Greece - SYRIZA, in the margin of the Eurozone

[salute]

Next is portugal ... now I really don't like that place

Lol what you have against these countries ?
And if we are next.. ?

yeah really, @Rowdy why ???

is this the reason you keep changing the flags.

 

[Rowdy]

Nah.

Try in Diu, Daman. Even when they speak their own language they use few Portuguese words in it.

Low self esteem wh*res ... just like most Indian leftists....
They should probably made to relive the inquisitions.

 

[amoy]

you have mismanaged your economy and expect the Germans to write off debt due to some moral obligation. Was it to Greece no---- it was to the US.

debtors certainly have a bad taste in mouth to Greece, but it's no use crying over the spilled milk. already too late ~ in absence of sound risk control previously! Germans may be bleeding but Greeks have already lost a leg.

probably now it's high time after so much brinkmanship（referendum alike）for both ends - IMF/ECB and Greeks to seek a compromise, such as writing off part of debts and defering payment due by possibly xx years etc. etc.. on condition that Greece adopts austerity and reforms.

and privatisation - Greece must have some good state owned assets for foreign scavengers, to cash for their coffer for bailout = opportunities for the rest of the world.

otherwise there may be unfathomable risks ahead for both Shylock and Antonio in the event of Grexit, for that pound of flesh of Antonio they have set the security at.


~Tapa talks: Orange is the new black.~

 

[sob]

@amoy very well written post. I can only hope that the parties involved will read your post.

 

[jouni]

Your average salary in Greece is one third of North European salaries...maybe Syriza should ask us to lower our salaries by 30% and give them to you out of solidarity?

 

[jouni]

Luckily we demanded those securities back in 2011 better safe than sorry, like we say....

http://yle.fi/uutiset/finland_and_greece_agree_on_loan_guarantees/5408271

 

[Zebra]

Low self esteem wh*res ... just like most Indian leftists....
They should probably made to relive the inquisitions.

Yeah it's true we have our own brand of dsb here in India , all invariably leftist ****

Typical Indian style useless crap. Don't address about problems of their people and cry for everything else.

Anyway, those who lived in Portuguese rule, many of them still believe, Portuguese rule was much better.

I was told that it was more organised, more people friendly and even most common men were able to sustain better way whatever they earn.

BTW, why you don't like Portugal, yet you didn't answered it.

 

[Rowdy]

Anyway, those who lived in Portuguese rule, many of them still believe, Portuguese rule was much better.

You will find morons that will say British rule was better as trains were on time.... they will forget that railways was a tool of oppression and used to extract resources out of areas and facilitate economic exploitation.
Doesn't make them right.

BTW, why you don't like Portugal, yet you didn't answered it.

How many times have you been to Goa?

 

[AnantS]

I was told that it was more organised, more people friendly and even most common men were able to sustain better way whatever they earn.

BTW, why you don't like Portugal, yet you didn't answered it.

OT But these kind of People are displaying what I call Paki Syndrome. Its no different from Paki thinking who also think Arabs, Persian and Turks r@ping their ancestors were the greatest thing that could happen to their gene pool.

Please read about Goa Inquisition. After reading that anybody who thinks that the portugal rule was good for local goan population needs to get his head checked.

 

[Rowdy]

Please read about Goa Inquisition. After reading that anybody who thinks that the portugal rule was good for local goan population needs to get his head checked.

Hahaha Wait i'll make a thread on it.

 

[AnantS]

Sure ! Would be interesting addition to DFI. My earlier post has lot of grammatical errors, and I cant edit them, but hope intended message goes through.

 

[Rowdy]

Sure ! Would be interesting addition to DFI. My earlier post has lot of grammatical errors, and I cant edit them, but hope intended message goes through.

GIve me a few days ... i'll tag these leftist loonies.... and I will use western sources as much as possible.

 

[pmaitra]

The Biggest Winner From The Greek Tragedy


Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/07/2015 10:12 -0400

Long after Greece has left the Eurozone and Germany is using the Deutsche Mark as its currency, the people of the two nations, antagonized to a level unseen since World War II, will be accusing each other of benefiting more from the brief but tumultuous period of the common currency.

In reality, nobody had put a gun to Greece's head and told it to lever up, enriching local oligarchs and corrupt politicians, taking advantage of credit that was artificially cheap only due to the common currency and an implicit monetary, if not fiscal, union.

