Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts

Monday, April 01, 2013

Sentencing Two Populations to Generations of Debt Slavery

The first real test of establishing America’s commitment to "democracy" came from Greece after WWII. During the war, the Left Wing National Liberation Front had provided the majority of resistance to the Nazis. It also set up interim governments across the nation. Though its military government leaders were communist, the partisan governments bore no resemblance to Stalinist Russia. They were decentralized and participatory. The peasants were treated fairly and their status, raised. It was a real people’s government. The goal was to make Greece independent, free from all ties.

But Winston Churchill claimed anarchy and demanded the return of the monarchy. He wanted to keep Greece in their sphere of influence in the Mediterranean for their own political ends. In other words, they wanted to restore the old order in Greece. They wanted the King back on his throne because he was the best guarantee of British interest in Greece: political, economic, and strategic, despite the fact that all of the Greek people hated the oppressive regime of the King.

So America stepped in and a network of concentration camps were set up across the Greek islands while right winged death squads terrorized villages. A favorite technique was beheading. President Truman gave $400 million to aid in restoring the old order. In 1947, 74,000 tons of military equipment was sent to Greece including massive stocks of napalm, and during the Civil War in Greece, the Truman Doctrine was announced which was in effect to crush the peasant and worker based anti-Nazi resistance and restore the traditional fascist order. As a result, 150,000 Greeks were killed. Greece was the first major police task which the United States took on in the postwar world.

Fast forward almost 60 years, and the European feudal system is scapegoating Greece, along with its tiny neighbor, Cyprus --many Cypriots consider themselves Greeks; they share the same National Anthem, are Orthodox and of course they speak Greek--once again, only this time, instead of tanks, they're using banks.

"At least 1,600 Greek businesses - from shipping, retail to tourism - will suffer from the Cyprus bailout deal announced on Sunday after a showdown between Brussels and Nicosia, according to Vasilis Korkidis, head of the National Confederation of Greek Commerce (ESEE).

“The tragic situation in Cyprus will certainly have immediate effects on the Greek market, since a large part of the domestic businesses maintain close ties with Cypriot companies,” Korkidis said in a statement on Tuesday. He was particularly critical of the capital controls and the impending haircut on large deposits (over 100,000 euros) expected to be more than 40%.

Greece's exports to Cyprus exceed 1billion euros annually and the country is Cyprus’ biggest trade partner, followed by the United Kingdom and Germany.

According to Korkidis, the Eurogroup’s Cyprus deal establishes new, severely punitive rules for countries needing emergency aid in the future.

He also slammed the Eurogroup deal (which he called the "German plan" to stress the key role played by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the negotiations) for “crippling” Cyprus. He said the deal is “tragic” because it “sentences” Cyprus - the country’s markets and economy - to a long period of recession and debt.
Without blinking an eye, the troika of International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank (ECB) wipes out the savings of a people, while imposing draconian capital controls, sentencing two populations to generations of debt slavery. This is the new model. Other countries will surely follow.

Links:

List Released With 132 Names Who Pulled Cyprus Deposits Ahead Of "Confiscation Day"

With every passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer the Cyprus deposit confiscation "news" was the most unsurprising outcome for the nation's financial system and was known by virtually everyone on the ground days and weeks in advance: first it was disclosed that Russians had been pulling their money, then it was suggested the president himself had made sure some €21 million of his family's money was parked safely in London, then we showed a massive surge in Cyprus deposit outflows in February, and now the latest news is that a list of 132 companies and individuals has emerged who withdrew their €-denominated deposits in the two weeks from March 1 to March 15, among which the previously noted company Loutsios & Sons which is alleged to have ties with the current Cypriot president Anastasiadis.

From Sigma:
"Money transfers made within 15 days, namely from 1 until March 15. On Friday, March 15, had met the Eurogroup, which officially decided to impose a tax on deposits by companies and individuals in all financial institutions in Cyprus.

These 132 companies and individuals have withdrawn all deposits in euros, dollars and rubles, which were transferred to other banks outside Cyprus.

The disclosure of the list, which shows that the outflow of deposits from local banks other financial institutions outside Cyprus became massively raises suspicion that some had inside information about the decisions taken by the other 16 eurozone countries in exchange for financing deficits of the economy.

In listings, and the company is Loutsios and Sons Ltd, which carried 21 million deposit in a UK bank, while the owner of the company is alleged to have family ties with the President of the Republic, Nikos Anastasiadis.

The first column are names of companies and individuals in the second record of the amounts withdrawn in the third column refers to the amount withdrawn in the same currency, the currency in the fourth and the fifth and last column refers to the date of transfer.

The Timeline of the Unfolding Eurozone Crisis

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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Is Cyprus Paving the Way For a Global Currency?

