Neoliberalism
does not give a shit
by Paul
Mason
The
International Monetary Fund has been caught, red handed, plotting to
stage a “credit event” that forces Greece to the edge of
bankruptcy, using the pretext of the Brexit referendum.
No,
this is not the plot of the next Bond movie. It is the transcript of
a teleconference between the IMF’s chief negotiator, Poul Thomsen
and Delia Velculescu, head of the IMF mission to Greece.
Released
by Wikileaks, the discussion took place in Athens just before the IMF
walked out of talks aimed at giving Greece the green light for the
next stage of its bailout.
The
situation is: the IMF does not believe the numbers being used by both
Greece and Europe to do the next stage of the deal. It does not want
to take part in the bailout. Meanwhile the EU cannot do the deal
without the IMF because the German parliament won’t allow it.
As
they bicker about the numbers, Thomsen and Velculescu are heard
mulling whether to suppress the IMF’s next report on whether Greek
debt is sustainable. Thats important because the IMF will only sign
up to a deal that involves debt relief, and the Germans will not.
Then
Thomsen drops the bombshell:
THOMSEN: What is going to bring it all to a decision
point? In the past there has been only one time when the decision has
been made and then that was when they were about to run out of money
seriously and to default. Right?
VELCULESCU:
Right!
THOMSEN:
And possibly this is what is going to happen again. In that case, it
drags on until July, and clearly the Europeans are not going to have
any discussions for a month before the Brexits and so, at some stage
they will want to take a break and then they want to start again
after the European referendum.
Velculescu
says they should try and do something in April. Thomsen replies:
THOMSEN: But that is not an event. That is not going
to cause them to… That discussion can go on for a long time. And
they are just leading them down the road… why are they leading them
down the road? Because they are not close to the event, whatever it
is.
VELCULESCU:
I agree that we need an event, but I don’t know what that will be.
So
let me decode. An “event” is a financial crisis bringing Greece
close to default. Just like last year, when the banks closed,
millions of people faced economic and psychological catastrophe.
Only
this time, the IMF wants to inflict that catastrophe on a nation
holding tens of thousands of refugees and tasked with one of the most
complex and legally dubious international border policing missions in
modern history.
The
Greek government is furious: “we are not going to let the IMF play
with fire,” a source told me.
But
the issue is out of Greek hands. In the end, as Thomsen hints in the
transcript, only the European Commission and above all the German
government can decide to honour the terms of the deal it did to bail
Greece out last July.
The
transcript, though received with fury and incredulity in Greece, will
drop like a bombshell into the Commission and the ECB. It is they who
are holding E300bn+ of Greek debt.
It
is the whole of Europe, in other words, that the IMF is conspiring to
hit with the shock doctrine.
It’s
clear from the transcript that the IMF has become a playground for
neoliberal fantasists.
To
fantasise about inflicting yet another near bankruptcy on a teetering
democracy reveals levels of insouciance about the welfare of human
beings and the sovereignty of states incompatible with a democratic
organisation.
It
proves, yet again, that the core of the economic doctrine that guides
the global elite is the determination not to “give a shit” about
real people, but to impose the doctrine even at the cost of state
failure.
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