To fully comprehend the enormity of the crime now being committed against Greece, one must understand that when banks lend money, including the international banks like the IMF, ECB etc., there is no actual transfer of assets from lender to borrower. The banks just credit their own accounts, and give the sum to the borrower. Thus "new" money comes into being. The borrower must then earn that amount plus interest from the real economy and hand it over to the bank. Consequently there is always a systemic shortage of money as more is pulled out (the interest) than was injected by the loan, and businesses go broke, mortgages go into default etc.; and it creates horrific poverty for most of the people on the planet It goes without saying that the human misery they create is of no concern to the banks, success for them is measured in profits.
Greece, like many nations, issue bonds in order to fund government spending. These were purchased by sovereign wealth funds (i.e. by other governments), big banks etc. Some of these bonds are soon to come due, and Greece doesn't have enough money to cover them. So they are seeking new loans.
It is not Greece that stands to lose from default, but their creditors. Greece will receive a bad credit rating, but such things are easily reversed when there's an upswing in the economy. Capital has shown time and time again that it can be forgiving, if there's a buck to be made in magnanimity.
So the banks are agreeing to create more "new" money to enable Greece to pay them for bonds which were originally purchased with "new" money. In reality, these loans are a windfall for the banks.
In order to secure these new loans, Greece is being forced to accept grotesquely punitive terms, including the sell-off of valuable Greek real estate, which the banks will then buy with more "new" money. According to Demetri Kofinis, interviewed in the video below, most Greeks do not support the plan and prefer to go into default, but their "socialist" government and it allies are betraying them.
Here are some of the details of the Faustian bargain being foisted on the Greek people by their government and the gang-bankers:
PUBLIC SECTOR CUTS
* The public sector wage bill will be cut by 770m euros in 2011, 600m euros in 2012, 448m euros in 2013, 300m euros in 2014 and 71m euros in 2015.
* Nominal public sector wages will be cut by 15%.
* Wages of employees of state-owned enterprises will be cut by 30% and there will be a cap on wages and bonuses.
* All temporary contracts for public sector workers will be terminated.
* Only one in 10 civil servants retiring this year will be replaced and only one in 5 in coming years.
SPENDING CUTS
* Defence spending will be cut by 200m euros in 2012, and by 333m euros each year from 2013 to 2015.
* Health spending will be cut by 310m euros this year and a further 1.81bn euros in 2012-2015, mainly by lowering regulated prices for drugs.
* Public investment will be cut by 850m euros this year.
* Subsidies for local government will be reduced.
* Education spending will be cut by closing or merging 1,976 schools.
CUTTING BENEFITS
* Social security will be cut by 1.09bn euros this year, 1.28bn euros in 2012, 1.03bn euros in 2013, 1.01bn euros in 2014 and 700m euros in 2015.
* There will be more means-testing and some benefits will be cut.
* The government hopes to collect more social security contributions by cracking down on evasion and undeclared work.
* The statutory retirement age will be raised to 65, 40 years of work will be needed for a full pension and benefits will be linked more closely to lifetime contributions.
PRIVATISATION
* The government aims to raise 50bn euros from privatisations by 2015, including:
* Selling stakes this year in the betting monopoly OPAP, the lender Hellenic Postbank, port operators Piraeus Port and Thessaloniki Port as well as Thessaloniki Water.
* It has agreed to sell 10% of Hellenic Telecom to Deutsche Telekom for about 400m euros.
* Next year, the government plans to sell stakes in Athens Water, refiner Hellenic Petroleum, electricity utility PPC, lender ATEbank as well as ports, airports, motorway concessions, state land and mining rights.
* It plans further sales to raise 7bn euros in 2013, 13bn euros in 2014 and 15bn euros in 2015.
[1]
There are also sharp increases in VAT tax which will hurt Greece's tourism business, its largest.
Here's a short list of what's being expropriated from the people of Greece by the international banking vampires as reported by their most faithful of media loyalists:
ATHENS—Debt-strapped Greece is about to hold an epic yard sale.
For the taking: four wide-body Airbus jets, a state lottery, a state horse-racing concession and sports book, stakes in a casino, several ports, a national post office, two water companies, a nickel miner and smelter, a munitions maker, electricity and gas monopolies, a telecommunications operator, shares in a half dozen banks, hundreds of miles of roads, a defunct airport, old Olympic venues and thousands of acres of land, including magnificent stretches of Greece's famed coast.
That wasn't what Greece had in mind when it began wrangling with other euro-zone countries and the International Monetary Fund for a second dose of bailout money. But the nation's rescuers are leaning hard on Greece to come up with fresh cash. Selling off government goodies, the rescuers hope, will raise...[2]
Rescuers? Exsanguinaters is more like it.
And of course the imperialist press is doing its part to hasten Greece's demise:
Making the Argument for Greece’s Austerity Plan
The Greek Parliament is prepared to vote on austerity measures on Wednesday, and its people have been gathering in demonstrations and strikes to protest the cuts. Here is an open letter explaining why members of Parliament would be crazy to vote no:
Dear Greeks,
The anger you feel about your plight is understandable. You are staring at several unpalatable options, all of which will involve big cuts in living standards for years to come. But the choices are not equally bad. You must avoid an emotional reaction that leaves you in an even worse state. And you should ostracize those who resort to violence.
One option is to persuade your politicians to say no to the austerity plan set forth by the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund. That proposal is not perfect. But rejecting it outright would be childish.[3]
Childish. It's insults like these that start revolutions.
When he refers to those who resort to violence he doesn't mean the police presumably.
Some straight talk: Here is a video in which the interviewee rightly identifies the actions of international capital as a "financial occupation" of his country.
Here's a link to many short videos. They are in Greek but have English captions underneath. Interesting viewing.
http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/
So what we have here is the big banks agreeing to lend conjured money to Greece to pay its debts to the same banks who conjured the money to buy the bonds in the first place. But they are only willing to do so if Greece sells off its best assets, and agrees to let the international banking cartel run the Greek economy, including such essential and important tasks as tax collection. In other words, the gang-banker predators are demanding that Greece hand over the keys.
Let us call this what it is--conquest.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13940431?print=true
[2] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304231204576405861389511594.html?mod=e2tw
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/business/29views.html?_r=2
