There Is Only One Way Out
Open Letter to Mr. Tsipras, PM of Greece
There is only one way out for Greece, Mr.
Tsipras: You take the first step; you exit
the Eurozone at your own initiative, return
to your solid currency the drachma, and
start anew.
By Peter Koenig
Dear Mr. Tsipras,
February 06, 2015 "ICH"
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Let me first congratulate you
for winning the elections on 25 January
2015. And congratulations also for
dismissing the troika as one of your first
deeds. Well done!
It is encouraging to see
that the majority of voting Greek dares to
vote for a change from the relentless misery
imposed by the infamous troika – ECB, EC and
IMF. The Greek people have entrusted you
with the delicate task of pulling Greece out
of the morass, where she has been put –
totally unjustified – by this notorious
troika.
Mr. Tsipras, your
Government has been tricked into believing
that Greece’s debt is unsurmountable and
could pull Europe into an abyss. Instead
your country is being looted by Wall Street
and their European allied too-big-to-fail
banksters. Of course, with the connivance of
your neoliberal predecessors, some of whom
have been associated with one of the biggest
Wall Street gangsters, Goldman Sachs.
Indeed, the President of the European
Central Bank has also been associated with
this criminal financial institution. In
other words, the EU financial system today
is run by the extended arm of Goldman Sachs
– and its Washington masters.
Neoliberalism is a murderous
plague. It is invading at brushfire speed
the entire western world. What makes it even
more diabolical is that it controls almost
all the western media. Ninety percent of the
news we get in the West are controlled by
six giant Anglo-Saxon media corporations.
They dish out every day nefarious propaganda
– lies after lies after ugly lies. They
brainwash people into believing what is
not.
They made Europe believe
that Greece with a mere 2% of the Eurozone
GDP and with about 109% debt to GDP in 2009
was a danger for Europe. If Europe was to
survive economically, Greece had to be
‘rescued’ – and that with hundreds of
billions of Euros in new debt!
The Greek debt would have
been totally manageable without outside
interference. Compare it with the US current
debt of 105%, and with ‘long-term unmet
obligations’ (5 years) of US$ 128 trillion,
more than seven times its GDP; debt that
will never be paid back, but is largely
absorbed by foreign nations who hold dollar
reserves – as long as the dollar remains the
world’s main reserve currency.
That’s when the infamous
troika struck – the extended arm of
Washington. It decided that Greece would
need about €300 billion in different
packages over about 4 years. They imposed
their usual draconian conditions. Your
neoliberal predecessors played along. Greece
had to punish its population with severe
‘austerity’ programs. In reality,
’austerity’ is a mere euphemism for the
misery they forced the Greek Government to
impose on its people; privatizing public
assets, reducing public services, health and
education benefits, pensions, minimum wages,
dismissing public servants – overall
increasing unemployment from about 10% to
close to 30%, and above 60% for young
people, as you well know, Mr. Tsipras,
causing outright famine and sometimes death
from sheer destitution.
The ECB would not lend
directly to Greece at favorable interbank
rates as central banks normally would. The
ECB was not created as a central bank, but
as a watchdog and manipulator of the
European economy, in the service of its
North American masters. The ECB lent to
giant too-big-to-fail mostly German and
French banks at interbank rates of 1% or
less. These banksters then on-lent the
proceeds to Greece at horrendous 6% or 7%.
They pocketed huge profits. They claimed the
‘risk’ justified the margins. They knew they
would never lose. If Greece was unable to
repay the debt, the money would come from
the European tax-payers.
If this model worked, the
troika could apply it elsewhere in Europe.
As you know, Mr. Tsipras,
it did work. Solidarity among European
nations, if it ever existed, was decimated
by neoliberalism. Greece was followed by
Portugal, Ireland, Spain and even Italy, who
at that time was led by Mr. Monti, also a
former Goldman-Sachs henchman.
Later the evil troika
applied an even more drastic formula to
Cyprus. Instead of ‘bailing out’, they
insisted on ‘bailing in’, meaning that the
banks had to take (steal) the money from
their depositors. This new ‘rescue model’
has recently been approved in the US as the
new norm, and soon thereafter it was also
sanctioned by Brussels. Not surprisingly it
got very little press coverage, lest it
might have caused a run on the banks.
Hence, the artificial Greek
crisis morphed into a manufactured European
crisis. The media hype allowed it, as nobody
asked, why? – Why a crisis when the European
economy was so much stronger than that of
the US; was then and still is today. It was
and is backed by a solid economy.
The real purpose behind
this fake European economic calamity was the
weak dollar at the time. It risked to be
replaced by the euro as chief reserve
currency – which would have jeopardized the
dollar’s world hegemony.
The combined EU economy
(28 member countries) was then and is still
today the world’s strongest economy –
€14.303 trillion (US$18.451 trillion, est.
2014), as compared to that of the US with
US$ 17.4 trillion. Hence, the euro had to be
weakened – not destroyed, it was needed for
trade and to subordinate Europe – but
severely weakened, so that the dollar could
regain its inflated strength.
And –
as an added benefit, the
European mafia banksters and their
transatlantic partners filled their pockets
with the proceeds of Southern Europe’s
public and social services.
Thanks to the media
propaganda and deceit machine, it worked
again. Europe’s debt increased from an
average of about 70% in 2009 to close to
100% of GDP today. Greece’s GDP declined
from € 242 in 2008 to € 201 in 2014 (-17%)
and her debt increased by 21% to 160% in the
same period. The dollar is kept artificially
strong and the euro weak.
Today, Mr. Tsipras, you were
in Brussels and Mr. Varoufakis, your
Minister of Finance, was in London and
Frankfurt, seeking understanding for the
Greek predicament, seeking forgiveness or
postponement of debt. You will shake hands
and even embrace with these cold, calculated
leaders of Europe and European finance, but
they will not budge. They will embarrass
you; they will try to scare you with
expulsion from the Eurozone.
There is only one way out
for Greece, Mr. Tsipras: You take the first
step; you exit the Eurozone at your own
initiative, return to your solid currency
the drachma, and start anew. You may look at
the example of Argentina in 2001, when she
decided to abandon the imposed peso-dollar
parity, devaluing her currency and starting
afresh – with the principle of local
production for local markets. Forget
globalization. It has killed many economies
around the world and hundreds of thousands
of people. You may then renegotiate the
Greek debt under YOUR terms. Greece has the
background for a solid economy with her
biggest asset – a wonderful and well
educated people.
Perhaps equally important,
you will open a gate for other European
countries in distress to follow your
example. You may evoke a new solidarity
among nations. That’s what Brussels is most
afraid of. If that happens their house of
cards may collapse – and with it possibly
the entire dollar dominated western casino
scheme.
Peter Koenig is an
economist and geopolitical analyst. He is
also a former World Bank staff and worked
extensively around the world in the fields
of environment and water resources. He is
the author of Implosion: An Economic
Thriller about War, Environmental
Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction
based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank
experience around the globe.