It appears that the odds of a deal between Greece and its creditors are growing increasingly smaller.
The main sticking point seems to be whether Greece is to receive debt forgiveness. nbsp; As CNN <http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/12/news/economy/greece-bailout-europe-conditions/index.html>reports this morning: Greece wants creditors to <http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/29/news/economy/greece-banks-internation-exposure/index.html?iid=EL>restructure its debt. Europe could give it even more time to pay back loans, and cut already very low rates of interest, but that may not be enough. Some eurozone countries insist they can't go further and cancel Greek debt outright. That in turn could kill a deal. Some eurozone countries say they'll only back a third bailout if the IMF takes part. The IMF has made clear that it will only participate if the Europeans agree to restructure Greece's debt.
Canceling Greece's debt outright, however, would be political sucide for Andrea Merkel, and might end up seeing her facing criminal charges.
For if Greece's debt ends up being forgiven, then Merkel's illegal "cash for trash" scheme, in which she used hard-woking Germans' taxpayer money to buy Greek bonds from private-sector banks at face value (bonds which at the time of the "cash for trash" exchanges were, in the markets, selling for only about 30% of face value), could see the light of day.
We're already beginning to see some signs of this.
And, surprisingly, these are appearing even in the Anglo-American press. An example is <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/greece-crisis-how-has-greece-spent-its-money-and-who-does-it-still-owe-2428bn-to-10355847.html>this recent article from The Independent: Almost all the money owed by Greece has been used to pay off its lenders, with only 10 per cent of it going to the Greek people, according to the Jubilee Debt Campaign. "Greece is right not to pay the IMF. The IMF should never have lent the moneyin the first place, with over 90% of it being used to bail out European financial institutions," Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign. Clifton said that in 2010 when the IMF loans were agreed, developing countries on the IMF Board argued that banks should share in the costs of the crisis they had helped to create. They argued banks should cancel some of the debt, rather than bailing the banks out with IMF loans. Europe and the US overruled them. Ever since, the Greek government has been in crisis. "Only if the debts stop being paid, whether through default or debt cancellation, is there a route out of this crisis," she added. A Jubilee study has shown that since 2010, the IMF, European governments and the European Central Bank has lent 252 billion to Greece. Over the same period, 232.9 b9 billion has been spent on debt payments, bailing out Greek banks and paying 'sweeteners' to speculators to get them to accept the 2012 debt restructuring. This means less than 10% of the money has been used for anything else. Back in 2010, nearly all government debt was owed to private entities such as banks. Today 78 per cent is owed to the public sector, primarily people in other Eurozone countries, but also throughout the world through the IMF's loans.
Then there's this recent program on German television which enumerates and discusses the numerous laws Merkel broke in order to pull off her "cash for trash" scam on the German people:
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Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in. ~ Leonard Cohen
Realize that little things lead to bigger things ... And there s a wonderful parable in the New Testament: The sower scatters seeds. Some seeds fall in the pathway and get stamped on, and they don t grow. Some fall on the rocks, and they don t grow. But some seeds fall on fallow ground, and they grow and multiply a thousandfold. Who knows where some good little thing that you ve done may bring results years later that you never dreamed of. ~ Pete Seeger
