Democracy officially terminated by the European Financial Dictatorship in Portugal!

[no more banksters]

Further signs of panic in another coup after Greece

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2015/10/democracy-officialy-terminated-by.html

[DetlefK]

1. Please note how the blog-post didn't re-post the official statement.

“In 40 years of democracy, no government in Portugal has ever depended on the support of anti-European forces, that is to say forces that campaigned to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact, the Growth and Stability Pact, as well as to dismantle monetary union and take Portugal out of the euro, in addition to wanting the dissolution of NATO,” said Mr Cavaco Silva.

“This is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy.

"After we carried out an onerous programme of financial assistance, entailing heavy sacrifices, it is my duty, within my constitutional powers, to do everything possible to prevent false signals being sent to financial institutions, investors and markets,” he said.

Mr Cavaco Silva argued that the great majority of the Portuguese people did not vote for parties that want a return to the escudo or that advocate a traumatic showdown with Brussels.

This is true, but he skipped over the other core message from the elections held three weeks ago: that they also voted for an end to wage cuts and Troika austerity. The combined parties of the Left won 50.7pc of the vote. Led by the Socialists, they control the Assembleia.




And this blog continues trying to rewrite history:
Greece became a hotbed of corruption in the 1970s.
Greece started cooking its books the latest in the year 2000 when it applied for the Euro.
It continued cooking its books since 2002 when it got into the Eurozone.
Greece hired Goldman-Sachs to hide their debt from the ECB with creative book-keeping.
And when Greece collapsed under catastrophic debt and catastrophic corruption, the bad guys were the EU and the IMF for refusing to bend over backwards to accommodate those who had broken international treaties and falsified documents.

[no more banksters]

3. Corruption

is the basic characteristic of the European Financial Dictatorship called eurozone.

In the last five years Greece has been systematically destroyed through neoliberal policies imposed by the EFD.

IMF destroyed countries everywhere it went.

Please write the whole story, not only the one of the mainstream media narratives.

[DetlefK]

6. HAHAHA! You call THAT corruption?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/03/greece-corruption-alive-and-well
Technician finds an elevator-shaft full of bribe-envelopes.

http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2014/07/16/patient-who-accused-surgeon-for-bribe-dies-after-delayed-heart-operation-prosecutor-investigates/
Patient dies when life-saving surgery is postponed because he refused to pay a bribe.

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-14-05/greece-even-corruption-deep-recession
A handy guide how big what kind of bribe is supposed to be.




In Greece, corruption was a way of life. First you create a bloated, dysfunctional bureaucracy where all your family-members get cushy jobs with no work to be done. And when the bureaucracy becomes an obstacle, bribes get you the appointments and documents you want.

[no more banksters]

7. Bribes

Are the basic characteristic of Western capitalism and especially multinationals like Siemens. Corrupted politicians are everywhere. Bureaucracy is the basic characteristic of the European Financial Dictatorship with the bureaufascists at the top of it. Your mainstream media narratives won't work this time. Find a more sophisticated propaganda.

[DetlefK]

8. ????????? This isn't a narrative. This is Greeks talking about Greece.

The greek corruption down to the lowest level of every citizen, the all-encompassing bribe-culture, that's historic fact. You can ask any Greek if you don't believe what you read.

The bloated, useless bureaucracy of Greece, that's a historic fact. You can ask any Greek if you don't believe what you read.




You think bribes are a product of capitalism? My parents fled from a communist country in eastern Europe to West-Europe during the Cold War. They made it through the Iron Curtain at a time where people where shot on sight, no questions asked, for trying to flee to western Europe. And how did they do that? They bribed one of the communist bureaucrats who was responsible for approving travels abroad.




Your kind of extremism seems to do well here on DU: You have been lied to all of your life, but now you have seen "The Truth (TM)" and NOTHING will convince you that you might be wrong! You are the heroic rebel and the rest of the world is the evil empire!

Seriously: This gets old pretty fast. What's up next? Dying your hair black, painting your finger-nails black, wearing black, listening to Symphonic Metal and complaining how everybody is fake and doesn't know what's going on?

