It is not that they could not. They did not want to find a solution and a “mutually beneficial agreement” as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had hoped. What they wanted is to create a financial monster out of Greece, “to put a Eurozone member country into a social, economic and political disaster.”
“The real objectives of the European leaders is to hide their lies,” writes Romaric Godin, Deputy Editor in Chief of Economics at French daily La Tribune.
Below is a partial translation his article “Greece: the true nature of 3. bailout.”
The real objective of the creditors: to hide their lies
It was not “Greece” that was saved on Monday July 13, it was the silence of the European leaders, who in order not to lose face, in order not to acknowledge their mistakes to their constituents, are ready to put a Eurozone country into a position of social, economic and political disaster. The error of Alexis Tsipras has been to believe that he could get a “mutually beneficial agreement”, as he insisted for five months. The objective of the creditors was not to find such an agreement; it was to conceal their decision to build up a financial monster, starting in 2010, and hide behind a moral discourse to avoid taking responsibility for its logical consequences: the renunciation of part of the Greek debt. Populism and lack of realism: the two criticisms that have been directed so much at Alexis Tsipras should actually be applied to the creditors.
Making future generations pay
The leaders of the Eurozone are like those “big liars” who create parallel lives and must constantly add new lies to the old ones in order to maintain the consistency of a life that, over time, becomes increasingly untenable. These cases always end badly, as the house of cards finally collapses. In the Greek case, one way or the other it will inevitably end with the cancellation of the debts. If the creditors refuse it, the Greeks will unilaterally default. The irresponsibility of the leaders of the Eurozone will be brought to light, as their constant “plans” will have only increased the bill. In the meantime, it is as if these leaders are pursuing only one goal: to transfer the responsibility for this inevitable moment to their successors, and the burden of its consequences to future generations. Here is where the moral lessons of these careless leaders will take us.
A lost opportunity
Obviously, during this first half of 2015, the Eurozone has made a mess of a unique opportunity.
From the beginning, Yanis Varoufakis, the (now former) Greek finance minister, declared that he “did not want money from the creditors”. His goal was to open a real debate on the debt so that Greece could pay back what it could. We can understand better now the hatred that immediately encircled him: he was the one who wanted to bring to light the immense repressed that exists on the debt, that which must be hidden at any cost. The opportunity to put an end to this logic was lost. The Greeks and all Europeans will pay for it, in the end, very dearly.
Article excerpt translated from the French by @Ian Cosh
Full article in French here: “Grèce: la vraie nature du troisième mémorandum” La Tribune, 15/07/2015.
Tsipras: “Up until today I’ve seen reactions, I’ve read heroic statements but I haven’t heard any alternative proposal,”
He will be probably crucified soon by Greeks, because they do not like realistic solutions but love heroic speech.
And this like all your other nonsense you were told by the zero Greeks you know. I guess it is some kind of very special fun to be part in the killings of totally unknown people.
Well I know only few Greeks, that is true, but how can you vote people like Varoufakis? This guy just speaks bullshits you want to hear, he destroyed credibility of Greece, he managed to take your country into default, he managed to gamble and loose. This is tragedy, not the contraction of GDP.
Tsipras has at least the courage to fight even if things are wrong. I respect this, but I am afraid that Greeks are not ready for reforms and thus Tsipras will be crucified.
That all the reforms Greece made the last 5 months must get cancelled is condition for “negotiations” the extortion-ring EU blackmailed for and calls “compromise”; except from the law fighting the humanitarian crisis.
What you call “reforms” are cuts, it’s the Orwellian language Stasi-Merkel got taught by Stalinist Putin when they shared bed.
1. If you have the HIGHEST Pensions to GDP ratio in Eurozone (probably in Europe) you do not need to be genius to understand that cut is necessary here.
2. This is no more about compromise after Varoufakis lost his game with your country.
Just like unemployed allowance for pensions workers had to pay insurance and if they don’t get the money it’s fraud, why should workers keep on paying this insurances?