Germany, whose exports account for nearly 50% of GDP, on the other hand experienced an unprecedented exporting golden age, made possible only due to an artificial currency, the Euro, that was by definition created to be weaker than the Deutsche Mark and benefitted from any bout of weakness in Europe's periphery, such as the past 5 years.

The truth is, when things were good nobody second-guessed any decisions for a second, and since the rising economic tide lifted all boats, nobody cared.

And then the tide rolled out, displaced by trillions in bad loans and gargantuan mountains of sovereign and financial debt, which ultimately would lead to the first, then second, then third and then an all-out cascade of sovereign defaults.

Sadly, the losers - regardless of the propaganda and jingoist rhetoric - are the ordinary, common, taxpaying people of Germany and Greece (and every other European nation), who enjoyed a few brief years of artificial prosperity, which in retrospect was entirely due to debt, masked well by the "currency swaps" and other financial engineering concocted by banks such as Goldman Sachs, in clear violation of the Maastricht treaty which is now a long-forgotten memory of the founding ideals behind the Eurozone.

For every loser there is a winner, and in the case of Greece and its tragedy, just as millions are about to lose everything, a few not only made billions but quietly, under the guise of "sovereign bailouts" transferred their entire risk onto the taxpaying public.

They are shown in the chart below.





It is that transfer of private-to-public risk, which is also the main reason why the public debt of so many European countries, not only Greece, whose debt is record high despite a default to its private creditors in 2012 and where only 10% of bailout proceeds ever made it to the actual economy...





... but the entire periphery has soared in the last few years.





Inevitably, there will be many angry people, because what is about to come to Europe will be hardship unlike anything seen in generations. Our suggestion: before neighbor takes it out on neighbor, study the following map closely because just like Libor was an impossible conspiracy theory until it was a proven fact, what is happening in Europe was propagated and effectuated by one bank more than any other.

This one:




Or, one can ignore this as merely yet another conspiracy theory. And that's fine.

But there is one critical, factual loose end that has to be investigated.

Back in June 2012, the ECB, whose head was the recently crowned Mario Draghi who had less than a decade ago worked at none other than Goldman Sachs, was sued by Bloomberg's legendary Mark Pittman under Freedom of Information rules demanding access to two internal papers drafted for the central bank’s six-member Executive Board. They show how Greece used swaps to hide its borrowings, according to a March 3, 2010, note attached to the papers and obtained by Bloomberg News. The first document is entitled “The impact on government deficit and debt from off-market swaps: the Greek case.” The second reviews Titlos Plc, a securitization that allowed National Bank of Greece SA, the country’s biggest lender, to exchange swaps on Greek government debt for funding from the ECB, the Executive Board said in the cover note. From Bloomberg:

In the largest derivative transaction disclosed so far, Greece borrowed 2.8 billion euros from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in 2001 through a derivative that swapped dollar- and yen-denominated debt issued by the nation for euros using a historical exchange rate, a move that generated an implied reduction in total borrowings.

“The Greek authorities had never informed Eurostat about this complex issue, and no opinion on the accounting treatment had been requested,” Eurostat, the Luxembourg-based statistics agency, said in a statement. The watchdog had only “general” discussions with financial institutions over its debt and deficit guidelines when the swap was executed in 2001.

“It is possible that Goldman Sachs asked us for general clarifications,” Eurostat said, declining to elaborate further.

The ECB's response: "the European Central Bank said it can’t release files showing how Greece may have used derivatives to hide its borrowings because disclosure could still inflame the crisis threatening the future of the single currency."

Considering the crisis of the (not so) single currency is very much "inflamed" right now as it is about to be proven it was never "irreversible", perhaps it is time for at least one aspiring, true journalist, unafraid of disturbing the status quo of wealthy oligarchs and central planners, to at least bring some closure to the Greek people as they are swept out of the Eurozone which has so greatly benefited the very same Goldman Sachs whose former lackey is currently deciding the immediate fate of over €100 billion in Greek savings.

Because something tells us the reason why Mario Draghi personally blocked Bloomberg's FOIA into the circumstances surrounding Goldman's structuring, and hiding, of Greek debt that allowed not only Goldman to receive a substantial fee on the transaction, but permitted Greece to enter the Eurozone when it should never have been allowed there in the first place, is that the person who oversaw and personally endorsed the perpetuation of the Greek lie is none other than Goldman's Vice Chairman and Managing Director at Goldman Sachs International from 2002 to 2005. The man who is also now in charge of the ECB.

