Here's hoping you don't find yourself sleeping beneath any bridges over "fraudulent debts." In this TRNN interview with Jessica Desvarieux, economists Bill Black and Michael Hudson give their interpretation of how Greece has come to this point of economic uncertainty:
"BLACK: Well, the same people are getting bailed out that have been getting bailed out from the beginning of the Greek crisis, and that is foreign banks. So this money just moves in sort of an elaborate circle from the Troika, which is the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF, through the Greek government, through the Greek banks, and then they pay the foreign creditors.
And they pay them just enough that they don't have to recognize a loss for accounting purposes.
"As Michael will explain, of late the big investors tend to be American hedge funds, as opposed to what used to be primarily French banks.
DESVARIEUX: Okay. Michael, I want to ask you about the role of French banks in all of this. Can you just speak to this, give us a sense of how they even got entangled in Greek debt.
"HUDSON: Well, today's problem with the debts really stem back from 2010 and 2011 when Greece obviously couldn't pay. When Greece joined the Eurozone, it falsified its debt figures. The head of its central bank worked with Goldman Sachs to make it complicated derivatives to hide it all, and that was
Lucas Papademos.
"Well, in 2010 right after the PASOK party came to power in Greece, they revealed the fact that their figures had been fudged all along, and that the debt was so large that Greece couldn't pay. So the International Monetary Fund, which hadn't been making loan--almost had no customers in the world, had its European staff calculate. And the staff unanimously said, Greece can't pay these debts.
These are fraudulent debts that are all, that are way beyond the ability to pay. They've got to be written down. And the board of directors agreed."
In the second part of this interview, Micheal Hudson offers some additional details about Lucas Papademos:
"And in--a few years ago Christine Lagarde provided a list to Greece of Greek tax evaders that had 50 billion Euros in Switzerland. This 50 billion Euros is enough to pay--was enough to pay all of Greece's debts. And the technocratic leader that the financial interests installed,
Lucas Papademos, the very man who falsified all of the Greek payments and debt statements in 2001, didn't do anything at all with the list. He refused to move against the oligarchs."
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14132