Άρχισε το κελάηδημα ο Χουσεϊν Ομπάμα: «Επέβαλαν λιτότητα στην Ελλάδα γιατί ήθελαν να διασώσουν τις γερμανικές τράπεζες»

[Hector Buas]

Από το να χρησιμοποιείς τα εξοπλιστικά για να κερδίσεις την εύνοια των εκμεταλλευτών σου...

Μπορούμε πάντα να το ρισκάρουμε. Μπορούμε π.χ. να χρησιμοποιήσουμε σφεντόνες εναντίον των Τουρκικών drone. Δεν είναι κακή ιδέα...

[1451]

Είναι γνωστό ότι μόνο οι Γάλλοι φτιάχνουν όπλα και κανένα άλλο κράτος.

[Eθνικοκοινωνιστης]

επιβεβαιωση των "ψεκασμενων"

[talaipwros]

Είναι γνωστό ότι μόνο οι Γάλλοι φτιάχνουν όπλα και κανένα άλλο κράτος.

Οι Αρμένιοι ειχαν κατι καλα Ρώσικα

[Eθνικοκοινωνιστης]

https://www.pronews.gr/kosmos/diethnis- ... sosoyn-tis
Ο πρώην πρόεδρος των ΗΠΑ, Μπαράκ Ομπάμα, υποστήριξε πως η Γερμανία και η Γαλλία είναι υπεύθυνες για την μνημονιακή περιπέτεια της Ελλάδα, τονίζοντας χαρακτηριστικά πως η επιβολή της λιτότητας έγινε για να διασωθούν οι γαλλογερμανικές τράπεζες.

Πού τα λέει αυτά ο Ομπάμα; Σε ένα ολόκληρο κεφάλαιο της αυτοβιογραφίας του «Α Promised Land» το οποίο αφιερώνει στην κρίση της Ευρωζώνης και τη διαφορετική αντίληψη για την αντιμετώπισή της που είχαν Ουάσινγκτον και Βρυξέλλες, με τον πρώην πρόεδρο των ΗΠΑ να μην κρύβει την ενόχλησή του για το γεγονός ότι στην προσπάθειά του να πείσει τους ευρωπαίους ηγέτες να στραφούν σε αναπτυξιακά πακέτα, έπεφτε στο τείχος Γερμανίας και Γαλλίας που προέκριναν τη λογική της σκληρής λιτότητας απέναντι στην Ελλάδα. «Η πεισματική επιμονή στη λιτότητα, παρά όλα τα αντίθετα στοιχεία ήταν απογοητευτική» γράφει ο Ομπάμα.

Ο Ομπάμα «καρφώνει» Βερολίνο και Παρίσι, γράφοντας ότι «παρατήρησα πως σπάνια ανέφεραν ότι οι γερμανικές και οι γαλλικές τράπεζες ήταν από τους μεγαλύτερους δανειστές της Ελλάδας ή ότι μεγάλο μέρος του χρέους των Ελλήνων είχε συσσωρευτεί αγοράζοντας γερμανικές και γαλλικές εξαγωγές – δεδομένα που θα μπορούσαν να έχουν καταστήσει σαφές στους ψηφοφόρους τους γιατί διασώζουν τους Έλληνες», ενώ συμπληρώνει ότι η πολιτική στην Ελλάδα «ισοδυναμούσε με τη διάσωση των δικών τους τραπεζών και βιομηχανιών και ίσως ανησυχούσαν ότι μια τέτοια παραδοχή θα έστρεφε την προσοχή των ψηφοφόρων από τις αποτυχίες διαδοχικών ελληνικών κυβερνήσεων, στις αποτυχίες εκείνων των Γερμανών ή Γάλλων αξιωματούχων που είναι επιφορτισμένοι με την εποπτεία των πρακτικών τραπεζικού δανεισμού».

Πάντως, ο Ομπάμα δεν προσωποποιεί τις ευθύνες, ενώ δείχνει να εκτιμά την Γερμανίδα καγκελάριο Ανγκελα Μέρκελ.

