Note: the data in the following article takes into account the state of Greek economy and society before the recent corona-crisis. According to the IMF, Greece will suffer a greater depression than all other EU members because of the pandemic, but nothing is certain for the time being. In any case, the economic and social results of the crisis will make things in Greece much worse than already described in our article.
Ιn May 2010, the EU, the ECB, the IMF and the Greek government signed a Loan agreement describing an unprecedented “bail-out program” for Greece. The stated purpose of the program was to “save” Greece from bankruptcy and “help” it redress its economy and its public finances while paying back its loans, mostly from European banks.
The “Greek question” has been by far the main subject debated by the EU leaders for nearly ten years. The Greek “experiment” was supposed not only to “solve” the Greek problems, but also to create a new “paradigm” for the whole of the Eurozone. Angela Merkel herself went on record on May 10, 2010, the day the program came into being, to explain that other European countries will see what will happen to Greeks and they will be more careful in the future.
The European and international importance of the Greek program exceeds by far the importance of the Greek economy itself. Punishing Greece and obliging it to repay all the exorbitant debt it had contracted was meant to set an example of a historic significance for the solution of the Debt question by satisfying all Bankers’ claims and safeguarding the power of international Finance, a power which has already surpassed the power of the States and transforming the EU itself.
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In a way, the economic and political war launched against Greece (and to a lesser extent against the so called PIIGS) by the western financial and political elites has served as the introduction to the huge struggle between European peoples and Finance, which will decide the fate of our civilization, somehow in the same way the Spanish civil war (1936-39) was the overture to WWII in Europe.
The Greeks themselves were never asked if they wanted this program. The Papandreou government agreed to it in spite of the fact that it was elected on a completely different program. Georges Papandreou himself has gone to great lengths in an interview prior to his election in order to exclude any probability of bringing the IMF into Greek affairs. The only time Greeks were asked if they wanted this program was during the 2015 referendum and their answer was an unequivocal No. Most legal specialists believe the imposition of this program on Greece runs counter to the Greek constitution and legislation, to the treaties regulating the functioning of the EU, to fundamental provisions of the international law and also to the statues of the IMF itself.
As a result of the harsh treatment reserved for the Greek people the prestige and the political capital of the EU and of Germany have fallen sharply and centrifugal tendencies greatly increased in all European Union. The Greek referendum and the refusal of European governments and authorities to respect it have contributed a lot to the Brexit vote and to the rise of radical parties of the Left and even more of the Far Right all over Europe.
In the summer of 2018, the European authorities and the Greek government announced that the “Greek bail-out program” had ended. Of course it was nothing else than one more in a line of huge lies by Germany and EU authorities through the decade of the Greek crisis. What really ended in 2018 was the obligation of the “creditors” to finance debt reimbursement of loans. The clearly neocolonial terms of the loan Agreements are valid and some will remain even valid for 99 years (!!!), during which time Greece will not be a sovereign country, but rather some kind of debt colony. What we don’t know is if there will be Greeks in Greece and, if they do exist, at what point in the next 60 or 100 years they will leave.
On the occasion of ten years since the signing of the first loan agreement with Greece, we will try to describe here for our readers the main results of this program which shaped the direction of the EU and which will have a huge influence on European politics for years or decades to come.
The Greek program did not end, neither did the Greek Crisis. This was a huge deception and another big lie by Western leaders
The Eurogroup (the Finance Ministers of the EU) decided to stop financing the Greek bail-out program. Then, they began to claim that both the program and the Greek crisis are over.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, announcements by European and Greek politicians concerning the end of the bail out program or of the Greek crisis are presenting us with nothing more than a gigantic Potemkin village, reflecting both the enormous impasse of the EU and the fantastic progress of totalitarianism of the Western world. Politicians are more or less appointed by bankers (for example, Emmanuel Macron by Rothschilds), the same bankers control the press and the “public intellectuals” and, as a result of all that, politicians can claim the most stupid things and unsubstanciated facts without running the risk of appearing ridiculous.
The program will remain very much in place and it is anybody’s guess if Greece will be able to finance itself from the markets in 2021, as suggested by Eurogroup’s predictions.
Up to now, all, without exception, EU economic predictions about Greece have failed miserably. That means that either European economists and authorities are completely incompetent, or, alternatively, they know very well the destructive consequences of their program to Greece and are hiding them behind erroneous “calculations” and “predictions”, which permit to them to say a posteriori they made mistakes, not crimes.
Greek obligations under the bail-out program will remain valid until 2060 (!!!) at a minimum, in spite of the supposed and publicised “end of the program”. Greek sovereign debt remains “extremely non sustainable” according to the IMF. In reality, what Eurogroup did was postpone once more the final decision on Greece and the probable execution of its “death sentence”, while keeping the country well inside a debt “Death Spiral”, as George Soros once put it.
Greece was obliged to agree to completely unrealistic, never realized in any country, primary budget surpluses of 3.5% until 2022 and 2.2% on average from 2022 to 2060 (now those figures are being reviewed because of the coronavirus, but they are still indicative of the direction. By the way, even if Merkel will permit some relaxation of austerity for one or two years, the sheer amount of the Greek debt will bring things back to normal very quickly).
Aside from being totally unrealistic, these numbers mean a perpetual austerity and near-stagnation of the country for 40 years. Their totally unrealistic character became also apparent because of the coronavirus. It is becoming difficult to make predictions for six months, how can one make predictions for the next 40 years!? It is a ridiculous aberration to draft a program based on assuming decades of complete stability for Greece, Europe and world economy (or, again, it is a way to hide a premeditated crime behind supposed errors).
If Greece will not obey the rules, its few remaining state assets, which were transferred to a special fund for 99 years, will be sold automatically and other penalties will be applied.
Greece will remain under very tight supervision of the EU until 2060. The IMF will remain in the program, but as an “advisor”. That means that its policies will remain but not its money. It will keep destroying Greeks and Greece, but it won’t be considered responsible for its criminal activity! We would prefer to use purely economic terms rather than those from criminology, but we believe it is contrary to the truth to describe a crime as a simply bad, erroneous economic policy.
Germany and the EU, acting on behalf of European banks and the general interests of the “Empire of Finance” of international financial capital, have refused any debt relief, which would be the only solution to the Greek problem back in 2010 and remains the only solution now. We remind our readers that this method was applied to Germany itself in the past (http://www.defenddemocracy.press/why-the-1953-cancellation-of-german-debt-wont-be-reproduced-for-greece-and-developing-countries/), but also to Poland, Iraq and other western clients. The fact that Greece has been one of the oldest EU members or a historical nation, birthplace of the notion of democracy, did not alleviate the furor with which Berlin and the IMF insisted in a program destroying the country without solving its problems or making the Greek Debt sustainable. Germany refused even a French proposal to include a clause postponing the debt service if Greece does not produce a development permitting the repayment of the debt.
During the Coronavirus pandemic, the Greek government asked the Eurogroup to permit Athens to postpone for three months the confiscation of homes of people who cannot pay their loans to the banks. The Eurogroup Ministers refused in spite of the real danger of tens of thousands of Greeks being evicted from their homes in the midst of the pandemic and of the socio-economic crisis.