Mario Draghi.

 

[pmaitra]

Since a lot of the mainstream news media (not so much the US media) has been making attempts to pin all the blame on Greece, and thus shaping public opinion about Greece. This article below is rhetorical, however, points are quite a few things that are true, but not mentioned in the various articles in the mainstream media.

Personally, I believe the Greeks are not faultless, but their contribution to the problem is minor. The Greeks should simply default and ask the banking cartels to pound sand. They have the right to do it for reasons highlighted in red in the article below, and added commentary is highlighted in cyan.

As an aside, if some of you might wonder why I highlighted Harvard, I did so because Ben Bernanke is a Harvard product, and I have written about why I dislike him in topics that are out of scope in this thread.

___________________________________________________________________________

Greece – What You are not Being Told by the Media

According to mainstream media, the current economic crisis in Greece is due to the government spending too much money on its people that it went broke. This claim however, is a lie. It was the banks that wrecked the country so oligarchs and international corporations could benefit.

Published: July 5, 2015 | Authors: Chris Kanthan | NationofChange | Op-Ed


Every single mainstream media has the following narrative for the economic crisis in Greece: the government spent too much money and went broke; the generous banks gave them money, but Greece still can’t pay the bills because it mismanaged the money that was given. It sounds quite reasonable, right?

Except that it is a big fat lie … not only about Greece, but about other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland who are all experiencing various degrees of austerity. It was also the same big, fat lie that was used by banks and corporations to exploit many Latin American, Asian and African countries for many decades.

Greece did not fail on its own. It was made to fail.

In summary, the banks wrecked the Greek government and deliberately pushed it into unsustainable debt so that oligarchs and international corporations can profit from the ensuing chaos and misery.

If you are a fan of mafia movies, you know how the mafia would take over a popular restaurant. First, they would do something to disrupt the business – stage a murder at the restaurant or start a fire. When the business starts to suffer, the Godfather would generously offer some money as a token of friendship. In return, Greasy Thumb takes over the restaurant’s accounting, Big Joey is put in charge of procurement, and so on. Needless to say, it’s a journey down a spiral of misery for the owner who will soon be broke and, if lucky, alive.

Now, let’s map the mafia story to international finance in four stages.

Stage 1: The first and foremost reason that Greece got into trouble was the “Great Financial Crisis” of 2008 that was the brainchild of Wall Street and international bankers. If you remember, banks came up with an awesome idea of giving subprime mortgages to anyone who can fog a mirror. They then packaged up all these ticking financial bombs and sold them as “mortgage-backed securities” at a huge profit to various financial entities in countries around the world.

A big enabler of this criminal activity was another branch of the banking system, the group of rating agencies – S&P, Fitch and Moody’s – who gave stellar ratings to these destined-to-fail financial products. Unscrupulous politicians such as Tony Blair got paid by Big Banks to peddle these dangerous securities to pension funds and municipalities and countries around Europe. Banks and Wall Street gurus made hundreds of billions of dollars in this scheme.

But this was just Stage 1 of their enormous scam. There was much more profit to be made in the next three stages!

Stage 2 is when the financial time bombs exploded. Commercial and investment banks around the world started collapsing in a matter of weeks. Governments at local and regional level saw their investments and assets evaporate. Chaos everywhere!

Vultures like Goldman Sachs and other big banks profited enormously in three ways: one, they could buy other banks such as Lehman brothers and Washington Mutual for pennies on the dollar. Second, more heinously, Goldman Sachs and insiders such as John Paulson (who recently donated $400 million to Harvard) had made bets that these securities would blow up. Paulson made billions, and the media celebrated his acumen. (For an analogy, imagine the terrorists betting on 9/11 and profiting from it.) Third, to scrub salt in the wound, the big banks demanded a bailout from the very citizens whose lives the bankers had ruined! Bankers have chutzpah. In the U.S., they got hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers and trillions from the Federal Reserve Bank which is nothing but a front group for the bankers.

In Greece, the domestic banks got more than $30 billion of bailout from the Greek people. Let that sink in for a moment – the supposedly irresponsible Greek government had to bail out the hardcore capitalist bankers.