[DFW]

9. Those of us who live in Europe have to contend with many who never have

And yet, they think they know the world through the internet. It's comfortable and great for theorizing, but those of us who live here, speak the local languages and know the situation on the ground have an uphill battle. What is first-hand experience compared to the magic "link?" ???????ώ !!

[no more banksters]

10. When you are left without serious arguments

you judge someone you don't know and derive childish conclusions for him. That's a pretty good sign about your degree of reliability.

What you say has nothing to do with the catastrophe of the Greek economy in the last five years. I can bring you dozens of evidence for that. Even former IMF executives have admitted that the IMF program in Greece was about to fail because there was nowhere a successful example.

This has nothing to do with Communism vs Capitalism. It's clearly a class war. Get over with it and move forward, don't reproduce the obsolete mainstream media narratives and deal with your Communist-phobia.

[DetlefK]

11. Because there was no other solution for Greece.

Greece was broke and had a history of government-waste and corruption.
Greece had broken international treaties.
Greece had falsified government-documents.
Those are historic facts.

The EU, the ECB, the IMF andsoforth had no direction of approach where to start with saving Greece. THEY HAD NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT ANY DOCUMENT GREECE WOULD SIGN WOULD BE WORTH THE PAPER IT'S PRINTED ON.
There was no possible way to keep the greek economy afloat by giving Greece money. There was no guarantee that giving Greece a debt-restructuring would disencourage them from pulling that same bullshit AGAIN ten or twenty years down the road.

The price EU/ECB/IMF are demanding for saving Greece is stability and trust. And Greece's track-record says that you can't trust Greece.
Without trust, the only thing that's left is structural reforms.
Without the option to give Greece foreign money, the only thing that's left is getting rid of the debts with greek money.

[no more banksters]

12. Here

to get a more clear picture, away from your one-dimensional perspective:

1) After the statement of Panagiotis Roumeliotis - former Representative of Greece in IMF – to NY Times, that the IMF knew that the program for Greece was impossible to implement because there was nowhere a successful example, a statement that was made purely for distraction purposes, it was the turn of Olivier Blanchard, chief economist at the Fund, to admit through a report which was given to the public a few days ago, that the Fund, together with all European leaders, finance ministers, European Commission and ECB, made a serious mistake in their calculations, underestimating the devastating consequences of austerity policies imposed on indebted countries.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2013/02/imf-new-tactics-it-is-better-to-appear.html

2) IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, has ordered an investigation to ascertain the reasons for the failure of the Greek program and its implementation in the period 2010-2012. According to the Greek newspaper, Real News, the investigation will be held by an independent committee, while the former Greek prime minister, Lucas Papademos, has already testified as well as the representative of Greece to the IMF, Miranda Xafa. Both expressed their opinion on the Greek program, the mistakes and omissions that led to failure.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2015/05/official-imf-admits-failure-of-greek.html

3) “IMF staff, according to the Arte documentary, were well aware of the consequences of the drastic fiscal adjustment being imposed on Greece. Former Greek executive director Panagiotis Roumeliotis showed what he said was a secret internal memorandum from the time that the IMF prescriptions would produce a 'sharp contraction' and a 'deep recession' in Greece.”

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2015/03/confirmed-one-more-time-imf-knew.html

4) Greek journalists attended seminars funded by the International Monetary Fund in order to present its positions favorably, said Greece’s former representative to the IMF Panagiotis Roumeliotis. Roumeliotis testified on Tuesday in front of the special parliamentary committee on the Greek debt. The former official said that several Greek journalists were “trained” in Washington D.C. in order to support the positions of the IMF and the European Commission in Greek media.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2015/06/greek-journalists-allegedly-trained-by.html

5) “In each case, embarrassed by the failure of its supposed medicine to work, the IMF charged the country with failing to take the necessary reforms seriously. In each case, it announced to the world that there were fundamental problems that had to be addressed before a true recovery could take place. Doing so was like crying fire in a crowded theater: investors, more convinced by the diagnosis of the problems than by the prescriptions, fled. Rather than restoring confidence that would lead to an inflow of capital into the country, IMF criticism exacerbated the stampede of capital out. Because of this, and the other reasons to which I turn shortly, the perception throughout much of the developing world, one I share, is that the IMF itself had become a part of the countries' problem rather than part of the solution.” [...] “In 1998, GDP in Indonesia fell by 13.1 percent, in Korea by 6.7 percent, and in Thailand by 10.8 percent. Three years after the crisis, Indonesia's GDP was still 7.5 percent below that before the crisis, Thailand's 2.3 percent lower.”

