{"id":4199,"date":"2015-01-07T14:17:19","date_gmt":"2015-01-07T19:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4199"},"modified":"2015-01-07T14:17:19","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T19:17:19","slug":"eu-showdown-greece-takes-on-the-vampire-squid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=4199","title":{"rendered":"EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire Squid"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><a title=\"EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire\u00a0Squid\" href=\"http:\/\/ellenbrown.com\/2015\/01\/06\/eu-showdown-greece-takes-on-the-vampire-squid\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire\u00a0Squid<\/a><\/h4>\n<p>Greece and the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the EU, and the European Central Bank) are in a dangerous game of chicken. The Greeks have been threatened with a\u00a0<strong>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/news\/2014-12-29\/greece-turmoil-after-third-failed-presidential-vote-means-snap-elections-deck\">Cyprus-Style prolonged bank holiday<\/a>\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>if they \u201cvote wrong.\u201d But they have been bullied for too long and are saying \u201cno more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A return to the polls was triggered in December, when the Parliament rejected Prime Minister\u00a0Antonis\u00a0Samaras\u2019 pro-austerity candidate for president. In a general election, now set for January 25<sup>th<\/sup>, the EU-skeptic, anti-austerity, leftist Syriza party is likely to prevail. Syriza captured a 3% lead in the polls following mass public discontent over the harsh austerity measures Athens was forced to accept in return for a \u20ac240 billion bailout.<\/p>\n<p>Austerity has plunged the economy into conditions worse than in the Great Depression.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.opednews.com\/articles\/The-Greek-Depression-the-by-William-K-Black--Austerity_Austerity_Austerity_Bailout-141231-49.html\">As Professor Bill Black observes<\/a>, the question is not why the Greek people are rising up to reject the barbarous measures but what took them so long.<\/p>\n<p>Ireland was similarly forced into an EU bailout with painful austerity measures attached. A series of letters has recently come to light showing that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessworld.ie\/livenews.htm?a=3230954\">the Irish government was effectively blackmailed<\/a>\u00a0into it, with the threat that the ECB would otherwise cut off liquidity funding to Ireland\u2019s banks. The same sort of threat has been leveled at the Greeks, but this time they are not taking the bait.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire\u00a0Squid Greece and the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the EU, and the European Central Bank) are in a dangerous game of chicken. The Greeks have been threatened with a\u00a0\u201cCyprus-Style prolonged bank holiday\u201d\u00a0if they \u201cvote wrong.\u201d But they have been bullied for too long and are saying \u201cno more.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2015,233,279,280,282,1167,418,434],"class_list":["post-4199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bailout","tag-ecb","tag-eu","tag-euro","tag-european-central-bank","tag-greece","tag-imf","tag-international-monetary-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4200,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4199\/revisions\/4200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}