Wednesday 15 July 2015

Will the real criminal please stand up


The dust hasn't settled yet as Alexis Tsipras has to persuade his parliament to accept a dreadful financial situation forced on the Greek people.
The troika were unrelenting in their pursuit of Greece who were seen as profligate. They practised the tactics of State interrogator threatening to leave the meeting in staged frustration, playing the good cop (France) bad cop (Germany) routine so that eventually after 17 hours of non stop negotiation they bullied the loan appellant Tsipras into signing away the State silver.
For a 68 billion euros loan he handed them the crown jewels which, given the leverage he was under, understated their true value by multiples of the value of the loan. Typical of the capital markets as the suitor for a loan you take what you can get and try not to estimate what, on the open market your assets will fetch. There will be financiers today waiting in the wings to cream enormous profits from the deal.
It also has to be remembered that politics like high finance is a dirty game.
Greece has had financial mismanagement at the route of its governance for decades. This was well known by the political leaders and the EU bureaucracy prior to Greece being joining.
Goldman Sacs were brought in to work their magic and massage the figures to get over the hurdles of due diligence.
Most importantly the financial arrangement was between the "banks" and "Greece". The banks extended them the credit and were the creditors with all the responsibility that lending money brings to the lender.
Somewhere along the line the banks were relieved of this debt, they were allowed to walk away with the European taxpayer now footing the bill.
Like a replay of the 2008 financial crash the banks were bailed out by the taxpayer even though the taxpayer had not been privy to any of the dealings.
Listening to Mrs Merkel and her finance chief, Wolfgang Schauble rage against the Greeks in Vienna would could be forgiven for thinking that they were the innocent party but it was Merkel and Schauble who convinced the ECB to take on the debt to save the German banks.
They were the ones to saddle the taxpayer, they were the ones to let the banks off the hook, the same banks who were guilty of basic financial diligence (examining the books).
Blaming Alexis Tsipras, or the Greeks in general is fraudulent given the history of the Greek saga and particularly Germany's hand in Greece's entry into Monetary Union.

Sent from my iPad

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