Greece Is Now Just A Political Issue
Greece paid off the IMF yesterday with its IMF reserves. Is that a big deal? Whatever you may want to read into this, it’s been obvious for years that Greece needs major debt restructuring if it wants to move forward and have a future as a country -let alone a member of the eurozone-. Instead, the EU/troika anno 2010 decided to bail out German and French and Wall Street banks (I know there’s an overlap)- instead of restructuring the debts they incurred with insane bets on Greece and its EU membership- and put the costs squarely on the shoulders of the Greek population.
This, as I said many times before, was not an economic decision; it was always entirely political. It’s also, by the way, therefore a decision the ECB should have fiercely protested, since it’s independent and a-political and it can’t afford to be dragged into such situations. But the ECB didn’t protest. And ever since the deed was done, Brussels presents it as if it were as unavoidable as Noah building the Ark. It’s not. It’s still just another decision to put banks before people.
And in this case the people have come out on the very short end of a very long stick. That’s what the Greek discussions have been about ever since Syriza was elected, with a substantial majority, to be the government in Athens. And no matter how many times how many people may claim Greece lived above its means for years, it’s obvious that the unemployed and the hungry children and the elderly without health care did not.
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