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"A member state may obtain IMF credits only on the condition that it has 'a need to make the purchase because of its balance of payments or its reserve position or developments in its reserves.' "
However, despite ample foreign exchange reserves, IMF loans are offered "because of budgetary problems," precisely what it's not allowed to do. As a result, "when it comes to bailing out bankers," said Hudson, "rules are ignored" to save them and their counterparties from incurring losses. And it works the same way in America under the Fed, dispensing open-checkbook amounts to Wall Street on demand.
No wonder Hudson calls finance "a form of warfare," operating like pillaging armies, taking over land, infrastructure, other tangible assets, and all material wealth, devastating nations in the process, causing unemployment, poverty, neoserfdom, "demographic shrinkage, shortened life spans, emigration and capital flight."
Greece's business-friendly fiscal legacy, in fact, caused today's crisis, squeezing public spending in favor of the rich the rich, especially with sweetheart tax policies letting much of their income go undeclared.
Financial deception followed. On February 8, 2010, Der Spiegel writer Beat Balzli headlined, "How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt," saying:
In 2002, Goldman helped them borrow billions by circumventing Eurozone rules in return for mortgaging assets. Using creative accounting, debt was then hidden through off-balance sheet shenanigans, employing derivatives called "cross-currency swaps in which government debt issued in dollars and yen was swapped for euro debt for a certain period - to be exchanged back into the original currencies at a later date."
Debt entrapment followed, nations like Greece held hostage to repay it, the usual price being structural adjustment harshness, making a bad situation worse. In 2010, in return for a $150 billion loan, Papandreou imposed:
-- large public worker layoffs (around 10% overall);
-- public sector 10% wage cuts, including a 30% reduction in salary entitlements;
-- cutting civil service bonuses 20%;
-- freezing pensions;
-- raising the average retirement age two years; and
-- higher fuel, alcohol, tobacco, and luxury goods taxes, knowing much more lay ahead given Greece's worsening debt problem.
More bailout help is now needed in return for greater austerity, as well as selling off Greece's crown jewels as explained above. On June 24, New York Times writer Stephen Castle headlined, "Europeans Agree to a New Bailout for Greece with Conditions," saying:
The deal "came a day after Greece agreed with international creditors to more austerity measures (requiring parliamentary approval) as part of revised plans for 2011-15 aimed at" assuring bankers are first in line to get paid, popular and national interests be damned.
An agreement in principle expects half the funds offered to come from new loans, a fourth from state asset sales, and the remainder from private sector contributions.
