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Greek debt update

By Saturday, February 3, 2018 Interviews Permalink

Taken from a short interview with Greece's Banking News. According to the IMF, Greece's debt isn't manageable in the long-run without being either extended or forgiven. Where do you stand towards this claim? How important is the Greek debt relief? The IMF’s European research staff staff was quite correct in stating some years ago that Greece’s debt was unpayable. The staff was so upset that the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, made the bailout loan anyway that they resigned and became whistle-blowers. I describe this whole incident in detail in Killing the Host. Strauss-Kahn wanted to be president of France, and therefore had to press to bail out French banks, which were the major holders of Greek bonds. Also, US President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner also told Angela Merkel that ...

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IMF to Greece: Sorry We’ll Destroy You

By Monday, May 8, 2017 Interviews , Permalink

Greece Passes New Austerity for New Loans, The Real New Network, May 6, 2017. Bond holders, banks, and IMF bear responsibility for having made irresponsible loans to Greece, so it is not right for them to force yet more austerity on Greece, says Michael Hudson. Sharmini Peries: It's the Real News Network. I am Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. The European Commission announced on May 2, that an agreement on Greek pension and income tax reforms would pave the way for further discussions on debt release for Greece. The European Commission described this as good news for Greece. The Greek government described the situation in similar terms. However, little attention has been given as to how the ...

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Greek IMF Loan a Planned Obsolesence

By Friday, February 24, 2017 Interviews , Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEKHMuvZ4yA SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore. The latest economic indicator showed that the Greek economy shrank by 0.4% in the last three months of 2016. This poses a real problem for Greece, because its lenders are expecting it to grow by 3.5% annually, to enable it to pay back on its bailout loan. Greece is scheduled to make a 10.5 billion euro payment on its debt next summer, but is expected to be unable to make that payment, without another installment from its $86 billion bailout. A growing impasse between the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank, Greece's two main lenders, is threatening to push Greece into default, and pull out of the euro. Meanwhile, the Greece government told its lenders, ...

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The Greek Surrender

By Sunday, May 22, 2016 Interviews , Permalink

May 22, 2016 SHARMINI PERIES, TRNN: It's the Real News Network, I’m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. Greece's economic crisis has perhaps been eclipsed by Europe's refugee crisis, terrorist attacks, and by the forthcoming Brexit referendum. But it has not gone away.  Greece's Syriza coalition faced violence on the streets and a 3 day general strike last week that had brought much of the country to a halt. In spite of the protests the government of Alexis Tsipras pushed through legislation to amend the country's tax and pension system with the backing of 153 MPs, a measure required by the lenders in order to continue the debt negotiations. Addressing the 300 seat house, Prime Minister Alex Tsipras said we are determined to make Greece stand on its 2 feet at ...

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Reuters’ Public Relations Missif

By Tuesday, September 1, 2015 Globalism and its Institutions , Permalink

As published on Counterpunch: This autumn may see anti-austerity coalitions gain power in Portugal, Spain and Italy, while Marine le Pen’s National Front in France presses for outright withdrawal from the eurozone. These countries face a common problem: how to resist the economic devastation that the European Central Bank (ECB), European Council and IMF “troika” has inflicted on Greece and is now intending to do the same to southern Europe. To resist the depression and debt deflation that the troika seeks to deepen, one needs to bear in mind the dynamics that make the IMF un-reformable. Its destructive role in Greece provides an object lesson for how southern Europe must shun its horde of ideologues, as Third World countries learned to avoid it by May 2013, the year that Turkey capped the ...

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Democracy Now: China stocks over consumption

By Wednesday, August 26, 2015 Interviews , , , Permalink

Watch the video on the Democracy Now site Black Monday is how economists are describing Monday’s market turmoil, which saw stock prices tumble across the globe, from China to Europe to the United States. China’s stock indices fell over 8 percent on Monday and another 7 percent today. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average initially fell a record 1,100 points before closing down nearly 600 points. The decline also caused oil prices to plunge to their lowest levels in almost six years. To make sense of what’s really behind the fluctuations in the market, we are joined by economist Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, a Wall Street financial analyst and author of the book, "Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and ...

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Why Greece’s Debt is Illegal

By Saturday, July 11, 2015 Interviews , Permalink

  Capitalism and Government Debt at Odds in Greece (1/2) Michael Hudson says unlike personal and corporate debt, there is no legal framework for writing off government debt, so there is deliberate anarchy in place -   July 10, 2015   SHARMINI PERIES, EXEC. PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. Greece is in the situation they're in, burdened with a huge debt that they cannot pay, because there's no legal framework for writing down debt owed to the IMF, ECB, and intergovernmental bodies, writes Michael Hudson in an article he penned in Counterpunch. So where do we go from here? To answer this question, I'm joined by Michael Hudson. He's a former Wall Street economist and a distinguished research professor at the University of Missouri Kansas ...

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EU Infrastructure Undermines Sovereignty

By Wednesday, July 8, 2015 Articles , , Permalink

The Financial Attack on Greece: Where To From Here? The major financial problem tearing economies apart over the past century has lain more with official inter-governmental debt than with private-sector debt. That is why the global economy today faces a similar breakdown to 1929-31, when it became apparent that the volume of official inter-government debts could not be paid. The Versailles Treaty had imposed impossibly high reparations demands on Germany, and the United States imposed equally destructive demands on the Allies to use their reparations receipts to pay World War I arms debts to the U.S. Government. Legal procedures are well established to cope with corporate and personal bankruptcy. Courts write down personal and business debts either under “debtor in control” procedures or foreclosure, and creditors take a loss on loans ...

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Why No Means Yes

By Monday, July 6, 2015 Articles , , Permalink

Greece Rejects the Troika. Where Do We Go From Here? Just after 7 PM Greek time on Sunday, I was told that the “No” vote (Gk. Oxi) was winning approximately 60/40. The “opinion polls” showing a dead heat evidently were wrong. Bookies across Europe are reported to be losing their shirts for betting that the financial right wing could fool most Greeks into voting against their self-interest. The margin of victory shows that Greek voters were immune to media misrepresentation during the week-long run-up as to whether to accept the troika’s demand for austerity to be conducted on anti-labor lines. It should not have been so great a surprise. Voting age for the referendum was lowered to 18 years, and included army members. Faced with an unemployment rate of over 50 ...

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