Πράγματι, τα έλεγε τοτε ο Σαμαράς οτι δεν πρεπει να μπουμε σε μνημόνιο, αλλα τρεχανε οι αριστερουληδες να στηριξουν ΓΑΠ

ειχε δικαιο ο αντιμνημονιακος σαμαρας δλδ

κριμα και χαθηκε η βαση δεδομενων του προηγουμενου φορουμ να σπασουμε πλακα

[gassim]

Το ίδιο θέμα απο διαφορετική πηγή:

https://www.ekathimerini.com/259290/opi ... ebt-crisis

[sys3x]

Εννοείς ότι υπάρχουν χρήστες στο φόρουμ που ισχυρίζονται ότι αυτό δεν ισχύει; 10 χρόνια μετά και δεν το έμαθαν από κάπου;

Μπούμερς, υποθέτω.

ΣΑΤΑΝΙΚΟΣ ΕΓΚΕΦΑΛΟΣ.

[sys3x]

Εννοείς ότι υπάρχουν χρήστες στο φόρουμ που ισχυρίζονται ότι αυτό δεν ισχύει; 10 χρόνια μετά και δεν το έμαθαν από κάπου;

Μπούμερς, υποθέτω.

Εσυ αν δεν κάνω λάθος πριν 10 χρόνια πήγαινες γυμνάσιο. Σίγουρα θα έπαιζες στα δάχτυλα την διεθνή πολιτική σκηνή.

Βασικά το έμαθα ως ιστορία, τότε δεν ασχολιόμουν. Και ως ιστορία είναι πολύ εύκολο να διακρίνεις τον ψεκασμό, από ότι αν το ζεις.

ΣΑΤΑΝΙΚΟΣ ΕΓΚΕΦΑΛΟΣ.

[sys3x]

[Eθνικοκοινωνιστης]

εξαφανισμενο το ανφαν γκατε του εκζυχρονισμου

[Hector Buas]

Είναι γνωστό ότι μόνο οι Γάλλοι φτιάχνουν όπλα και κανένα άλλο κράτος.

Φτιάχνουν και οι Αφρικανοί πολύ καλά τόξα και σφεντόνες. Και πιο φτηνές...

[Cavaliere]

Τι καινούριο είπε ο Ομπάμα; Είπε επίσης πως είπε του χαχανούλη να μη φύγει και να κάνει συμφωνία;

[isuldar]

Το κείμενο που παρατέθηκε στο op αναφέρει ότι ο Ομπαμα είπε πως έσωσαν την Ελλάδα για να σώσουν τις τράπεζες τους, όχι ότι επέβαλαν λιτότητα για να σώσουν τις τράπεζες τους;

[Dwarven Blacksmith]

AFTER MORE THAN a year of unrelentingly bad economic numbers, we finally received a glimmer of hope: The March 2010 jobs report showed the economy gaining 162,000 new jobs—the first month of solid growth since 2007. When Larry and Christy Romer came into the Oval to deliver the news, I gave them both fist bumps and declared them “Employees of the Month.”

“Do we each get a plaque for that, Mr. President?” Christy asked.

“We can’t afford plaques,” I said. “But you get to lord it over the rest of the team.”

The April and May reports were positive as well, offering the tantalizing possibility that the recovery might finally be picking up steam. None of us inside the White House thought a jobless rate over 9 percent called for a victory lap. We agreed, though, that it made both economic and political sense to start more emphatically projecting a sense of forward momentum in my speeches. We even began planning for a nationwide tour in the early summer, where I’d highlight communities on the rebound and companies that were hiring again. “Recovery Summer,” we would call it.

Except Greece imploded.

Although the financial crisis had originated on Wall Street, its impact across Europe had been just as severe. Months after we’d gotten the U.S. economy growing again, the European Union remained mired in recession, with its banks fragile, its major industries yet to recover from the huge drop in global trade, and unemployment in some countries running as high as 20 percent. The Europeans didn’t have to contend with the sudden collapse of their housing industry the way we did, and their more generous safety nets helped cushion the recession’s impact on vulnerable populations. On the other hand, the combination of greater demands on public services, reduced tax revenues, and ongoing bank bailouts had placed severe pressure on government budgets. And unlike the United States—which could cheaply finance rising deficits even in a crisis, as risk-averse investors rushed to buy our Treasury bills—countries like Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy, and Spain found it increasingly difficult to borrow. Their efforts to placate financial markets by cutting government spending only lowered already weak aggregate demand and deepened their recessions. This, in turn, produced even bigger budget shortfalls, necessitated additional borrowing at ever higher interest rates, and rattled financial markets even more.

