The Goal of the Troika is Not the Rescue of the Greek Population But the Rescue of the Financial Sector from the Financial Crisis They Caused !

• The Goal of the Troika is Not The Rescue of the Greek Population But the Rescue of the Financial Sector from the Financial Crisis They Caused ! 
  by http://www.attac.org/en
  … “The goal of the political elites is not the rescue of the Greek population but the rescue of the financial sector”, Lisa Mittendrein of ATTAC concludes. “They used hundreds of billions of public money to save banks and other financial players – and especially their owners – from the financial crisis they caused.”
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  Political elites distort public view of “rescue packages”
  These findings refute the position publicly taken by European politicians that it is the Greek population who benefit from the so-called “rescue packages”. They are rather the ones paying for the rescue of banks and creditors by suffering from a brutal course of austerity and its well-documented catastrophic social consequences.
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  Billionaires and hedge fund benefit
  Among those actually rescued is the multi-billion Latsis clan, one of the richest families in Greece, owning large parts of the state-rescued “Eurobank Ergasias”. (1) Speculators benefited, too: During the debt buyback in December 2012, the hedge fund Third Point pocketed €500 million with the aid of European public funds. (2) “When Barroso, the President of the European Commission, labels the so-called Greek bail-out an act of solidarity, you have to ask: Solidarity with whom?”, Mittendrein comments. (3)
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  Another €34,6 billion in interest payments
  A maximum of €43,6 billion (22,46%) of the so-called “rescue packages” went into the Greek national budget. However, this amount has to be seen alongside other state expenses during the same period which didn’t benefit the general population. More than €34,6 billion were yet again paid to creditors as interest payments for outstanding government bonds (2nd quarter 2010 to 4th quarter 2012 (4)). Moreover, the Greek state put another €10,2 billion into military spending (2010 and 2011 (5)). According to insiders, the governments in Berlin and Paris pressure Greece not to cut military spending because that would affect German and French arms companies. (6)
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  Not the first bank bail-out
  “The so-called Greek bail-out turns out to be another bail-out for banks and wealthy individuals”, Mittendrein says. European banks have already received €670 billion of direct state support (not including guarantees) since 2008. (7) Still, the financial sector in Greece and all over Europe remains unstable. This is once again proven by the recent disbursement of two more tranches dedicated to bank recapitalisations comprising €23,2 billion since December 2012.
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  Political elites fail to implement needed regulations…
  The Greek state’s haircut hit local banks so hard that the state is forced to go into debt again to save them with a billion-euro bail-out. “In the five years that passed since the financial crash, Europe’s politicians have failed to regulate the financial markets and adopt a bankruptcy regime for banks. So taxpayers are still forced to help out in case of losses, while the banks’ owners are getting away scot free. The governments have to stop giving this kind of blackmailing opportunity to the financial sector”, Mittendrein criticises.
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  …and rescue corrupt Greek banking sector
  What’s even worse is that billions of bail-out money go to Greek banks even though some of them only meet the official conditions by resorting to dubious methods. In 2012, a Reuters report exposed the banks’ scandalous practices of using a Ponzi scheme of offshore companies to shove unsecured loans on to each other. They did this to appear to still be able to attract private capital and thus meet the conditions for state recapitalisation. (8) “While the European and the Greek political elites demand blood and tears from the ordinary Greek people, they turn a blind eye to the secret deals amongst financial oligarchs, who are in fact the main beneficiaries of the bail out money given to Greece”, confirms economist Marica Frangakis, a member of the Athens-based Nicos Poulantzas Institute, and a founding member of ATTAC Hellas.
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