FacebookTwitterGoogle+RedditEmail

The Looting Stage of Capitalism: Germany’s Assault on the IMF

by

Having successfully used the EU to conquer the Greek people by turning the Greek “leftwing” government into a pawn of Germany’s banks, Germany now finds the IMF in the way of its plan to loot Greece into oblivion.

The IMF’s rules prevent the organization from lending to countries that cannot repay the loan. The IMF has concluded on the basis of facts and analysis that Greece cannot repay.  Therefore, the IMF is unwilling to lend Greece the money with which to repay the private banks.

The IMF says that Greece’s creditors, many of whom are not creditors but simply bought up Greek debt at a cheap price in hopes of profiting, must write off some of the Greek debt in order to lower the debt to an amount that the Greek economy can service.

The banks don’t want Greece to be able to service its debt, because the banks intend to use Greece’s inability to service the debt in order to loot Greece of its assets and resources and in order to roll back the social safety net put in place during the 20th century.  Neoliberalism intends to reestablish feudalism—a few robber barons and many serfs: the One Percent and the 99 percent.

The way Germany sees it, the IMF is supposed to lend Greece the money with which to repay the private German banks.  Then the IMF is to be repaid by forcing Greece to reduce or abolish old age pensions, reduce public services and employment, and use the revenues saved to repay the IMF.

As these amounts will be insufficient, additional austerity measures are imposed that require Greece to sell its national assets, such as public water companies and ports and protected Greek islands to foreign investors, principallly the banks themselves or their major clients.

So far the so-called “creditors” have only pledged to some form of debt relief, not yet decided, beginning in 2 years.  By then the younger part of the Greek population will have emigrated and will have been replaced by immigrants fleeing Washington’s Middle Eastern and African wars who will have loaded up Greece’s unfunded welfare system.

In other words, Greece is being destroyed by the EU that it so foolishly joined and trusted.  The same thing is happening to Portugal and is also underway in Spain and Italy.  The looting has already devoured Ireland and Latvia (and a number of Latin American countries) and is underway in Ukraine.

The current newspaper headlines reporting an agreement being reached between the IMF and Germany about writing down the Greek debt to a level that could be serviced are false.  No “creditor” has yet agreed to write off one cent of the debt.  All that the IMF has been given by so-called “creditors” is unspecific “pledges” of an unspecified amount of debt writedown two years from now.

The newspaper headlines are nothing but fluff that provide cover for the IMF to succumb to presssure and violate its own rules. The cover lets the IMF say that a (future unspecified) debt writedown will enable Greece to service the remainder of its debt and, therefore, the IMF can lend Greece the money to pay the private banks.

In other words, the IMF is now another lawless Western institution whose charter means no more than the US Constitution or the word of the US government in Washington.

The media persists in calling the looting of Greece a “bailout.”

To call the looting of a country and its people a “bailout” is Orwellian.  The brainwashing is so successful that even the media and politicians of looted Greece call the financial imperialism that Greece is suffering a “bailout.”

Everywhere in the Western world a variety of measures, both corporate and governmental, have resulted in the stagnation of income growth. In order to continue to report profits, mega-banks and global corporations have turned to looting.  Social Security systems and public services are targeted for privatization, and indebtedness so accurately described by John Perkins in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, is used to set up entire countries to be looted.

We have entered the looting stage of capitalism. Desolation will be the result.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

More articles by:
Weekend Edition
June 03, 2016
Friday - Sunday
Diana Johnstone
Hillary Comes Out as the War Party Candidate
Andrew Levine
Hard Times Ahead for the Israel Lobby (Thank Sanders and Trump)
Rob Urie
Democrats in Dis-Array
Jeffrey St. Clair
Diamond Dogs: Clinton Family Jewels
Dan Falcone – Saul Isaacson
Anti-Intellectualism, Terrorism, and Elections in Contemporary Education: a Discussion with Noam Chomsky
Joyce Nelson
Is Clinton An “Environmental Champion”?
Richard W. Behan
The Chaos of a Hillary Clinton Presidency: Corporate Dominion and Open Rebellion
Ted Rall
Trump or Clinton, Screwed Either Way
Eric Mann
Sanders v. Clinton on Palestine: No Contest
Conn Hallinan
A Very Brazilian Coup
Robert Fantina
Of Gorillas and Palestinians
Robert Hunziker
The Climate and a Very Hot Election Year
Binoy Kampmark
Dreams of Control: Israel, Global Censorship and the Internet
Margaret Kimberley
Who’s the Fascist?
Ben Burgis
How Nate Silver Provides Political Cover for Hillary Clinton
Serge Halimi
Why the Far Right is on the Rise
Michael Brenner
Crime or Punishment: Why Wall Street Elites Don’t Do Time
Rick Wayman
Obama at Hiroshima: Courage in Words, But Not in Action
Frank Stricker
My Dinner with Isobel: Arguing About Jobs
Ann Garrison
Philly Says No to Poor People’s March at DNC: an Interview with Cheri Honkala
Peter Lee
Was MacArthur a Japanese Agent?
Rick Baum
Has Sanders Betrayed His Revolution by Endorsing Jane Kim?
Laura Carlsen
The Ayotzinapa Agenda
Rannie Amiri
Dismantling Civil Society in Bahrain
Terry Simons
Blaming Sanders: Why Democratic Party Unity is Officially Impossible
Kent Paterson
The Border’s Flint, Michigan?
Jackie Smith - Alfredo Lopez
Let’s Stop Google from Gobbling Up Our Schools
Julian Vigo
Sex Inequality and the £330,000 Lottery
David Macaray
4 Reasons Not to Fear Donald Trump
Uri Avnery
The Day of the Rhinos
Kristine Mattis
Toxic Curve Ball: Why Outdated Assumptions to Determine “Safe Levels” of Toxicants Forfeit the Game
Howard Lisnoff
The Human Toll of War
Colin Todhunter
Countering Pro-GMO Deceptions in the British Press
Christopher Brauchli
Trump isn’t the Only Clown in Town, Consider Alabama
Andrew Stewart
Marx and the Movement
Ralph Nader
Cheating Donald
Manuel E. Yepe
A Contradictory Vision of Small Business in Cuba
Robert Koehler
Poverty, Militarism and the Public Schools
Michael Doliner
Hello Out There
Missy Comley Beattie
Courage vs. Cowardice
Cesar Chelala
Mr. Trump is a Toy Soldier
CJ Hopkins
Trumpocalypse: America Saves the World Again!
Martin Billheimer
At the Limit of the Electric Pencil
Charles R. Larson
Crazed Monster’s Reparative Therapy
David Yearsley
Ceremonial Bugles: the Latest Insult to Veterans
FacebookTwitterGoogle+RedditEmail