Greece – What You Are Not Being Told by the Media

14

Written by By Chris Kanthan / nationofchange.org

 

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.

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?
anon wear t-shirt
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 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, 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.
Get Your Anonymous T-Shirt / Sweatshirt / Hoodie / Tanktop, Smartphone or Tablet Cover or Mug In Our Spreadshirt ShopClick Here

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT US VIA PATREON

Get Your Anonymous T-Shirt / Sweatshirt / Hoodie / Tanktop, Smartphone or Tablet Cover or Mug In Our Spreadshirt Shop! Click Here

 

14 COMMENTS

  1. You are still not providing all of the facts! The banking failures of 2008 were brought on by US banks following the lead of European bankers who were operating under Basal II which permitted banks to reduce the amount of bank money in a loan and use more investor money, thus lowering their risk exposure, but allowing them at the same time to make riskier loans and the rest is history. If European bankers are still following this formula, look out!!!

  2. i agree with everything said here but it would help if it provided sources and references to help legitimize the article.

  3. http://www.vox.com/2015/7/1/8871509/greece-charts . Please get an elementary economics degree before writing total fucking bullshit. You know it has nothing to do with austerity, loans and greed, it’s simply a case of spending more than you earn. How long can you survive if you spend twice as much as you earn every month? This is like reading a “teenagers rant about how mom made me clean the cats litterbox. FML”

    • That article you used as a reference, used references to American political think tanks and even a guy that ran hedge funds among things. I looked up most of the references. When I’m reading an article, I look at who pays for that article to get put up or who has paid the references. Always got to follow the money trail.
      There isn’t gonna be much in anything related to mainstream media (VOX media is tied to sports news and one of it’s funders is tied to the NFL) that will support a far-left government.

    • Your an idiot. So is like what the banks want you to do??? Right? Spend twice as much. Make life seem like is ok like nothing is going to happen. Next thing you know millions off ppl losing their jobs. Common dont a troll. You know where hes going with this. And you know how bad this is to humanity. Yes all of us. Because sooner or later we r going to get it as well.

  4. Squeezing the people worldwide. Must be part of agenda 21. Make that oil go further, get rid of half the population through poverty.

  5. One GLARING hole in your analysis that renders it all suspect; Hyman Roth was in The Godfather Part II, not III. Other than that, seems pretty spot on.

  6. Not sure if this is what you called a bailout, but I think it’s worth explaining like Vox and TYT did: https://youtu.be/A7EJsyynpbc?t=5m45s

    The banks had loans that couldn’t be paid. They made an error in evaluating the ability their recipients had of paying it back, so by market rules there would be debt defaults, BUT instead of the banks being punished by the market and their errors, the EU loaned Greece money to pay the banks.
    They took on the banks debt, that means the private debt Greece had with banks turned into a public debt with EU banks, much harder to default and much more damaging to do so.
    What EU should do is forgive the debt or make it at least make it interest free. Debts are forgiven all the time. After the World War, Germamy had their debt forgiven.

    Another solution would for that BRICS bank to come into action and save Greece. That would give it authority and unquestionable legitimacy as a world power it wants.

  7. Correction, the previous government pocketed the money, so it was actually their fault, they gave the false info to the banks, the EU failed to recognize the lies etc. Lets talk about the corruption behind anonhq.com, such as them not being affiliated in any way with the actual anonops group. Anonhq.com has more trackers then a majority of the social media sites combined yet they encourage anonymity? Do they tell you to install extensions such as ghostery to avoid being tracked by their “trackers” ? no they do not, but they do tell you how you can stay anon, which isn’t any good as whatever u use to connect to this site doesn’t hide any of your details from the owners or admins of the site. And only God knows who they actually are, who is the founder of this site, reveal yourself.

  8. I fully underwrite this article, one of the best short resumees ever read. Unfortunately the “thinkers” of the wheel cant see outside the wheel and delivering stupid comments all the way down. No matter if Goldman & Sachs banksters already and openly admitting the set up, the “thinker” of the wheel generously ignoring all evidences because the system popes slaughtering Greece on a political show stage. Stupid world equals stupid outcome.

    • Yes, but that is partly true Horst. It depends from what kind of view you are looking at the current Troika issue. If you are looking from the EU’s logical point of view, they are totally right in not cutting any more debts of Greece. On the other hand, even the IMF admitted that with it’s current status, Greece can not pay back it’s debts. Varoufakis worked very hard on some plans how to support Greece so it would grow and be able to pay back it’s debt. Now that Tsipras agreed to all demands including the more strict austerity measures on greece, that is a total lose lose situation, as Greece’s economy will not even increase, but probably shrink and make it even harder for Greece to pay back any money.

      From the humanitarian point of view: No one even bats an eye on the greek people from the Troika partners. The suicide rates in greece trippled, more than 1/3 of the people and children are living far udner the minimum wage / poorness limit and thousands got homeless. It is a humanitarian desaster.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here