Stage 3 is when the banks force the government to accept massive debts. For a biology metaphor, consider a virus or a bacteria. All of them have unique strategies to weaken the immune system of the host. One of the proven techniques used by the parasitic international bankers is to downgrade the bonds of a country. And that’s exactly what the bankers did, starting at the end of 2009. This immediately makes the interest rates (“yields”) on the bonds go up, making it more and more expensive for the country to borrow money or even just roll over the existing bonds.

From 2009 to mid-2010, the yields on 10-year Greek bonds almost tripled! This cruel financial assault brought the Greek government to its knees, and the banksters won their first debt deal of a whopping 110 billion Euros.

The banks also control the politics of nations. In 2011, when the Greek prime minister refused to accept a second massive bailout, the banks forced him out of the office and immediately replaced him with the Vice President of ECB (European Central Bank)! No elections needed. Screw democracy. And what would this new guy do? Sign on the dotted line of every paperwork that the bankers bring in.

(By the way, the very next day, the exact same thing happened in Italy where the Prime Minister resigned, only to be replaced by a banker/economist puppet. Ten days later, Spain had a premature election where a banker puppet won the election).

The puppet masters had the best month ever in November 2011.

Few months later, in 2012, the exact bond market manipulation was used when the banksters turned up the Greek bonds’ yields to 50%!!! [This sounds cool, but is actually a devaluation of the Greek bonds.] This financial terrorism immediately had the desired effect: The Greek parliament agreed to a second massive bailout, even larger than the first one.

Now, here is another fact that most people don’t understand. The loans are not just simple loans like you would get from a credit card or a bank. These are loans come with very special strings attached that demand privatization of a country’s assets. If you have seen Godfather III [I believe this is a typo, and should have been Godfather II.], you would remember Hyman Roth, the investor who was carving up Cuba among his friends. Replace Hyman Roth with Goldman Sachs or IMF (International Monetary Fund) or ECB, and you get the picture.

Stage 4: Now, the rape and humiliation of a nation begin under the name of “austerity” or “structural reforms.” For the debt that was forced upon it, Greece had to sell many of its profitable assets to oligarchs and international corporations. And privatizations are ruthless, involving everything and anything that is profitable. In Greece, privatization included water, electricity, post offices, airport services, national banks, telecommunication, port authorities (which is huge in a country that is a world leader in shipping) etc. Of course, the ever-manipulative bankers always demand immediate privatization of all media which means that the country gets photogenic TV anchors who spew establishment propaganda every day and tell the people that crooked and greedy banksters are saviors; and slavery under austerity is so much better than the alternative.

In addition to that, the banker tyrants also get to dictate every single line item in the government’s budget. Want to cut military spending? NO! Want to raise tax on the oligarchs or big corporations? NO! Such micro-management is non-existent in any other creditor-debtor relationship.

So what happens after privatization and despotism under bankers? Of course, the government’s revenue goes down and the debt increases further. How do you “fix” that? Of course, cut spending! Lay off public workers, cut minimum wage, cut pensions (same as our social security), cut public services, and raise taxes on things that would affect the 99% but not the 1%. For example, pension has been cut in half and sales tax increase to more than 20%. All these measures have resulted in Greece going through a financial calamity that is worse than the Great Depression of the U.S. in the 1930s.

After all this, what is the solution proposed by the heartless bankers? Higher taxes! More cuts to the pension! It takes a special kind of a psychopath to put a country through austerity, an economic holocaust.

If every Greek person had known the truth about austerity, they wouldn’t have fallen for this. Same goes for Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and other countries going through austerity. The sad aspect of all this is that these are not unique strategies. Since World War II, these predatory practices have been used countless times by the IMF and the World Bank in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

This is the essence of the New World Order — a world owned by a handful of corporations and banks; a world that is full of obedient, powerless debt serfs.

So, it’s time for the proud people of Greece to rise up like Zeus and say NO (“OXI” in Greece) to the greedy puppet masters, unpatriotic oligarchs, parasitic bankers and corrupt politicians.

Dear Greece, know that the world is praying for you and rooting for you. This weekend, vote NO to austerity. Say YES to freedom, independence, self-government, sovereignty, and democracy. Go to the polls this weekend and give a resounding, clear victory for the 99% in Greece, Europe, and the entire western world.


___________________________________________________________________________

I don't know how many people are aware of this.

Georgios A. Papandreou was the elected Prime Minister, who was not only reluctant to accept the new loan offers in late 2011-early 2012, he had earlier, upon becoming the Prime Minister, revealed Greece's real financial situation, which was worse than what was publicised earlier.