???
The whole point of creating the eurozone was to eventually force a financial union into a political union. All member states using the euro have ceded sovereignty to the European Union. That was the basis of the Delors plan back in the day and it is being bamboozled through via Germany’s Finance Minister and France’s Hollande – their loyalties lie with the hidden hand and secret societies.
Greece is just a poster-boy for what will (is) happening to Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland etc. Once they have secured political union they will then demand a European ‘army’ in which the EU then becomes the european branch of the so-called new world order. It aint’ gonna happen but thats what they have been planning for many, many years.
I am not a prophet, but a political union is not what we will have in the next twenty or fifty years. Where is the European Nation with its own national will and government? It would be more realistic to see the EU of the future as a federation of US provinces in Europe. A new world order? Its a phantom. US entered all the wars in Europe with the aim to control the economically strongest country of the continent- Germany – and thus become number one in Europe and in the world. The US with all its military and economical power is and will be the master of Europe, in close cooperation with its allies. The US will never tolerate a rival power on the European continent, you can be sure.
First, let me say that I am not a conspiracy theorist believing in “hidden hand”, “secret societies” and all. Events have much more rational explanation — love of (or just need for) money, glory, power, companionship, etc. People want to bring those to themselves, their families, friends, cities, nations and alliances. Everyone has his/her motives, but they are not that much different. Having said that, I am not naive to dismiss the fact that people will use the tools at their disposal to achieve their goals. People in positions of power have “power tools”.
The question of the future of Europe is important. A few major empires on the “old continent” (with their near and far colonies) used to be on top of the world, with nobody else to fear but each other until the nineteenth century. (I am including the Russian and the Ottoman empires here). The empires then broke up into a multitude of small European states that continued to fight each other on occasions.
Most importantly, the world outside of Europe changed significantly with the raise of the USA after WWII, then Japan Inc, now China, and maybe in the future India or others. The best (Western) Europe could achieve in the meanwhile was sustain a decent standard of living for its citizens and stop the wars on the continent until former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union broke up and militant nationalism on the continent was, unfortunately, reborn. The most formidable European states (UK, France, Germany, even Italy and Spain) still have relatively large GDPs and international positions based on past glory (e.g., 2 permanent seats at the UN Security Council, “special relationships” with their former colonies). However, they are only second-tier (and falling) economic, political, military, technological and scientific powers with few natural resources and experiencing a demographic slump. The citizens of the smaller EU states are even more “independent” (as in “even less depends on them in the globalized modern world”). In the face of the competition it does make sense to try to create a political union based on commonality of culture, values, and European identity, with vibrant and competitive economy, and yes, army as well. I see nothing wrong with that idea from pan-European point of view. It worked for some countries, and unfortunately not as well for others. However, just like with Greece today, the good old way of life is no longer an option. Change is difficult, but not changing means falling further behind.
I agree fully with your excellent analysis. We cannot go back to the old nationalism and chauvinism. European economical integration is a reality now, and the political integration will follow. But as you rightly say there are still the big five of the past. Who will be the dominant power of the continent? Pax Germanica or a balance of power, and who will be the balancer? Certainly not the UK as in the old good days. The US? Do you know a better salution?
ragingbullshit.com/2015/06/30/eurozone-profiteers-how-german-and-french-banks-helped-bankrupt-greece/
There are various worthwhile articles at the home page
oh, we had also IMF’s Batista saying this.
If you follow the link in the article you get to here
which somewhat answers my question about how the money from the first two packages was used.
no links in comments section, pls
is it enough to leave out the http://www.? / how can i post an adress thats doesn not appear as a link?
arg sry but you see my problem?
I said: no links –
Much more of interest would be how much Greece paid back already, that this is “unknown” shows that all economists, journalists and politicians belong into madhouse.