We couldn’t afford to be passive observers to all this. Problems in Europe acted as a significant drag on the U.S. recovery: The European Union was our largest trading partner, after all, and U.S. and European financial markets were practically joined at the hip. Through much of 2009, Tim and I had urged European leaders to take more decisive action to mend their economies. We advised them to clear up the issues with their banks once and for all (the “stress test” E.U. regulators had applied to their financial institutions was so slipshod that a pair of Irish banks needed government rescues just a few months after regulators had certified them as sound). We pushed any E.U. countries with stronger balance sheets to initiate stimulus policies comparable to our own, in order to jump-start business investment and increase consumer demand across the continent.

We got exactly nowhere. Although liberal by American standards, Europe’s biggest economies were almost all led by center-right governments, elected on the promise of balanced budgets and free-market reforms rather than more government spending. Germany, in particular—the European Union’s one true economic powerhouse and its most influential member—continued to see fiscal rectitude as the answer to all economic woes. The more I’d gotten to know Angela Merkel, the more I’d come to like her; I found her steady, honest, intellectually rigorous, and instinctually kind. But she was also conservative by temperament, not to mention a savvy politician who knew her constituency, and whenever I suggested to her that Germany needed to set an example by spending more on infrastructure or tax cuts, she politely but firmly pushed back. “Ya, Barack, I think maybe that’s not the best approach for us,” she would say, her face pulling into a slight frown, as if I’d suggested something a little tawdry.

Sarkozy didn’t serve as much of a counterweight. Privately, he voiced sympathy for the idea of economic stimulus, given France’s high unemployment rate (“Don’t worry, Barack…I’m working on Angela, you’ll see”). But he had trouble pivoting away from the fiscally conservative positions that he himself had taken in the past, and as far as I could tell, he wasn’t organized enough to come up with a clear plan for his own country, much less for all of Europe.

And while the United Kingdom’s prime minister, Gordon Brown, agreed with us on the need for European governments to boost short-term spending, his Labour Party would lose its majority in Parliament in May 2010, and Brown would find himself replaced by Conservative leader David Cameron. In his early forties, with a youthful appearance and a studied informality (at every international summit, the first thing he’d do was take off his jacket and loosen his tie), the Eton-educated Cameron possessed an impressive command of the issues, a facility with language, and the easy confidence of someone who’d never been pressed too hard by life. I liked him personally, even when we butted heads, and for the next six years he’d prove to be a willing partner on a host of international issues, from climate change (he believed in the science) to human rights (he supported marriage equality) to aid for developing countries (throughout his tenure, he’d managed to allocate 1.5 percent of the U.K.’s budget to foreign aid, a significantly higher percentage than I’d ever convince the U.S. Congress to approve). On economic policy, though, Cameron hewed closely to free-market orthodoxy, having promised voters that his platform of deficit reduction and cuts to government services—along with regulatory reform and expanded trade—would usher in a new era of British competitiveness.

Instead, predictably, the British economy would fall deeper into a recession.

The stubborn embrace of austerity by key European leaders, despite all of the contrary evidence, was more than a little frustrating. But given everything else on my plate, the situation in Europe hadn’t been keeping me up at night. That all began to change in February 2010, though, when a Greek sovereign debt crisis threatened to unravel the European Union—and sent me and my economic team scrambling to avert yet another round of global financial panic.

Greece’s economic problems weren’t new. For decades, the country had been plagued by low productivity, a bloated and inefficient public sector, massive tax avoidance, and unsustainable pension obligations. Despite that, throughout the 2000s, international capital markets had been happy to finance Greece’s steadily escalating deficits, much the same way that they’d been happy to finance a heap of subprime mortgages across the United States. In the wake of the Wall Street crisis, the mood grew less generous. When a new Greek government announced that its latest budget deficit far exceeded previous estimates, European bank stocks plunged and international lenders balked at lending Greece more money. The country suddenly teetered on the brink of default.

