{"id":9722,"date":"2015-07-05T06:52:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T11:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9722"},"modified":"2015-07-05T06:52:14","modified_gmt":"2015-07-05T11:52:14","slug":"as-the-eurozone-teeters-the-imf-does-something-weird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9722","title":{"rendered":"As the Eurozone Teeters, the IMF Does Something Weird"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/07\/04\/as-the-eurozone-teeters-the-imf-does-something-weird\/\" target=\"_blank\">As the Eurozone Teeters, the IMF Does Something Weird<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><em><strong>Wolf here<\/strong>:\u00a0the IMF\u2019s job is\u00a0to bail out holders of sovereign bonds issued in a currency the issuer doesn\u2019t control and can\u2019t devalue (Mexico issuing bonds in dollars, Greece issuing bonds in euros). These\u00a0bondholders are mostly banks.\u00a0In a debt crisis, the IMF bails out these banks by buying their troubled\u00a0bonds and\u00a0then\u00a0tightens the belts around the little guys so that the country can\u00a0service the debt it\u00a0now owes the IMF.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>What happened in Greece?\u00a0The banks that used to hold Greek debt have sold most of it to the European institutions, and some of it\u00a0to the IMF; they have been bailed out years ago. The IMF has done its insidious job.\u00a0Now mostly taxpayers are on the hook. But the IMF doesn\u2019t give a crap about taxpayers.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>By Don Quijones,\u00a0<\/strong>Spain &amp; Mexico, editor at\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><u>WOLF STREET<\/u><\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>As Europe teeters on a precipice of its own making, some people are beginning to wonder whether the IMF might have somehow discovered it has a conscience. Strange as it may sound, rumors of the IMF\u2019s do-gooding began spreading on Friday after the Fund published a damning report on the sustainability of Greece\u2019s finances and the Troika\u2019s woeful mismanagement of the country\u2019s debt crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, the report was deeply critical of Syriza\u2019s negotiation strategies and governance of Greece. But the report\u2019s real victims were the IMF\u2019s two Troika partners, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission, both of whom had fought to prevent its publication.<\/p>\n<p>The latest developments confirm what I argued four months ago in \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/03\/07\/is-the-imf-about-to-make-greece-an-offer-it-cant-refuse\/\" target=\"_blank\">Is the IMF About to Make Greece an Offer It Can\u2019t Refuse?<\/a>\u201d: namely that the IMF could well prove to be an unlikely, albeit temporary, ally for Syriza. Now, by publishing its Debt Sustainability Analysis at the best\/worst possible time, the Fund has massively improved Syriza\u2019s chances of achieving a no-vote on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the Eurozone Teeters, the IMF Does Something Weird Wolf here:\u00a0the IMF\u2019s job is\u00a0to bail out holders of sovereign bonds issued in a currency the issuer doesn\u2019t control and can\u2019t devalue (Mexico issuing bonds in dollars, Greece issuing bonds in euros). These\u00a0bondholders are mostly banks.\u00a0In a debt crisis, the IMF bails out these banks by [&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":[951,5660,233,279,280,281,1167,418,2236,2868,4255],"class_list":["post-9722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-currency","tag-don-quijones","tag-ecb","tag-eu","tag-euro","tag-europe","tag-greece","tag-imf","tag-syriza","tag-troika","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9722","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=9722"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9723,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9722\/revisions\/9723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}