Greece

NOVANEWS by Stephen Lendman   Greece is being systematically raped, pillaged and destroyed. Bankers demand it. What they want, they get, no matter the human toll and economic ruin. Standing armies pale by comparison. Financial oligarchs wage war by other means and take no prisoners. Greece is Exhibit A. More on it below. Last July, Christine Lagarde became IMF managing director. She replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Spurious attempted rape allegations forced him out. In fact, he was targeted for supporting more responsible IMF policies. Bankers wanted his head and got it. Lagarde’s mandate is making IMF policy meaner and tougher. Straightaway, she backed harsh austerity measures banks demand. They include debt peonage and forcing nations to place money master interests above sove...

NOVANEWS by Stephen Lendman   Predatory bankers make serial killers look good by comparison. Their business model creates crises to facilitate grand theft, financial terrorism, and debt entrapment. They steal all material wealth and then some. They systematically rob investors and strip mine economies for self-enrichment. They demand they get paid first. They hold nations hostage to assure it. They turn crises into catastrophes. They leave mass impoverishment, high unemployment, neo-serfdom, and human wreckage in their wake. Their Federal Reserve/ECB/IMF/World Bank/political class lackeys do their bidding. They’re more dangerous than standing armies. They wage war by other means. They cause “demographic shrinkage, shortened life spans, emigration and capital flight,” explains Michael...

NOVANEWS  by Stephen Lendman   On February 12, Greece’s banker controlled parliament passed sweeping austerity measures on top of multiple previous rounds. New ones include: sacking 15,000 public workers in 2012 and 150,000 by 2015; slashing private sector wages by 20%; lowering monthly minimum wages from 750 to 600 euros; cutting fast disappearing monthly unemployment benefits from 460 to 360 euros; and reducing pensions many Greeks need to survive by 15%. At issue is securing another 130 billion euro bailout. The more financial aid Greece gets, the greater its debt, the harder it is to repay, the more future aid’s needed, and deeper the country’s economic abyss heading for total collapse. No matter. Troika power kleptocrats demanded deep cuts – the IMF, EU and E...

NOVANEWS  ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece’s parliament approved a deeply unpopular austerity bill on Monday to secure a second bailout and avoid national bankruptcy, as buildings burned across central Athens and violence spread around the country. Cinemas, cafes, shops and banks were set ablaze in central Athens and black-masked protesters fought riot police outside parliament before lawmakers voted on the package that demands deep pay, pension and job cuts – the price of a 130 billion euro bailout needed to keep the country afloat. State television reported the violence spread to the tourist islands of Corfu and Crete, the northern city of Thessaloniki and towns in central Greece. Police said 150 shops were looted in the capital and 34 buildings set ablaze. Altogether 199 of the 300 lawmakers b...

NOVANEWS ( The Independent): As Greece is forced by European leaders to abandon a referendum to allow the people the chance to vote on its latest bailout conditions, the country is preparing for yet another dose of austerity. The conditions of the next €130bn rescue package will be severe, yet there is an elephant in the room: the extent to which the German but also the French military industries rely on Greece. The small, crisis-hit nation, whose prime minister, George Papandreou, narrowly survived a vote of confidence on Friday, buys more German weapons than any other country. Some Greeks want to know why it is that France and Germany are demanding cuts in pensions, salaries and public services, but the buying of arms is allowed to continue unabated. Yanis Varoufakis, professor of ec...

NOVANEWS By Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay Global Research “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist and professor, Nobel Prize 1921   “It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.” Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd President of the United States (1801-09)   "Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd ...

NOVANEWS by Stephen Lendman Economist Michael Hudson calls it “Replacing Economic Democracy with Financial Oligarchy” in a June 5 article by that title, saying: After being debt entrapped, or perhaps acquiescing to entrapment, the Papandreou government needs bailout help to pay bankers that entrapped them. Doing so, however, requires “initiat(ing) a class war by raising its taxes (harming working households most), lowering its standard of living – and even private-sector pensions – and sell off public land, tourist sites, islands, ports, water and sewer facilities” – in fact, all the country’s crown jewels, lock, stock and barrel, strip-mining it of everything of worth at fire sale prices. Why? Because the US-dominated IMF, EU and European Central Bank (ECB), the so-called “Troika,” deman...

NOVANEWS   by Mike Stathis In the very first issue of the Intelligent Investor (June 2009), I discussed problems in Europe that became a reality several months later. “It is likely that America will end up on the hook for the majority of the bailout funds needed for Eastern Europe via the IMF…In the end, I feel the long-term fate of the European Union (EU) will be threatened; not so much for economic reasons as for the continued destruction of each nation’s sovereignty. Already, common laws of the union are causing social disruptions based upon cultural differences within each member nation. It is perhaps for this reason that the union has aggressively opened its doors to nations outside of the union as a way to dilute the cultural and racial identities of each nation. But we have al...