Normally the prospect of a small country not paying its bills on time would have a limited effect outside its borders. Greece’s GDP was roughly the size of Maryland’s, and other countries faced with similar problems were typically able to hammer out an agreement with creditors and the IMF, allowing them to restructure their debt, maintain their international creditworthiness, and eventually get back on their feet.

But in 2010, economic conditions weren’t normal. Greece’s attachment to an already shaky Europe made its sovereign debt problems the equivalent of a lit stick of dynamite being tossed into a munitions factory. Because it was a member of the European Union’s common market, where companies and people worked, traveled, and traded under a unified set of regulations and without regard to national borders, Greece’s economic troubles easily migrated. Banks in other E.U. countries were some of Greece’s biggest lenders. Greece was also one of sixteen countries that had adopted the euro, meaning it had no currency of its own to devalue or independent monetary remedies that it could pursue. Without an immediate, large-scale rescue package from its fellow eurozone members, Greece might have no alternative but to pull out of the currency compact, an unprecedented move with uncertain economic ramifications. Already, market fears about Greece had caused big spikes in the rates banks were charging Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain to cover their sovereign debt. Tim worried that an actual Greek default and/or exit from the eurozone might lead skittish capital markets to effectively cut off credit to those bigger countries altogether, administering a shock to the financial system as bad or even worse than the one we’d just been through.

“Is it just me,” I asked after Tim had finished laying out various hair-raising scenarios, “or are we having trouble catching a break?”

And so, out of nowhere, stabilizing Greece suddenly became one of our top economic and foreign policy priorities. In face-to-face meetings and over the phone that spring, Tim and I put on a full-court press to get the European Central Bank and the IMF to produce a rescue package robust enough to calm the markets and allow Greece to cover its debt payments, while helping the new government set up a realistic plan to reduce the country’s structural deficits and restore growth. To guard against possible contagion effects on the rest of Europe, we also recommended that the Europeans construct a credible “firewall”—basically, a joint loan fund with enough heft to give capital markets confidence that in an emergency the eurozone stood behind its members’ debts.

Once again, our European counterparts had other ideas. As far as the Germans, the Dutch, and many of the other eurozone members were concerned, the Greeks had brought their troubles on themselves with their shoddy governance and spendthrift ways. Although Merkel assured me that “we won’t do a Lehman” by letting Greece default, both she and her austerity-minded finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, appeared determined to condition any assistance on an adequate penance, despite our warnings that squeezing an already battered Greek economy too hard would be counterproductive. The desire to apply some of that Old Testament justice and discourage moral hazard was reflected in Europe’s initial offer: a loan of up to €25 billion, barely enough to cover a couple of months of Greek debt, contingent on the new government enacting deep cuts in worker pensions, steep tax increases, and freezes on public sector wages. Not wanting to commit political suicide, the Greek government said thanks but no thanks, especially after the country’s voters responded to news reports of the European proposal with widespread riots and strikes.

Europe’s early design for an emergency firewall wasn’t much better. The initial figure proposed by eurozone authorities to capitalize the loan fund—€50 billion—was woefully inadequate. On a call with his fellow finance ministers, Tim had to explain that to be effective, the fund would have to be at least ten times that size. Eurozone officials also insisted that to access the fund, a member country’s bondholders would have to undergo a mandatory “haircut”—in other words, accept a certain percentage of losses on what they were owed. This sentiment was perfectly understandable; after all, the interest lenders charged on a loan was supposed to factor in the risk that the borrower might default. But as a practical matter, any haircut requirement would make private capital far less willing to lend debt-ridden countries like Ireland and Italy any more money, thus defeating the firewall’s entire purpose.

For me, the whole thing felt like a dubbed TV rerun of the debates we’d had back home in the aftermath of the Wall Street crisis. And while I was crystal clear about what European leaders like Merkel and Sarkozy needed to do, I had sympathy for the political bind they were in. After all, I’d had a hell of a time trying to convince American voters that it made sense to spend billions of taxpayer dollars bailing out banks and helping strangers avoid foreclosure or job loss inside our own country. Merkel and Sarkozy, on the other hand, were being asked to persuade their voters that it made sense to bail out a bunch of foreigners.

