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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Post Admits Austerity 'Killing' Greece

By Staff Report
35

In Greece, fears that austerity is killing the economy ... Deeply indebted and nearly bankrupt, this Mediterranean nation was forced to adopt tough austerity measures to slash its deficit and secure an international bailout. But as Greece's economy slides into free fall, critics are scanning the devastated landscape here and asking a probing question: Does austerity really work? Unemployment has surged to 18.8 percent from 13.3 percent only a year ago. Overburdened public hospitals are facing acute shortages of everything from syringes to bandages because of budget cuts, with hiring freezes forcing the mothballing of operating rooms even as more unemployed are relying on the public health system. Rates of homelessness, suicide, crime and HIV cases from intravenous drug use are jumping. "Conditions have deteriorated so dramatically that doctors in this country now believe that the Greek crisis is no longer just a financial crisis but a humanitarian crisis," said Dimitris Varnavas, the president of the Federation of Greek Hospital Doctors' Unions. – Washington Post

Dominant Social Theme: Greece needs to "get its act together." But will the pain be too much to bear?

Free-Market Analysis: The almost genocidal nature of modern "austerity" as interpreted by the current crop of European one-world technocrats has come in for some mild criticism in the pages of the Washington Post.

Surprise! It must be really bad in Greece for this august, mainstream mouthpiece to publish such an article. Look on it as a limited hangout of sorts. With the Greek economy continuing to collapse as suicides pile up, a responsible mainstream paper must provide some sort of realistic reporting. And so it does.

Of course, the underlying assumptions remain resolutely unexamined. This is a kind of power elite dominant social theme of sorts – that the "cure," while necessary, is harsh. It is a pure Hegelian Dialectic when one considers this approach, as the argument is NOT framed by the question as to whether "austerity" is necessary at all.

In Singapore one can be flogged for certain offenses. Perhaps the Washington Post shall do an article wondering whether the number of lashes ought to be mitigated. That's how this article appears to us. We would ask why someone needs the lash at all. The Washington Post worries only that the cure is a bit extreme. Here's some more from the article:

Leaders aim to hammer out a plan to save the euro, while demonstrators take to the streets to show opposition to austerity measures in cash-strapped countries. Greece has been forced to cut spending and raise taxes in the middle of a severe downturn, slashing pensions as well as state salaries, jobs and services.

As public confidence has evaporated, consumer spending — the biggest driver of the economy — has plunged, generating cascading losses at private firms. The result is a dizzying economic plummet and social crisis that is bringing the cradle of Western civilization to its knees ...

On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy turned up the heat on Greece, suggesting that its bailout deal is in danger of unraveling if Athens does not press ahead quicker with pledged budget reforms and seal a deal with bondholders to voluntarily restructure its massive debt.

For some reason, the powers-that-be are determined to grind Greece into the ground. When they are done nothing will be left but a spot. This is the way of the IMF, of course, as amply documented by such by books as Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

First, the World Bank lends to a country's leaders – the more corrupt the better, which is why much of this takes place in the so-called developing world. Then the leaders abscond with the loot, leaving behind huge "public" debts.

Western banks, which have also lent to "build up the country's infrastructure," cry out that they have taken humanitarian risks and now will go bust if they are not paid back, jeopardizing the entire Western financial system. Sound familiar? The IMF is called in to make an emergency bailout.

The IMF is a stern taskmaster. It will demand that taxes go UP and that government spending go DOWN. Then it will demand that various government assets be sold off to raise funds. The assets, of course, are bought by select Western corporations at pennies on the dollar. People starve; the Anglosphere gains additional control.

For control is what is sought. That's the reason to grind people into the dust of mercantilist bankruptcy. The power elite that wants to run the world cares not at all for the welfare of the people whose country it is supposedly rescuing. And so it is with Greece.

As we have pointed out numerous times, the top men in Greece (and Ireland and Eastern Europe) were virtually bribed to bring their countries into the EU. This was done via a clever mechanism in which the Brussels bureaucrats determined the amount of funding that a given country needed to bring its economy in line with stronger economies such as Germany's.

The money was duly calculated and handed over to the various national elites who then fulfilled their part of the bargain by ensuring this country and that country was indeed delivered into the clutches of the EU. This mechanism occurred with considerable alacrity in the 2000s, for it was increasingly evident that the world's economy was collapsing and that there was a limited window available during which the lies would yet be tenable.

In any event, the money that went to these countries didn't do what it was supposed to do. The economies were not stabilized. Public spending was not rationalized. Instead, absurd public works projects were embarked upon. And if they money was not wasted in this way – lining the pockets of certain local corporations and their owners – it was merely absconded with.

