IMF

“They just wanted to take a bat to them,” said former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, referring to the attitude of European leaders towards debt-laden Greece in February of 2010, three months before the country’s first bailout. Mr. Geithner, Treasury Secretary from 2009 until 2013, was attending a meeting of the finance ministers and central bankers of the Group of Seven (G7) nations: the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada.

Edward Harrisonby KenI encountered Edward Harrison's cute little graph in Ian Welsh's June 25 post, "Greece and the Emperor's New Clothes," in which Ian noted that a commenter, markfromireland, had pointe

Some might think it strange for a country founded on a proposition of equality to send so much aid to regimes that are doing everything they can to disfigure it. Of course, slipping on one’s Orwellian eye wear, it makes perfect sense. Freedom is Slavery, not just in Oceania. And that is the proper perspective in which to digest the perversity of market incentives in three specific areas: foreign aid, defense contractor stocks, and—that bête noire of peace—the stock price of oil companies.

The people of Greece have rejected austerity with an emphatic “No” in a referendum. The corporate media reacted predictably. Reuters depicted Greeks as defying Europe.
The language in the Reuters piece was palpably biased. It portrayed Greeks as having “overwhelmingly rejected conditions of a rescue package” [italics added] put together by “creditors” and “lenders.”

By Finian Cunningham – Sputnik – 29.06.2015 Decades of exorbitant military spending account for Greece’s present downfall under an Olympian-sized debt. European governments and news media portray the problem of Greece’s financial woes as public spending profligacy. The truth is that Greece’s debt mountain has been incurred from years of wasteful military splurging. That is […]

By Boris Kagarlitsky | CounterPunch | July 2, 2015 For five years now Europe has been troubled by the problem of the Greek debt. It all began with a relatively modest sum estimated at 15-20 billion euros, though at the time coping even with this debt seemed beyond the country’s capacity. Instead of simply writing […]

In what could hopefully lead to a significant change in the nature of Third World development financing, a new research paper from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) admits that the strong pro-capitalist policies at the centre of its development support activities do not work.

Miami Herald caption: "People walk through the streets after Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla gave a speech regarding the government's $72 billion debt on June 29, 2015 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The most optimistic scenario shows that Greece would face an unsustainable debt in 2030 even if it agreed to the package of tax increases and spending cuts proposed by the European commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF in exchange for a five-month €15.5bn loan from its creditors.
The post Austerity not enough to save Greece – leaked IMF documents appeared first on BSNEWS.

Like Marathon, Thermopylae, Plateau, and Mycale roughly 2,500 years ago, Western freedom again depends on Greece. Today Washington and its empire of European vassal states are playing the part of the Persian Empire, and belatedly the Greeks have formed a government, Syriza, that refuses to submit to the Washington Empire.