Can you extract the data from the article and post it here? Also, can you provide a reference (name of the article and site) without providing a URL (web location)? Thank you
go to the raginbullshit site anon postet. last link in the article goes to attac austria where they broke it down by sector. this is the summary:
€58,2 billion (28,13%) were used to recapitalise Greek banks – instead of restructuring the too big and moribund sector in a sustainable way and letting the banks’ owners pay for their losses.
€101,331 billion (48,98%) went to creditors of the Greek state. €55,44 billion of these were used to repay maturing government bonds – instead of letting the creditors bear the risk for which they had received interest payments before. Another €34,6 billion served as incentive to make creditors agree to the so-called “haircut” in March 2012. €11,3 billion were used in a debt buyback in December 2012, when the Greek state bought back almost worthless bonds from its creditors.
€43,7 billion (22,46%) went into the national budget or couldn’t be definitively attributed.
€0,9 billion (0,43%) were used as Greek contribution to the new bail-out fund ESM.
The “Europeans” won’t pay, they’ll keep on earning as 75% of all the money Greece will have paid back will be interest not debts. It’s the same logic problem money greedy stupids got regarding that 90% of the “70 bln debts of Greek taxpayers” are in reality interest and fines.
So far Greece paid to the IMF 40 bln, the ECB made 6 bln profit, the ECB holds 27 bln in Greek bonds which they bought for 30% to rescue hedge-funds and the exact number of billions Greece paid so far to the ECB is unclear.
You have the numbers wrong, again.
you are right. Paying interests is and was more important for the big banks than paying back the loans which were regularly rolled over in the past. The catastrophy began when the interest paiments got out of control and could not be financed without new debts. Whose fault? Irresponsible governments and greedy bankers that have only one belief: “money must produce money and nothing else.”
Real Marxists analyse it as an outcome of the December-Revolt 2008 that sped up the mistrust of the markets so much that Karamanlis had to get very, very expensive money in spring of 2009 and that finally brought his government down but he was still able to hide these real numbers months after Papandreou took over; as far as I know this money still has to be paid back also.
There is a very straightforward way for Greece to minimize the amount of interest it will pay on the loans: pay off the loans sooner. Actually, the loans have such generously low interest rate, that Greece can make money by not paying off those loans, and instead lending money back to some of the euro zone partners (like Italy or Portugal) at higher market rates. Of course, if Greece manages to collect the money.
This shows exactly that you are just a copy-pasting app of stupidity, as the official mantra of propaganda farts Greece is starting to pay back sometime far in the future but what the hell is she paying back since 5 years then?
Interest rate does matter only for by bankers infected sick minds as the absolute numbers say Greece pays back until 2030 200 billion of which 150 billion is interest and the easiest solution is to scrap the fucking interest.
GG, you keep repeating the same untruths.
My information is that Greece pays 3.6% interest on IMF loans. It pays 2.5% interest on loans to ESM. Ireland pays 3.5%.
I’ve posted here a few times the exact numbers of the Public Debt Agency, so it’s not untrue, it’s still 50bln debts plus 150bln interest and it doesn’t matter if your interest rate is “low” when you pay it 50 instead of 30 years.
That’s the naive thinking of idiots that believe their job is secure and the thinking of the bank bastards that brainwashed them into loans and think interest was invented for profit and not for risk. Not to mention that by taking interest the risk is taken over by the taxpayers of the givers and doesn’t is Greek anymore.
Show the numbers from Public Debt Agency that support your theory. You either don’t understand the numbers or are deliberately misleading. Also, chances are that interest rate will be lowered as the result of new negotiations. But let’s assume it stays at 3.6%.
At 3.6%, total interest on 50B loan over 15 years would be 14.8B (if paid monthly), 15B if paid annually. Over 30 years total interest would be 31.8B (if paid monthly), 32.6B if paid annually. Over 50 years total interest would be 58B (if paid monthly), 60B if paid annually.
You say that Greece is paying 150B in interest on 50B loan. How did you come up with this 150B number? I don’t see where Public Debt Agency is saying that.
Maybe Xenos can chine in on this, since he is an economist (I think)?
