Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “European Central Bank”
SAINT-JEROME, Quebec –— Modern Greek tragedy is at play, and so are illusions. The big myth is that Greece overspent and the Greek government was reckless with its budgets, ultimately indebting Athens. It is true that Greek officials tried to gain influence and political support through spending. It’s also true that they signed lucrative contracts with local businesses. Athens, however, …
Is the financial deprivation of entire nations engendering a new level of frustration and political unrest? Are the unlikely top-ranked US presidential candidates a sign that the Europeans aren’t the only ones who want to “throw the bums out?” Ellen engages these emerging political themes in her conversation with renown author, advisor and Economics professor Michael Hudson, just back from his consultations with Greece’s Syriza party. But also revolting is the blatant theft of national assets and impoverishment of the citizens of nations whose governments got caught up in the shady dealings of global bankers and their political cronies. To relieve the pressure, Swami Beyondananda offers a simple soliloquy on the money world and we borrow a bit of consumer financial planning advice from author Nomi Prins.
Debt: The Creation of A Global Crisis
The forced, politically engineered bankruptcy of the City of Detroit has been an ongoing discussion on Leid Stories for almost two years. Its historic bankruptcy court filing, to discharge $18 billion in debts, still wreaks havoc with Detroiters, who now must live under the yoke of blistering austerity.
Detroit, however, was a template for almost 60 U.S. cities said to be on the brink of bankruptcy because of debt, as Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, grapples with an onerous debt of $73 billion.
But debt is a geopolitical contrivance, says Yanis Varoufakis, who on July 6 quit as finance minister in Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government of Greece, opposing European Union, International Monetary Fund and bankers’ demands for drastic cutbacks to service the country’s debt obligations.
In a wide-ranging talk in Seattle three years ago, when he was an economics professor, Varoufakis deconstructs the myth of a global debt crisis.
“My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Luca Brasi held a gun to his head and my father assured him that either his brains, or his signature, would be on the contract.” — The Godfather (1972) In the modern global banking system, all banks need a credit line with the central bank in order to be part of …
What do you call a country that has grown 4.6 per cent – in total – since it joined the euro 16 years ago? Well, probably the one most likely to leave the common currency. Or Italy, for short. It’s hard to say what went wrong with Italy, because nothing ever went right. It grew 4 per cent its first year …
In 2010 the Greek state lost the capacity to service its debt. Put simply, it became insolvent and thus lost access to capital markets. To prevent a default on fragile French and German banks that had irresponsibly lent billions to irresponsible Greek governments, Europe decided to grant Greece the biggest loan in world history on condition of the largest ever …
After being elected in January, Prime Minister Tsipras and his Finance Minister Varoufakis negotiated with the EU commission, the ECB and the IMF for almost five months. While fulfilling almost all of their financial demands, Syriza’s leaders openly criticized the “institutions” for their tough bargaining and resisted some of their harshest measures. At the beginning of July, the Troika tightened …
In his first international television interview since stepping down from his post as Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis told CNN‘s Christiane Amanpour on Monday that European lenders had forced his government to make a choice between “suicide or execution.” After five months of rigorous negotiations, the outspoken Varoufakis stepped down from his post the night of the Greek referendum. And despite voting against the …
Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has shown no mercy in axing left-wing cabinet colleagues in order to implement the austerity measures that saw a quarter of his MPs desert him and violence flare in the streets of Athens. Only by silencing his critics can he hope to introduce the tax hikes, labour reforms and privatisations which were ordered by the …
In the early hours of Thursday morning, July 16, the Greek Parliament passed a host of austerity measures in order to begin talks on a potential third bailout of 86 billion euros. The austerity measures were pushed onto the Parliament by Greece’s six-month-old leftist government of Syriza, elected in late January with a single mandate to oppose austerity. So what exactly happened …
