Saturday, July 04, 2015

How the Greeks Got Screwed

There's been a fair amount of propaganda on the 'net about the "laziness" of the Greeks, and their "fat/overpaid/over-pensioned" public servants.

I'll believe the second part--public "servants" are pretty much the same worldwide. (Yes, there are exceptions.)

But that isn't the whole story.

The IMF Debt Sustainability Analysis report on Greece that came out this week has caused a big stir. We now know that the Fund’s analysts confirm what Syriza has been saying ever since they came to power 5 months ago: Greece needs debt relief, lots of it, and fast....

We also know that Europe tried to silence the report. But what’s most interesting is that this has been going on for months, as per Reuters. Ergo, the IMF has known about the -preliminary- analysis for months, and kept silent, while at the same time ‘negotiating’ with Greece on austerity and bailouts.

And if you dig a bit deeper still, there’s no avoiding the fact that the IMF hasn’t merely known this for months, it’s known it for years. The Greek Parliamentary Debt Committee reported three weeks ago that it has in its possession an IMF document from 2010(!) that confirms the Fund knew even at that point in time.

So.  IMF gets to take a loss (underwritten by US taxpayers) b/c Merkel wanted to look good.

No comments: