Selling Their Seed
The BBC carried this item: EU leaders pledge to do what is needed to help Greece
European Union leaders have reaffirmed their commitment to help Greece out of its current debt woes and maintain EU financial stability.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said there was “a real will of the member states to do what is necessary”.
His comments came at the end of the first day of an EU summit in Brussels.
The Greek parliament has to pass fresh austerity measures next week before the country can gain vital bail-out funds.
What the Greeks are being required to do is to sell the assets they need to have an economy. They aren’t even allowed to eat their seed, they are being required to sell it.
For example, they are being required to sell their public power system. The system generates income, but they are being required to sell it to make a large payment to creditors, rather than restructuring and making smaller payments over a longer period.
If a craftsman is required to sell the tools of his trade to make a payment on a debt, the debt will never be repaid, because the craftsman needs the tools to work. That is what they are requiring of Greece – to sell prime tourist areas that generate a lot of revenue over time, to make a large, lump-sum payment. The people understand this, even if the politicians don’t.
The terms of this “bailout” make default a matter of when, not if. The EU and IMF are destroying the country.
2 comments
I’ve come across some curious facts about the Greek financial crisis (which is really a European, and US, crisis).
Greece:
US$481 bln Debt
US$11 Million population
USA:
14 trillion debt
307 million population
Greece Debt: US$44,000 / capita
USA Debt: US$45,000 / capita
Greece hid their problems from the rest of the Europe by going to Goldman Sachs 10 years ago for help. GS helped Greece hide the size of the debt using Currancy Swaps. European Banks bought the bonds, but transferred the potential risk of the bonds using Credit Default Swaps. Nobody knows who got the swaps. But the best guess is US banks.
Considering Greeks get 6 weeks paid vacation per year, and get to retire @ 53 with 80% pay & benefits, I think they are not doing that badly compared to the USA. 😉 At least… they are being screwed out of something tangible they actually had. 😛 😉
It’s all a US plot to bring the World down to the American peasants (workers) subsistence level so that these American’s don’t one day realize that the rest of the World is actually better off (and I do realize that’s actually unlikely to happen… for many reasons). 😈
The French bank own over half of the debt, the Germans a third. The Goldman Sachs connection was well known, and institutional investors should have known what that meant – the bonds were toxic junk – but they bought anyway because they thought they would get out before everything went to hell.
The bloody banks are all over leveraged and need to write down all of their junk assets so people will have some idea what they are really worth, but that scares the crap out of the financial criminal class.
The financial ‘wizards’ belong in prison or the poor house, like anyone else who gambles beyond their ability to pay their bills.
Greece needs to start actually enforcing its tax laws and to start throwing its wealthy elite in prison for evading their taxes, so the country can pay its bills, but that’s a separate issue.