Greece and Creditors at Loggerheads Again; Troika Wants More Foreclosures

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Greece and Creditors at Loggerheads Again; Troika Wants More Foreclosures
Posted on November 9, 2015 by Yves Smith


European creditors want to extract more blood from a stone, in this case Greece.

Greece and its lenders are again at odds over the latest “bailout” funds, which is €2 billion that was scheduled to be approved for release by the famed Eurobgroup (remember them? That’s all the Eurozone finance ministers) on Monday.

But a precondition for getting more dough was that Greece show enough “progress,” as in either have implemented or have committed to a sufficiently large number of “reforms”. “Reform” is Eurocrat-speak for austerian blood-letting. The creditors see Greece as coming up short.

As we’ve pointed out repeatedly in our coverage of Greece, the lenders are hell-bent on seeing Greece remake its economy in ways that are guaranteed to make their loans fail, or perhaps more accurately, produce even greater losses than if they allowed for more investment and spending, rather than insist on punitively high budget surpluses and other destructive measures.

Why this fixation on implementing failed policies? The reasons vary by actor, but they include: delusion (as in they believe austerity “works” as in makes economies better), political necessity/survival (governments that implemented austerity programs at high costs to their citizens can’t be seen to be letting the greatest profligate, Greece, get off easy), a fixation with morality (Greece must suffer pour decourager les autres). ......................(more)

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/11/greece-and-creditors-at-loggerheads-again-troika-wants-more-foreclosures.html