The European leaders pressed him to accept the new loan offer. He stepped down in early 2012, and a new Prime Minister, Lucas Demetrios Papademos, was appointed, who readily signed the new loan terms, thus increasing Greece's debt burden.

 

[pmaitra]

Some additional articles that readers might find interesting:

• Der Spiegel: Greek Debt Crisis: How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt
• Business Insider: Goldman Sachs Shorted Greek Debt After It Arranged Those Shady Swaps
• New York Trash: Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide (New York Times is making an exception and telling us the truth, probably because the Euro is a competitor to the US Dollar.)
• Bloomberg: Greece’s Debt and Goldman Sachs: Week in Review

Is there any precedence that bankers have actually been prosecuted for fraud? Yes. In Iceland.

Here is a surprisingly nice article from the British Brainwashing Corporation, the British Government's propaganda media: Iceland jails former Kaupthing bank bosses

This post, and the two previous posts came about after spending a lot of time reading through, and often verifying, a lot of material. This does not obligate anyone to refrain from making disagreeable, partially-informed, or uninformed comments, but if these posts are countered, it is expected that the person countering should at least do the right thing, and read through the content first.

 

[Zebra]

You will find morons that will say British rule was better as trains were on time.... they will forget that railways was a tool of oppression and used to extract resources out of areas and facilitate economic exploitation.
Doesn't make them right.

How many times have you been to Goa?

They are two different things...............British Rule in India (1858 to 1947) and Company Rule in India (1757 to 1858).

The first Indian railway started in 1853, between Bombay and Thane. Which was built during "Company Rule in India" .

What else you can expect from a company?

British Rule in India was not better. It doesn't mean that all the other governments were also not better.

And I never gone in Goa, but many times in Diu and Daman.

If you go to Diu then don't forget to visit Fudam village.

Many people from that village are in Portugal.

 

[arpakola]

Some additional articles that readers might find interesting:

• Der Spiegel: Greek Debt Crisis: How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt
• Business Insider: Goldman Sachs Shorted Greek Debt After It Arranged Those Shady Swaps
• New York Trash: Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide (New York Times is making an exception and telling us the truth, probably because the Euro is a competitor to the US Dollar.)
• Bloomberg: Greece’s Debt and Goldman Sachs: Week in Review

Is there any precedence that bankers have actually been prosecuted for fraud? Yes. In Iceland.

Here is a surprisingly nice article from the British Brainwashing Corporation, the British Government's propaganda media: Iceland jails former Kaupthing bank bosses

This post, and the two previous posts came about after spending a lot of time reading through, and often verifying, a lot of material. This does not obligate anyone to refrain from making disagreeable, partially-informed, or uninformed comments, but if these posts are countered, it is expected that the person countering should at least do the right thing, and read through the content first.

...................................................

 

[Zebra]

OT But these kind of People are displaying what I call Paki Syndrome. Its no different from Paki thinking who also think Arabs, Persian and Turks r@ping their ancestors were the greatest thing that could happen to their gene pool.

Please read about Goa Inquisition. After reading that anybody who thinks that the portugal rule was good for local goan population needs to get his head checked.

Sir, keep crying about your Paki Syndrome and Arabs, Persian and Turks, I don't mind.

I got few friends in Diu and Daman. They all are Hindu and they are locals who live there since ages. Even few of them has their property documents in Portuguese language and I saw it.

I witnessed it, their parents and grand parents still miss Portuguese rule.

And its a riddle for me, how the hell good Portuguese of Diu and Daman become so worse in Goa..!

OR

One more conspiracy to hide sins of our govt establishment, who failed to deliver many things to their citizens.

God knows.

 

[sob]

...................................................

These bailouts that you have mentioned in your posts were done by their own respective Governments, not by the taxpayers of other countries, so do not compare yourself with them. that is a wrong comparison.

Another line going around is that the oligarchs have benefited and they are the cause of the present crisis. But who are they -- they are Greeks not Germans. It is easy to pass the buck.

I wish the best for the ordinary people of Greece and once the situation stabilises I would love to come and visit your beautiful country.

 

[arpakola]

ΕU has a centralised fund and monetary system. So under this consideration is not tax payers of "other" but European taxpayers.. VAT gathered from each EU country is used by Brussels .
=====================

European Parliament: Investigate EP President Schulz
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/European_Parliament_Investigate_EP_President_Schulz/?sVTZzjb