The Future of Greece and What it means to Americans

Most Americans don’t pay much attention to global events. We feel like what happens elsewhere doesn’t matter here. For most of our history, that has been true. But, there is a drama playing out in a place that could not seem more distant and irrelevant to our future.

From Russell Shorto for the New York Times,

“A quarter of all Greek companies have gone out of business since 2009, and half of all small businesses in the country say they are unable to meet payroll. The suicide rate increased by 40 percent in the first half of 2011. A barter economy has sprung up, as people try to work around a broken financial system. Nearly half the population under 25 is unemployed. Last September, organizers of a government-sponsored seminar on emigrating to Australia, an event that drew 42 people a year earlier, were overwhelmed when 12,000 people signed up. Greek bankers told me that people had taken about one-third of their money out of their accounts; many, it seems, were keeping what savings they had under their beds or buried in their backyards. One banker, part of whose job these days is persuading people to keep their money in the bank, said to me, “Who would trust a Greek bank?”

You may have heard that Greece has been attempting to negotiate a massive haircut on its bond debt in exchange for another round of job lay-offs and other draconian austerity measures likely to further cripple the countries withering economy.

Or, they go bankrupt in March.

Not much of a choice, and in the long run, it does not matter which road they choose. Both arrive at the same destination. One just takes longer and costs a lot more, but there is no long-term solution.

First consider the logic. Greece has a big bill coming due in March that it has no money to pay. The solution is to loan them more money while reducing their ability to pay back that loan.

Anyone who lends money to Greece does so knowing full well that Greece has absolutely no hope of ever paying it back. Who would do that? Who would be dumb enough to avert a small loan default in order to create a much bigger one down the road?

If you were thinking bankstas, you might be one of those global financial meltdown theorists; but you would also be right. Right now, billions of unregulated dollars are making side bets on the collapse of the Euro.

Shorting the Euro has been so obvious that it’s too crowded to be much of a play. But, if you are trading billions by computer algorithm, a penny here and a decimal point there can make you millions in bonuses.

Second, Greece is but one domino in a chain of precariously perched European nations waiting for a slight breeze to cause them to collapse upon each other.

Even if a deal is struck with Greece, the Euro will decline due to the poor economic prospects of its member nations. So, hedge funds are sticking with their euro shorts pretty secure that any day, the Euro will begin its inexorable march downward.

Hiding out of the spotlight just behind Greece are future candidates for default and rescue: Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy.

They will also need a bailout soon. But, citizens of more prosperous Euro countries are becoming angry that they have to suffer to support other countries. Better just to conquer them, they argue.

That smells like trouble.

Meanwhile, citizens of bailed-out countries reject the harsh austerity measures being forced on them. Look for a mass European exodus as residents are forced to emigrate to find work.

This is what the beginning of the end looks like. This is the massive global derivatives bubble starting to leak.

You can hear it hissing in the British House of Lords where Lord James of Blackheath is urging an official inquiry into the suspicious circumstances regarding a massive $16 trillion fraud implicating Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke.

One thing he points out quite correctly is that “The Federal Reserve Bank is neither a Federal Reserve nor a bank.”

It is instead a private corporation serving its own secret agenda with our money.

It isn’t clear what the meaning is of Lord James of Blackheath’s discovery but the Federal Reserve is already denying it so maybe it isn’t some sort of hoax.

What we do know is that the first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

Among the investigation’s key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. “No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president,” Sanders said.

You can see it in the resignations of more than 40 of the world’s highest ranking banking officials. They know the truth.

You can read it between the lines of the continuing ratings declines of agencies evaluating the implications of both Greek and European debt. They know the truth.

You can smell it in the tear gas and pepper spray, and gun smoke in some of the world’s oldest cities.

There will be violence. There will be violence in Greece. There will be violence in Portugal. There will be violence in Ireland, Spain, Italy, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.

There will be violence in China and almost every country ending in “stan”.

And here, in the good ole USA, I expect that fueled by hypocrisy and a two tiered justice system, spurred on by the AG’s in your face sell-out accord with banksta criminals and the ongoing whitewash of our date-raped economy, in desperation and frustration, Americans will take to the streets.

Here they will encounter noise cannons, chemical nerve agents, urban assault vehicles, and drones. All bought and paid for under the guise of fighting terrorism. Here is one thing I have learned—now that they have these things, they won’t let them sit idle.

There will be violence from coast to coast as one by one, even the most thick-headed finally have to confront a naked emperor and admit that a handful of people got rich destroying the global economy and they have no intention of fixing it, certainly not In America.

See, they don’t need us anymore and they, as sure as hell, are no longer willing to pay middle class American wages when they can hire child labor for a dollar a day.

Plus, we already have everything. They can make a ton more money selling shit to emerging third world consumers.

Greece. Bankstas and their apologists say this is what happens when you do too much for the less fortunate. But, anyone who knows anything at all about Greece knows that isn’t true. Bankstas justification for having all the money is that the rest of us are lazy.

The truth is that Greece is the first of many examples of what will happen when the Pandora’s Box of debt securitization and derivatives is finally flung open.

Economies have already collapsed and what we are seeing are just the early symptoms of what will only get worse.

Greece, like Las Vegas, is a global vacation destination. But, unlike Las Vegas, what happens in Greece doesn’t stay in Greece.

George W. Mantor
The Real Estate Professor
Founder, American Foreclosure Resistance Movement
http://www.realtown.com/gwmantor/blog

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” — Mahatma Gandhi

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