I realized then that the Greek debt crisis was as much a geopolitical problem as it was a problem of global finance, one that exposed the unresolved contradictions at the heart of Europe’s decades-long march toward greater integration. In those heady days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the years of methodical restructuring that followed, that project’s grand architecture—the common market, the euro, the European Parliament, and a Brussels-based bureaucracy empowered to set policy on a wide range of regulatory issues—expressed an optimism in the possibilities of a truly unified continent, purged of the toxic nationalism that had spurred centuries of bloody conflict. To a remarkable degree, the experiment had worked: In exchange for giving up some elements of their sovereignty, the European Union’s member states had enjoyed a measure of peace and widespread prosperity perhaps unmatched by any collection of people in human history.

But national identities—the distinctions of language, culture, history, and levels of economic development—were stubborn things. And as the economic crisis worsened, all those differences the good times had papered over started coming to the fore. How prepared were citizens in Europe’s wealthier, more efficient nations to take on a neighboring country’s obligations or to see their tax dollars redistributed to those outside their borders? Would citizens of countries in economic distress accept sacrifices imposed on them by distant officials with whom they felt no affinity and over whom they had little or no power? As the debate about Greece heated up, public discussions inside some of the original E.U. countries, like Germany, France, and the Netherlands, would sometimes veer beyond disapproval of the Greek government’s policies and venture into a broader indictment of the Greek people—how they were more casual about work or how they tolerated corruption and considered basic responsibilities like paying one’s taxes to be merely optional. Or, as I’d overhear one E.U. official of undetermined origin tell another while I was washing my hands in a G8 summit lavatory:

“They don’t think like us.”

Leaders like Merkel and Sarkozy were too invested in European unity to traffic in such stereotypes, but their politics dictated that they proceed cautiously in agreeing to any rescue plan. I noticed that they rarely mentioned that German and French banks were some of Greece’s biggest lenders, or that much of the Greeks’ accumulated debt had been racked up buying German and French exports—facts that might have made clear to voters why saving the Greeks from default amounted to saving their own banks and industries. Maybe they worried that such an admission would turn voter attention away from the failures of successive Greek governments and toward the failures of those German and French officials charged with supervising bank lending practices. Or maybe they feared that if their voters fully understood the underlying implications of European integration—the extent to which their economic fates, for good and for ill, had become bound up with those of people who were “not like us”—they might not find it entirely to their liking.

In any event, by early May, the financial markets got scary enough that European leaders faced reality. They agreed to a joint E.U.-IMF loan package that would allow Greece to make its payments for the next three years. The package still included austerity measures that everyone involved knew would be too onerous for the Greek government to implement, but at least it gave other E.U. governments the political cover they needed to approve the deal. Later in the year, the eurozone countries also tentatively agreed to a firewall on the scale that Tim had suggested, and without a mandatory “haircut” requirement. European financial markets would remain a roller-coaster ride throughout 2010, and the situation in not just Greece but also Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy remained perilous. Without the leverage to force a permanent fix for Europe’s underlying problems, Tim and I had to content ourselves with having temporarily helped to defuse another bomb.

As for the crisis’s effect on the U.S. economy, whatever momentum the recovery had gathered at the beginning of the year came to a screeching halt. The news out of Greece sent the U.S. stock market sharply downward. Business confidence, as measured by monthly surveys, dropped as well, with the new uncertainties causing managers to put off planned investments. The jobs report for June returned to negative territory—and would stay that way into the fall.

“Recovery Summer” turned out to be a bust.

[Green Dragon]

Το μνημόνιο ΓΑΠ ήταν αχρείαστο και κακο.
Μετα απο το μνημόνιο ΓΑΠ, το μνημόνιο Σαμαρά επιβάλλοταν για να μην καταστραφει η χωρα

Τι ακριβώς θα έκανες με το 15% έλλειμμα (ή έστω 13% αφού ο Παπακωνσταντίνου το είχε μαγειρέψει λίγο);