Today, the elites that pocketed these funds have apparently left power. They will not be prosecuted, for they held up their end of the bargain. They delivered their countries into the clutches of the EU. And now these countries are the EU's – and the Eurocrats can do as they please. Which was the whole point.

Austerity is nothing but a ruse. The IMF's oft-stated intention to turn a country into a going concern is certainly misleading. The Anglosphere power elite seeks pliable nationalities that it can utilize for purposes of building an international community. This is why it crushes countries over and over. Culture is its enemy. Especially a stubborn, age-old culture such as exists in Greece.

Of course, the outrageousness of what is going on in Greece (and in other EU countries to a greater or lesser extent) must occasion articles like this one in the Washington Post. Justifications must be trotted out. The destruction, we are to believe, is unintentional. The aims of the power elite are pure.

They are not, of course. And Greece would have done better to emulate Argentina and Iceland and refuse to play the game the way the IMF and the big banking institutions demanded. What the cowardly Greek elites have agreed to will blight several generations of Greek families in the name of this "false" austerity, which is merely the crushing of a culture. In the meantime, the false memes will continue to be generated by power-elite mouthpieces.

"Greece, proponents of austerity say, has no one to blame but itself," the Washington Post informs us. "After a decade of excessive borrowing and spending, evidence emerged in late 2009 that Greek officials had lied about the extent of the country's whopping deficit. That lighted the first sparks of the European debt crisis, touching off a firestorm of investor panic that spread across Europe and is jeopardizing the global economy."

You see, they deserve their fate. Nobody knew what was occurring until 2009! It was a total surprise. (Never mind that this merciless system has been in place for at least 50 years, since the World Bank and IMF were set up, post-World War II.)

And just to make sure we understand that "merciless rigor" is truly justified, we read the following: "Slashing the deficit quickly is essential to ushering in a sustainable future ... and the resulting social pain is necessary to impress on Greek politicians and society that such excesses should never happen again."

As the economy further degrades in Greece and elsewhere, as the suicides rise and the cultural fabric itself is rent, we shall no doubt read more and more articles like this one. This is how the New World Order is to be built, on human suffering. The bodies and souls of the poor people trapped by this terrible paradigm are but rungs in a ladder that is ascending into the sky of a "brighter" tomorrow.

Conclusion: The storm troopers' measured tread as they climb this ladder is the sound track of what the future holds if these lies are not debunked and the terrible EU experiment is not exposed and ultimately dismantled.




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  Posted by bob on 01/16/12 08:19 PM

Yes indeed, Christ was a Jew as well as majority of his followers.

But, if I am not mistaken, the "good Jews" got him crucified for revolting against the foundation of Judaism.

  Posted by RodgerMitchell on 01/16/12 02:35 PM

Christ was a Jew. Remember that for your next diatribe.

  Posted by RodgerMitchell on 01/16/12 02:33 PM

[i] . . . as Greece's economy slides into free fall, critics are scanning the devastated landscape here and asking a probing question: Does austerity really work?"[/i]

The fundamental Law of Economics: The more budgets are cut and taxes go up, the weaker economies become. See: Click to view link

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

  Posted by 300Sploggersdotcom on 01/15/12 04:52 PM

This is an excellent article because it's got it all there but... when I read "the Anglosphere"... I want to laugh. The "Anglopshere", if we want to call it that, is DOMINATED by JEEEEEEWS. JEWS--NOT ANGLO-SAXONS. The JEWS control the Crown's, Vatican's and British Columbia's finances, and this the Western banking/financial world. And, YES, it was all started by the brilliant banking machinations of the Rothschild and all their JEWISH cohorts when they formed the Illuminati in 1776. This is all indisputable. So ... the world needs to know this. I don't care if it were the Africans or Pigmies that were behind this... THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW THIS.

As a Greek I know who is behind our fall at Constantinople in 1453, our valiant try to get it back in 1919, the fall of the RIGHTEOUS AND MISUNDERSTOOD military Junta in 1974, the Cyprus issue in '74, our decent into Statism (Socialism) in '74 and OUR PRESENT DAY CRISIS----IT'S THE JEWS!!!! EVERY key position in the Greek gov't is occupied by a CRYPTO-JEW! "George Papandreou" (aka Jeffry Mineiko) IS A JEW.

JEW WORLD ORDER, Kindle.

Reply from The Daily Bell

Ah, you who are so sure of the "Jews." What exactly is a "Jew" in your opinion?

  Posted by taxesbyanyothername on 01/14/12 10:33 AM

This link worked yesterday. It is to a book: The Fate of Africa.

  Posted by taxesbyanyothername on 01/13/12 07:11 PM

Good grab speedy. Can't believe I missed this one, it is just the kind of book I like to torture myself with. No sarcasm intended. Still I hope it is not as tortuous as this.

