Greece is the latest battleground in the financial elite’s war on democracy

[Ichingcarpenter]

Greece may be financially bankrupt, but the troika is politically bankrupt. Those who persecute this nation wield illegitimate, undemocratic powers, powers of the kind now afflicting us all. Consider the International Monetary Fund. The distribution of power here was perfectly stitched up: IMF decisions require an 85% majority, and the US holds 17% of the votes.

The IMF is controlled by the rich, and governs the poor on their behalf. It’s now doing to Greece what it has done to one poor nation after another, from Argentina to Zambia. Its structural adjustment programmes have forced scores of elected governments to dismantle public spending, destroying health, education and all the means by which the wretched of the earth might improve their lives.

The same programme is imposed regardless of circumstance: every country the IMF colonises must place the control of inflation ahead of other economic objectives; immediately remove barriers to trade and the flow of capital; liberalise its banking system; reduce government spending on everything bar debt repayments; and privatise assets that can be sold to foreign investors.

Using the threat of its self-fulfilling prophecy (it warns the financial markets that countries that don’t submit to its demands are doomed), it has forced governments to abandon progressive policies. Almost single-handedly, it engineered the 1997 Asian financial crisis: by forcing governments to remove capital controls, it opened currencies to attack by financial speculators. Only countries such as Malaysia and China, which refused to cave in, escaped.

Consider the European Central Bank. Like most other central banks, it enjoys “political independence”. This does not mean that it is free from politics, only that it is free from democracy.........................................



http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/07/greece-financial-elite-democracy-liassez-faire-neoliberalism?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

[geek tragedy]

1. is someone forcing Greece to borrow their money?

Greece is free to tax and spend however it wants. It just needs to use its own money to do that.

Greece is more than free to return to the taxation and spending policies of the past, including the full pension guarantees as they existed in 2007.

[The2ndWheel]

2. We can't have everything

We want the good parts of large, distant, governing bodies, without giving up any of the good parts of the smaller, more local, more direct governing ability. We can't have both though.

[truebluegreen]

3. I'd say the troika is morally bankrupt as well.

Disaster capitalism in full bloom.

[2naSalit]

4. K&R X 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!!

[Octafish]

5. War by Bankster

All your stuff are belong to us.