The Troika’s Policy in Greece: Rob the Greek people and give the money to private banks, the ECB, the IMF and the dominant States of the Eurozone
On
20 August 2018, the Greek government of Alexis Tsipras, the IMF and
the European leaders celebrated the end of the Third Memorandum.
On
this occasion, the major media and those in power spread the
following message: Greece has regained its freedom, its economy is
improving, unemployment is on the decline, Europe has lent Greece 300
billion and the Greeks will have to start repaying that debt in 2022
or in 2032.
The
main claims are completely unfounded as Greece remains under the
control of its creditors. In compliance with the accords that the
Alexis Tsipras government signed, the country must imperatively
achieve a primary budgetary surplus of 3.5% which will force it to
continue brutal policies of reduction of public spending in the
social sector and in investment. Contrary to the dominant message
that Greece will not begin to repay its debt until some time in the
future, it should be clearly understood that Greece has been repaying
considerable amounts constantly all along to the ECB, the IMF and to
private creditors, and this prevents it from responding to the needs
of its population.
by
Eric Toussaint
Part
11 - Why do we say that the ECB gave enormous gifts to around fifteen
major French, German, Dutch, Belgian, Italian and Austrian banks?
Between
10 May 2010 and early July 2010, a period of eight weeks, the ECB
purchased approximately two thirds of the Greek public securities
held by around fifteen large European private banks. To my knowledge,
until now, no one had ever pointed to that fact.
The
problem is not so much the mass of securities purchased, though it
was indeed enormous – €41 billion –, but the fact that that
amount corresponds to the majority of the holdings of these big
private Eurozone banks. The ECB purchased the securities at
approximately 75% of their face value, and thus paid out €35
billion.
Had the
ECB not massively purchased Greek securities, the price would have
fallen even lower. That would have forced the private banks of the
dominant powers of the Eurozone to again turn to their governments,
which would have contributed to further undermining the capitalist
system in a context where conditions were ripe for the emergence of a
major movement like the Indignadxs. And that movement was certain to
have spread to the dominant Eurozone countries had the bankers again
asked the governments for more money.
Anyway –
and this is not in contradiction with what has just been said – the
big private banks who sold Greek securities to the ECB below the
purchase price posted a loss which they wrote off against taxes due.
The
banks of the Centre got the international press and their governments
to mount a campaign to place responsibility for their own problems on
the Greeks and more generally the PIIGS countries (a contemptuous
acronym used by some of the press to designate the periphery
countries: Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) in order to
hide the fact that those problems were in fact the result of the
banks’ own cavalier policy of seeking maximum profit, mainly on the
market for “structured financial products” in the USA and
elsewhere.
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