I’ve translated and posted it here on KTG but I can’t find it back, anyway I found a part of it on GreekReporter published on Mar 9 2015:
“According to figures tabled by Greece’s Public Debt Management Agency in Parliament during 2014, between 2021 and 2030, the Greek state’s debt will reach 201.05 billion euros, out of a total of 291 billion euros in overall obligations between 2015 and 2030. The interest payments alone will amount to 114.45 billion euros.”
OK the rest is from sofokleus: 2015 – 2020: 37,93 billion interest
It makes a huge differnce whether the same amount of interest is over 15 or 30 or 50 years. Because it might be the same nominally but the actual value is different due to inflation. If you pay 2% interest in an environment with 2% inflation it is de facto interest free.
Until 2030 is not 50 years and your politician propaganda is also bullshit as in 50 years it might be 500 billion instead of 150 billion interest.
” …t doesn’t matter if your interest rate is “low” when you pay it 50 instead of 30 years….”
and 2030 is in 15 years, and this is not opinion its math, i teach the stuff if you want i can give you skype lessons. In the meanwhile it should be obvious that inflation and interest cancel each other out value wise though not in nominal amount(which is irrelevant). if interest and inflation are different lets say 3.5% interest and 2% inflation you get a factor of (1.035/1.02)^50=2,07 meaning the value of what you have to pay is about double the value of what you borrow. ofc this is simpified because reality is more complicated but its not hard to get a reasonable estimate. so no need for it might be … and i read somewhere…
Although terms of loans are not very clear from the above explanation (e.g. no rates), still you can see that this is quite different from your claim that Greece pays 150B interest on a 50B loan, interest being three times the original loans. Would you agree?
No, it’s still 200 billion until 2030 and of that 150 billion is interest, so 75% is interest, EU-Mafia profit made by brutal exploitation of Greece that is sold as help while at the same time told that nothing gets paid back.
“what the hell is she paying back since 5 years then?”
How about nothing, if anyone is paying it is european taxpayers paying banks and pension funds and though this is a smaller part the greek government budget. I could be wrong here but I think this is the first year with a primary surplus and that only works if you exclude pensions funds(which should be included) and the money needed to recapitalise banks so people can get to their deposits(which I dont think should be included because this money will come back sooner or later).
40 billion to IMF is nothing
40bn is a lot but the money isnt coming out of the government budget, its just loans replacing loans.
Bullshit! 17.5 billion Greece paid the EU/IMF-Mafia-Scum “back” only in 2015 and this without any loan-tranche coming since last summer. You’re just lying or are a true believer in the lies of the Goebbels-media. Lies like ELA would be “financing” Greece and lying by ignoring that for this the ECB stole 130 billion credits as “collateral” from the Greek banks and blackmailing Greece by refusing its duty as a central-bank plus blocking this 130 billion via “bank-control”.
The IMF had to publish the 40 billion due to referendum and that Greece paid the 17.5 billion was her big mistake beside giving back the not needed 10.9 billion and this 10.9 are part of another lie spread by you and your idiots of attac that for years ignored the movements in Greece and since some years try to exploit it, starting off with renaming “katalipsi” into “occupy” and make a political carnival out of it where even old punkrockers overseas can cash in with writing songs about.
you will need to name your sources even though without link. your comments are getting more & more confusing
I tried to infer the interest Greece is paying from an article in the Telegraph called “Three myths about Greece’s enormous debt mountain”. You can find it by google-ing “interest rate on greek bailout” (it comes in second for me — after the Wikipedia article. In turn, the Telegraph references a think-tank as a source.
One can get the yield of 30-year Portugal or Italian bonds from a variety of sources online. In January, for example, Portugal sold 30-year bonds at more than 4% yield. The current yield of 10-year Portugal bond is higher than 2.5% (it was more than 3% 2-3 weeks ago)
This article is painfully true. “These cases always end badly, as the house of cards finally collapses.” Only question is: _when_ will the house of cards finally collapse?