Sure, right now, the clear winner from the Cyprus crisis is the US dollar, which stands to benefit from public and private flows after the euro's reserve currency takes another hit. Today, the euro fell to its lowest against the US dollar in four months and the dollar came in just below its 52 week high. However, don't get too complacent because Cyprus is the canary in the coal mine, a petri dish, but unlike a petri dish, it will not be contained. It will affect the European markets and extend into the U.S.becoming the new model for bank bailouts, where money is directly confiscated from our bank accounts, not to mention, the fundamental breach in the public trust on which money relies.

From Economic Collapse blog:

"As it stands now, nowhere in Cyprus accepts credit or debit cards anymore for fear of not being paid, it is CASH ONLY. Businesses have stopped functioning because they cannot pay employees OR pay for the stock they receive because the banks are closed. If the banks remain closed, the economy will be destroyed and STOP COMPLETELY. Looting, robberies and theft are already on the rise. If the banks open now, there will be a massive run on the bank, and the banks will FAIL loosing all of its deposits, also causing an economic crash. TONIGHT there are demonstrations at most street corners and especially at the parliament building (just 2 miles from me).

Many are thinking that the ECB and EU are allowing Cyprus to fail as a test ground for new financial standards.

Just wanted all you guys to know the real story of whats going on here. Prayers are appreciated (although this is very interesting to watch) many of my local friends have lots of money in the banks.
You see, the entire western banking model is built on the dollar. So with the crisis in Europe, the flight to the dollar and flight to U.S. treasuries, makes the dollar the last safe haven.  However, once everyone’s on board this “lifeboat” full of holes will be pushed out to sea and sunk. Then, what do we do? Why, bring on the global currency, of course.

What leads me and others far more knowledgeable than me to this dreadful conclusion?

Well, it's not just Cyprus, it's what lies beneath Cyprus, and practically every economy in the world: the toxicity of the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market. Eventually,   the cascading domino destruction of global economies will occur largely due to this monstrosity that's rarely mentioned.  The Eurozone is over leveraged on a tremendous amount of American sub-prime mortgages, a ton of derivative debt – collateralized debt obligations (cdo), credit default swaps—sold throughout the world via Wall Street.

Keep in mind, the Bank for International Settlements in Europe acts as an umbrella for all the central banks world-wide. But beware, the BIS downplays the total notional value of the global derivatives market, although, even at $600 trillion, that's much larger than the global economy by far. Anyway, nobody really knows the real amount, but when this derivatives bubble finally bursts there is not going to be nearly enough money on the entire planet to fix things.

Links:

A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives



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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Austerity: Destroying the Social Contract Here and in the Euro

Is there any question that both Europe and the US governing powers side with the 1%? Corporate and bankster welfare queens abound! Socialism for the wealthy is alive and well, while the rest of us are subject to increasing austerity measures totally unnecessary considering the US government has well over $100 TRILLION in its CAFRS. That alone should tell you that the concept of austerity is not economic, but one of political control.

As Hugh says responding to the naked capitalism article:
Breaking the social contract is what kleptocracy is all about. Or rather it is about breaking one side of it. The 99% are supposed to honor all the duties of the contract, which largely means paying off the debts the 1% have incurred, supporting public institutions which the 1% control, and obeying the laws which the 1% write. But as regards the benefits for the 99% that flow from the social contract: personal and political rights, jobs, housing, healthcare, education, and retirements, these are being trashed, tossed, and looted by the same 1%.

In this sense, we are all Greece. Look at America’s decaying infrastructure, high unemployment, housing disaster, declining system of public education, student debt, overpriced healthcare that leaves tens of millions un- and under insured, pensions that no longer exist, are underfunded, or gutted by Wall Street gambling, and the multiple attempts by both parties to slash Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. How are we any different from Greece? How is the rest of Europe? East Asia, China, and Japan? Kleptocracy dominates them all. It plays out different ways in different countries. But the social contract is being destroyed, to the benefit of the 1% and the detriment of the 99%, in them all.



Links:

Greece has been ordered to reduce health care from its current 10% of GDP to below 6%.

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Monday, March 12, 2012

Forget China. What Abou the Rise of Germany?

Hitler may have failed to conquer Europe by military might, but it seems, modern Germans are succeeding through trade and financial superiority and strength. With the recent news of Greece default, and other European countries - reland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain - economic basket-cases, Germany renews its call for a European constitution demanding member nations to forfeit fiscal sovereignty and require EU fiscal oversight to approve regional laws.

A fiscal union means it is one economic policy, one taxation system, one social security system, one debt, one economy, one finance minister. And all of the above would be German

Instead of admitting the euro is a failure, and doing away with the system altogether, Angela Merkel is pushing a German-dominated Europe.  First, Papandreou had to go, then Berlesconi, replaced by puppet governments sure to go along with the plan.

On the surface, this may not sound the alarm bells; however, it should because Germany's finance minister is on record for stating the US is in worse shape than the worst of the worst European nation.  Guido Westerwelle told reporters, "We need more efficient decision structures."

Well, the Germans are experts on efficiency, that's for sure!

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Sunday, February 26, 2012

How Goldman Sachs Helped Cover up Greece's Debt.

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