Beware of Bankers Bearing Gifts

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Beware-of-Bankers-Bearing-by-Greg-Maybury-Austerity_Bankers_Bankers_Bankruptcy-150703-452.html



EU and the Greek Economic Crisis

Beware of Bankers Bearing Gifts
By Greg Maybury
OpEdNews Op Eds 7/3/2015 at 19:50:22

~snip~

As for the received wisdom the crisis was self-inflicted, apart from being a not entirely accurate reflection of reality, absent a more historically nuanced insight into how Greece got into such an indebted state -- to say little of other EU countries with massive debt and liquidity issues such as Italy, Spain and Portugal -- this crisis is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon in anyone's favour, with the possible exception of the main private creditors. And it should go without saying that until and unless the conditions that set Greece on the path to bankruptcy are recognised and addressed, any resolution however it might be defined much less effected is even less likely to be a self-sustaining, ongoing one. At best we can expect that any progress will be of the 'one step forward, two steps back' variety.

That said, it would be difficult to overstate the dire implications for the European Union experiment, to say nothing of those for the global economy, if the du jour economic 'sick-man' of Europe falls off the aforementioned perch. Short of some sort of debt forgiveness deal being negotiated, an outcome that no-one at this stage expects, or Greece accessing loans with more favourable terms from other sources external to the IMF and the ECB (Russia for example), the EU experiment looks increasingly precarious with every day. Even if Russia comes to the rescue, it is difficult to imagine from a geopolitical perspective the U.S. and NATO states being happy with that solution, for what should be patently obvious reasons. And if anyone had any illusions about the experiment's 'work-in-progress' status even after all this time, then a sustained Greek default post-referendum followed by the seemingly inevitable "Grexit", surely will dispel them for all but the most ardent Europhiles.

In short, the economic Tower of Babel that is the Eurozone could well endure a fate not dissimilar to its Biblical namesake. By all accounts there is no Plan B for Greece's departure from the Eurozone, with expectations in most quarters there'll be an economic 'domino effect' as a consequence. Which of course makes one wonder if the West in general and the U.S. in particular will bring to bear the same determination to prevent this scenario happening that they did when confronted with a domino effect of a different kind in the halcyon daze (sic) of the Cold War.

~snip~

All God's Dirty Work

As for identifying who the main culprits were in scamming Greece into a financial death-spiral, it may come as no surprise that we have to return to the 'scene of the crime' as it were, the "scene" of course being Wall Street, and said "crime" being the GFC. Specifically it was the 'Monsanto' of Wall Street Goldman Sachs, whose financial alchemists -- in the form of current CEO & Chair Lloyd "We Do God's Work" Blankfein, President and COO Gary Cohn, and co-Managing Director Addy Loudiadis -- had their fingerprints all over complex derivative deals they structured and presented to Greece [and] which enabled it to mask the true extent of its sovereign debt. Although by most accounts such deals weren't strictly illegal, they ended up almost doubling the amount of debt owed under the decidedly one-sided, if not dodgy arrangements.

[PADemD]

1. Send these three to Greece on vacation with just their credit cards.

[tech3149]

2. Forget the credit card, a debit card for a Greek bank

C'mon, you're smart guys you can get by on 60 Euro's a week Right?