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Emet m'Tsiyon

Friday, July 03, 2015

The Eurozone Put Greece in a Debt Straitjacket - Was It Deliberate?

It's obvious to almost everybody that the Eurozone never "rescued" or "bailed out" Greece from its debt crisis in 2010. Instead, the Eurozone or Eurogroup put Greece into a debt straitjacket or debt trap in which Greece's state debt soared because it was left to borrow on the open market where the interest rates demanded by private investors/lenders were sure to rise fast. Later, but too late, it was openly realized  --about 2012-- that Greece needed to borrow on easy terms because its state debt was soaring. But Greece was already in the debt straitjacket or trap from which it cannot get out. Someone estimated that it would take 180 years for Greece to pay off the debt mountain.

Now evidence has emerged that suggests --not absolute proof to be sure, which is not likely to emerge for many years-- that putting Greece into a debt trap may have been deliberate German policy. The purpose seems to have been to use the Greek example as a whip to scare other economically weak Eurozone member states. German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is quoted as telling US secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, as reported by Peter Coy of Bloomberg Businessweek:
The upshot is that events are unfolding roughly as foreseen by the wily German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble: The disaster befalling Greece is scaring other European nations into following the straight and narrow. According to former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in his book Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, Schäuble told him in 2012 that—in Geithner’s words—some people were arguing “that letting Greece burn would make it easier to build a stronger Europe with a more credible firewall.”

This surmise of mine explains a lot, if true. Why do Germany and the Eurozone keep on insisting that Greece pay off debts made at inflated interest rates, debts which it cannot pay off for more than a century?
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Also see here, and below --
The economist Paul Krugman pointed out that Greece was in: "a vicious circle, with fears of default threatening to become a self-fulfilling prophecy."  here. Interestingly, former Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, also pointed out that Greece was in a "vicious circle" that it should be helped to get out of. He favored mutualization of state debt within the Eurozone.
European hypocrisy about human rights according to Michael Rubin on the Commentary blog, "The Lie that Europe Cares about Human Rights"  [here]

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