conspiracy theory, it is fact, confirmed by those who initiated the whole thing, including the “Father of the Euro”, Mundell himself
Which is exactly what the Euro did and is intended to do …
The supply of “cheap money” was put in place to accellerate this process.
But the problem is, that for such a vulture economy, there has to be prey. and once the USE is established, this prey is no longer.
The euro is doing exactly what its progenitor – and the wealthy 1%-ers who adopted it – predicted and planned for it to do.
Dude I thought I already asked you to hung yourself. Man…you are a little bitch are n’t you?
Chris you are an arrogant person with a huge problem with Greece or any other national that is not English. You talk shit and have not even got an understanding of the money market.
“Chris” is not English. The way he writes “Piräus” in another post is a dead give away. German through and through, probably another “Bild” troll…
For clarification purpose….my comment above is directed to that scumbag called chris
Thank you