My Big Fat Greek
Minister... Αναφορά σε
ένα
''παχύδερμο'' των πολιτικών
συμμοριών Ελλάδας
Wall Street Journal: Το Grexit θα επιβληθεί στην Ελλάδα από τον λαό της
Bloomberg: Πλασματική η ευφορία για την ανάκαμψη της ελληνικής οικονομίας
Ανάπτυξη να ...''φάνε και οι κότες''
Συνέχισε να αυξάνεται το ελληνικό χρέος, φτάνοντας στα 309,357 δισ. ευρώ, στο τέλος Μαρτίου 2013, από 305,5 δισ. ευρώ που ήταν στις 31 Δεκεμβρίου 2012, σύμφωνα με τα στοιχεία του υπουργείου Οικονομικών.
By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine
It
wasn't too difficult picking out the Fat Bastard in the crowd of
Russian models, craven moochers and media mavens. Besides, Fat Bastard
and I were both desperate for coffee and heading for the same empty urn.
(We'd both signed on for Kazakhstan's annual Eurasia Media Forum, a
kind of Burning Man festival for Eastern oilgarchs and their media camp
followers.)
Now, it is my policy never to mention an interlocutor's weight, nor
question the legitimacy of their birth, given my own vulnerabilities. (A
would-be groupie told me, "You could do a few sit-ups, you know." Yes, I
know.)
But this particular Fat Bastard is asking for it. I had tried to put
the belly of this beast out of my thoughts, but I still had a New York Times story folded in my pocket that begins:
ATHENS – As an elementary school principal, Leonidas Nikas is
used to seeing children play, laugh and dream about the future. But
recently he has seen something altogether different, something he
thought was impossible in Greece: children picking through school trash
cans for food; needy youngsters asking playmates for leftovers; and an
11-year-old boy, Pantelis Petrakis, bent over with hunger pains.
Fat Bastard – or Theodoros Pangalos, thinks the little Greek kiddies should stop
belly-aching. Pangalos, as you can see from the photo below, is not
bent over with hunger pains. In fact, he looks more likely to be bent
over with labour pains, but in truth he probably just can't bend over at
all.
Pangalos is best known for blaming the working people of Greece for
the horror and the hunger among the ruins of what was once Greece's
economy. However, it is, of course, not his fault; until last year, and
through the core of the crisis, he was just Greece's Deputy Prime
Minister – why should he be held accountable for anything?
Minister Pangalos is much loved by Europe's banking chieftains, by
vulture speculators and by Prussian President Angela Merkel because
they've got themselves a gigantic Greek who will mouth their mantra:
that his nation's sudden collapse can be blamed squarely on
olive-pit-spitting, lazy-ass Greeks who won't work more than three hours
a week, then retire while they're still teenagers to swill
state-subsidised ouzo.
Pangalos leads the Fifth Column of Greeks calling to accept Germany's
terms of economic surrender: austerity, meaning cuts in food
allowances, in pensions, in jobs. As of this week, more than one in four
Greeks (27 percent) are out of work.
While we hunted for caffeine, Fat Bastard told me that anyone who
complains about the austerity diktat, "Is a fascist or a communist or a
conspiracy theorist." He didn't tell me which of these three categories
the 11-year-old kids complaining of hunger pains fell into.
Just for the record, those Greeks who can get a job, work 619 more hours per year (see table) than the average German (and way, way more than Britons or Americans as well).
But in the world according to Pangalos, Merkel and poobahs of the
media, Greece went to hell in a handbag because the entire nation
suddenly turned into work-shirking grifters.
But there's another explanation for wrack and ruin: Greece is a crime
scene. And its working people are not the perpetrators of the crime,
they are the victims – scammed, defrauded, their national industries
looted and their treasury drained by financial flim-flam.
In
2001, Greece dropped the drachma for the euro. The drachma was good
enough for Aristotle and very good for tourism, Greece's main industry.
But when sun-and-fun was re-priced in euros, tourists swam across the
Adriatic for kofte meatballs priced in dirt-cheap Turkish lira. Pre-euro
tourist visits to Greece outnumbered those to Turkey by millions; but
by last year, it was the just the opposite, with two-thirds of tourists tanning in Turkey.
With its Treasury bleeding hard currency, the government of Minister
Pangalos' PASOK joined together with the opposition in a complex
international currency kiting operation to conceal the losses from the
public and, most importantly, from the European Central Bank.
Why the cover-up of the deficit? The answer is that the euro is more
than a currency: it is a straitjacket, a set of constricting rules that,
for example, prohibit any euro nation from running a deficit of more
than 3 percent of GDP.
That's impossible in a recession – not to mention plain insane – as
it requires cutting public spending when spending is needed most. The
USA, China, Brazil, India – the nations that pulled the world from
depression's brink – all ran deficits way over the nutty 3 percent cap. I
asked finance wiz Nomi Prins to calculate America's debt-to-GDP ratio
using euro rules, and she estimates that Obama's deficits are now way
down from recession's peak – to 10.2 percent of GDP.
Greece, fearing expulsion from the euro loony bin, turned to Goldman
Sachs. For a mere $400 million in fees, plus golden sacks of ill-gotten
trading gain, the investment bank was willing to cook the nation's books
via a complex set of derivatives transactions. [For the particulars of
the derivatives con, see How Goldman Sacked Greece.]
Since the con was busted open in 2009, the Greek public has had to
pay cheated bondholders a premium to insure against default of the
nation's debts. The credit default insurance costs an average of $14,000
(£9,218) per family per year.
When I was a racketeering investigator working with the US Justice
Department, in the days when we pretended America still had justice, we
would have called the derivatives trick a "fraud on the market". We'd
handcuff the perpetrators, lock 'em up, or, at the least, make them
cough up their purloined profits.
So, should Goldman pay up? Not according to Pangalos, because – in
the worldview of our rulers – the victims of the scam are as guilty as
the victimisers. Pangalos even put it into a famous (or infamous) motto:
mazi-ta-fagame. That's Greek for "We all ate it together".
But the visible evidence suggests Pangalos, not Pantelis – the kid doubled over with stomach pain – ate all the pies.
The mass privatisation of public property at wiener schnitzel prices
has German speculators dipping in their spoons as well, though the
Federation of German industry is complaining about Greece's own
"princes" gobbling up the assets.
I
was going to invite Minister Pangalos to lunch to test his theories,
but he left in a pachydermic huff when I asked him about Geir Haarde.
Haarde, the former Prime Minister of Iceland, was found guilty of
concealing his knowledge of the trickery used by Iceland's banks before
they melted that nation's finances.
I asked Fat Bastard, "Do you think you should be in prison for" similar conduct in the Greek government?
Maybe that's why Minister Pangalos didn't want to go to lunch with me.
* * * * * * * *
Greg Palast’s book Vultures' Picnic (Constable
Robinson UK/Penguin USA), including chapters on Greece and Goldman,
will be published in Greek in early fall by Livani. Download the first
chapter, Goldfinger, and videos at VulturesPicnic.org.
Greg Palast's other books are the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.
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