EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire Squid

[marmar]

EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire Squid
Posted on January 6, 2015 by Ellen Brown


Greece and the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the EU, and the European Central Bank) are in a dangerous game of chicken. The Greeks have been threatened with a “Cyprus-Style prolonged bank holiday” if they “vote wrong.” But they have been bullied for too long and are saying “no more.”

A return to the polls was triggered in December, when the Parliament rejected Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ pro-austerity candidate for president. In a general election, now set for January 25th, the EU-skeptic, anti-austerity, leftist Syriza party is likely to prevail. Syriza captured a 3% lead in the polls following mass public discontent over the harsh austerity measures Athens was forced to accept in return for a €240 billion bailout.

Austerity has plunged the economy into conditions worse than in the Great Depression. As Professor Bill Black observes, the question is not why the Greek people are rising up to reject the barbarous measures but what took them so long.

Ireland was similarly forced into an EU bailout with painful austerity measures attached. A series of letters has recently come to light showing that the Irish government was effectively blackmailed into it, with the threat that the ECB would otherwise cut off liquidity funding to Ireland’s banks. The same sort of threat has been leveled at the Greeks, but this time they are not taking the bait. ...........................(more)

http://ellenbrown.com/2015/01/06/eu-showdown-greece-takes-on-the-vampire-squid/

[djean111]

1. Hopefully this does not translate into a coup.

How dare the Greeks get tired of austerity!!!!!!

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. The troika has used the same game on Spain, Italy and now Ukraine.

It is what John Perkins described in his book Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
Get a country in debt, bail them out with loans which have lots of strings attached, keep them dependent and rob them.

A page taken from the mob.