Click to view link

  Posted by speedygonzales on 01/13/12 01:19 PM

For those of you laboring through the current economic crisis, this book will be an eye-opener. It focuses on the misbehavior of Western banks in developing countries over the last fifty years -- with a series of concrete investigations, not just economic theory. You'll be amazed to find that much of the recent misbehavior in the First World has been going on for decades offshore! This book was work to get through -- it is packed with information. But if you really want to understanding what's going on, it's about time we did this kind of homework...

Click to view link

  Posted by speedygonzales on 01/13/12 01:16 PM

Debt is an efficient tool. It ensures access to other peoples' raw materials and infrastructure on the cheapest possible terms. Many developing nations are in debt and poverty partly due to the policies of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Political economist Adam Smith also provided some insights in his 1776 classic, The Wealth of Nations, which is regarded as the Bible of capitalism. He was highly critical of the mercantilist practices of the wealthy nations, while he recognized the value of local industry and the impact of imported manufactured products on local industries:

Click to view link

  Posted by taxesbyanyothername on 01/13/12 12:40 PM

You are welcome, amanfromMars. I sure don't know what he is, but I do not trust him at all. Still, he has useful insights. Kind of funny, I don't think that I have ever read anything by him that had anything to do with language.

  Posted by amanfromMars on 01/13/12 07:11 AM

Thanks for that Chomsky pdf, taxesbyanyothername. I'm sure many will see active present parallels in events of today and in plans for tomorrows.

And is renowned critic and always MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, one of the classic voices of intellectual dissent in the last decade, just an establishment puppet playing at the free-wheeling radical thinker and system tinkerer, for he has been exceptionally impotent at leading with anything which delivers any sort of significant meaningful change?

  Posted by taxesbyanyothername on 01/12/12 08:54 AM

Thanks Pete. Maybe it's time for a computer class huh.

  Posted by Agent Pete 8 on 01/12/12 03:42 AM
  Posted by Frank on 01/11/12 11:12 PM

This article makes very clear how a nation can be ground down by the Power Elite, its assets seized & its citizens turned into serfs. I guess the best course for Greece would be to default on its debt & hit the "reset button" now before their nation is confiscated by the Power Elite. But they would also have to also do much more to avoid the problem of falling into the same mess the next time around. If Ron Paul doesn't win this election to turn this nation around, maybe he should learn Greek & head over there to offer solutions!

  Posted by chad2 on 01/11/12 06:46 PM

Greece advise: Pray and then harvest the land/national assets. Government can only have 10% of the spoils, no debt allowed. Now if the land/national assets are owned centrally Greece must redistribute them and then the nation should start over from that...

  Posted by dotti on 01/11/12 03:18 PM

Thanks much. I left out the spaces and it worked like a charm.

  Posted by taxesbyanyothername on 01/11/12 03:03 PM

Hi dotti

Markets do all sorts of things, they are not all due to manipulation. Who knows?

I am putting spaces in this link, because my links on the DB often don't work. I guess that I am just computer illiterate. Just leave out the spaces.

parisis. files. wordpress. com /2011/01/noam-chomsky.pdf

  Posted by RR on 01/11/12 03:01 PM

2012 war will Iran will begin.
Iran and its allies will initially seem to be winning.
Widespread fear will set in the western world.
The United States of Europe will be formed 2013.
West will win.

  Posted by HugoHolland on 01/11/12 02:59 PM

There is quite some discussion going over this quote of Henry Kissinger.

'The Greek people are anarchic and difficult to tame. For this reason we must strike deep into their cultural roots: Perhaps then we can force them to conform. I mean, of course, to strike at their language, their religion, their cultural and historical reserves, so that we can neutralize their ability to develop, to distinguish themselves, or to prevail; thereby removing them as an obstacle to our strategically vital plans in the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.'

Some say he didnt state it, some do. Here a discussion about it. Click to view link

Still combining it will all the arms the current puppet government is buying me tends to believing it.

  Posted by NAPpy on 01/11/12 02:49 PM

Corruption is inevitable whenever government exists. The only valid use of force is self-defense. Anything that government does beyond that is therefore arbitrary and immoral, forcing self-interested people to ignore government in order to survive. Ignoring government equates to smuggling, grey and black markets. Where arbitrary and immoral force exists, people that ignore government (smugglers and black marketeers) are heroes. The greek economy isn't small, it's just not reported. Tax collection can't, by definition, help, since taxes are merely theft from the productive, given to the unproductive or unearned.

  Posted by dotti on 01/11/12 02:48 PM

Thanks.

So you're depressed, too?

Makes imminent collapse seem sort of nifty, eh?

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