From Joseph Stiglitz's "Globalization and Its Discontents"

http://digamo.free.fr/stig2002.pdf

6) Greek public debt is illegal, illegitimate, and odious
Hellenic Parliament’s Debt Truth Committee Preliminary Findings - Executive Summary of the report

http://www.hellenicparliament.gr/en/Enimerosi/Grafeio-Typou/Deltia-Typou/?press=cb2bae76-752a-473b-a943-a4ba00d8da6a

7) Germany benefits from Greek Crisis
The balanced budget in Germany is largely the result of lower interest payments due to the European debt crisis. These benefits tend to be larger than the expenses, even if Greece does not repay any of its debts.
Halle Institute for Economic Research

http://www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/en/media/news/news-single/article/deutschland_profitiert_von_eurokrise_100002049/

8) The secret recipe of Troika imposing austerity on the people of Europe reveals the recent documentary by the famous German research journalist Harald Schumann, entitled "Omnipotent and Uncontrollable: The Troika" which will be screened on April 21 at the European Parliament in Brussels. The event was organized and coordinated by MEP SYRIZA Stelios Kouloglou. A few days before the screening, the German journalist who has been strident criticism of the government of his country through his work and the Greek journalist who has researched the dark role of economic "hitmen" through his documentaries, talk in front of the camera, giving an enlightening look at the controversial role of the Troika, but also at the plans of the European institutions for Greece. As characteristically Harald Schumann says to Stelios Kouloglou, the policies that have been followed, made Europe today look like a "financial dictatorship".

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2015/04/schumann-they-make-europe-look-like.html

9) Schäuble to Varoufakis: 'The program is designed to fail!'

http://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2015/10/schauble-to-varoufakis-program-is.html

That's for a start. I can bring you more if you like.

[geek tragedy]

2. If people in Portugal want to leave the EU, and vote that way, it's really a violation of basic

democracy for him to stand in the way.

What happens when the conservatives can't put together a government?

[pampango]

4. From the election results it may not be apparent that is what they want.

The centre-right alliance, led by Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, had overseen the implementation of one of the toughest austerity packages in the euro following a €78bn bail-out in 2011. The incumbents still emerged as the biggest party with 36.8pc of the vote share, but lost 17 seats and their parliamentary majority in the process.

In second place was the main opposition Socialists (PS) led by Antonio Costa. Mr Costa - who supports Portugal's euro membership - gained 32.4pc of the vote share. The result was disappointing but not catastrophic for the former mayor of Lisbon, who had been narrowly leading the polls in the electoral run up.

But Portugal's more stridently anti-austerity, eurosceptic parties on the Left - the radical Left Bloc (sometimes dubbed the "Syriza of Portugal&quot and the anti-euro Communists, saw a surprising surge in support. Combined, they gained 18.5pc of the vote.

Mr Costa, however, vowed never to back the conservatives. Instead, after a few weeks of political horsetrading, he brokered a historic coalition deal with the radical Left Bloc and Communists in order to clump together a workable political majority of just under 51pc. Despite getting into bed with hardened eurosceptic Communists, Mr Costa promised not to jettison his pro-European principles and to notionally abide by the stringent fiscal targets imposed by Portugal's former creditors in Brussels. However, the Leftist alliance is of a decidedly anti-austerity bent.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11954611/Why-Portugals-constitutional-crisis-a-threat-to-all-Europes-democracies.html

It would seem that the pro-Euro 'center-right' and the 'pro-Euro' Socialists combined for about 70% of the vote. The Socialists refused to enter a coalition with the 'center-right' given their history of support for austerity and created an anti-austerity coalition of left-wing parties.

What happens when the conservatives can't put together a government?

I agree. In a parliamentary democracy a minority can exist if it can attract support from minority parties on an issue-by-issue basis but I don't see how the 'center-right' government does not collapse quite soon.