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Greek Debt Committee Just Declared All Debt To The Troika "Illegal, Illegitimate, And Odious"
It was in April when we got a stark reminder of a post we first penned in April of 2011, describing Odious Debt, and why we thought sooner or later this legal term would become applicable for Greece, because two months ago Greek Zoi Konstantopoulou, speaker of the Greek parliament and a SYRIZA member, said she had established a new "Truth Committee on Public Debt" whose purposes was to "investigate how much of the debt is “illegal” with a view to writing it off."
Moments ago, this committee released its preliminary findings, and here is the conclusion from the full report presented below:
All the evidence we present in this report shows that Greece not only does not have the ability to pay this debt, but also should not pay this debt first and foremost because the debt emerging from the Troika’s arrangements is a direct infringement on the fundamental human rights of the residents of Greece. Hence, we came to the conclusion that Greece should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate, and odious.
As we predicted over four years ago, Greece has effectively just declared that it will no longer have to default on its IMF (or any other debt - note that the dreaded "Troika" word finally makes an appearance after it was officially banned) simply because that debt was not legal to begin with, i.e. it was "odious."
If so, this has just thrown a very unique wrench in the spokes of not only the Greek debt negotiations, but all other peripheral European nations' Greek negotiations, who will promptly demand that their debt be, likewise, declared odious, and made null and void, thus washing their hands of servicing it again.
And another question: when Greece says the debt was illegal and it no longer has to make the June 30 payment, what will be the Troika's response: confiscate Greek assets a la Argentina, declare involutnary default, sue it in the Hague?
Good luck.
From the full just released report by the Hellenic Parliament commission:
Hellenic Parliament’s Debt Truth Committee Preliminary Findings - Executive Summary of the report
In June 2015 Greece stands at a crossroad of choosing between furthering the failed macroeconomic adjustment programmes imposed by the creditors or making a real change to break the chains of debt. Five years since the economic adjustment programmes began, the country remains deeply cemented in an economic, social, democratic and ecological crisis. The black box of debt has remained closed, and until now no authority, Greek or international, has sought to bring to light the truth about how and why Greece was subjected to the Troika regime. The debt, in whose name nothing has been spared, remains the rule through which neoliberal adjustment is imposed, and the deepest and longest recession experienced in Europe during peacetime.
There is an immediate need and social responsibility to address a range of legal, social and economic issues that demand proper consideration. In response, the Hellenic Parliament established the Truth Committee on Public Debt in April 2015, mandating the investigation into the creation and growth of public debt, the way and reasons for which debt was contracted, and the impact that the conditionalities attached to the loans have had on the economy and the population. The Truth Committee has a mandate to raise awareness of issues pertaining to the Greek debt, both domestically and internationally, and to formulate arguments and options concerning the cancellation of the debt.
The research of the Committee presented in this preliminary report sheds light on the fact that the entire adjustment programme, to which Greece has been subjugated, was and remains a politically orientated programme. The technical exercise surrounding macroeconomic variables and debt projections, figures directly relating to people’s lives and livelihoods, has enabled discussions around the debt to remain at a technical level mainly revolving around the argument that the policies imposed on Greece will improve its capacity to pay the debt back. The facts presented in this report challenge this argument.
All the evidence we present in this report shows that Greece not only does not have the ability to pay this debt, but also should not pay this debt first and foremost because the debt emerging from the Troika’s arrangements is a direct infringement on the fundamental human rights of the residents of Greece. Hence, we came to the conclusion that Greece should not pay this debt because it is illegal, illegitimate, and odious.
It has also come to the understanding of the Committee that the unsustainability of the Greek public debt was evident from the outset to the international creditors, the Greek authorities, and the corporate media. Yet, the Greek authorities, together with some other governments in the EU, conspired against the restructuring of public debt in 2010 in order to protect financial institutions. The corporate media hid the truth from the public by depicting a situation in which the bailout was argued to benefit Greece, whilst spinning a narrative intended to portray the population as deservers of their own wrongdoings.
Bailout funds provided in both programmes of 2010 and 2012 have been externally managed through complicated schemes, preventing any fiscal autonomy. The use of the bailout money is strictly dictated by the creditors, and so, it is revealing that less than 10% of these funds have been destined to the government’s current expenditure.
This preliminary report presents a primary mapping out of the key problems and issues associated with the public debt, and notes key legal violations associated with the contracting of the debt; it also traces out the legal foundations, on which unilateral suspension of the debt payments can be based. The findings are presented in nine chapters structured as follows:
Chapter 1, Debt before the Troika, analyses the growth of the Greek public debt since the 1980s. It concludes that the increase in debt was not due to excessive public spending, which in fact remained lower than the public spending of other Eurozone countries, but rather due to the payment of extremely high rates of interest to creditors, excessive and unjustified military spending, loss of tax revenues due to illicit capital outflows, state recapitalization of private banks, and the international imbalances created via the flaws in the design of the Monetary Union itself.
Adopting the euro led to a drastic increase of private debt in Greece to which major European private banks as well as the Greek banks were exposed. A growing banking crisis contributed to the Greek sovereign debt crisis. George Papandreou’s government helped to present the elements of a banking crisis as a sovereign debt crisis in 2009 by emphasizing and boosting the public deficit and debt.
Chapter 2, Evolution of Greek public debt during 2010-2015, concludes that the first loan agreement of 2010, aimed primarily to rescue the Greek and other European private banks, and to allow the banks to reduce their exposure to Greek government bonds.
Chapter 3, Greek public debt by creditor in 2015, presents the contentious nature of Greece’s current debt, delineating the loans’ key characteristics, which are further analysed in Chapter 8.
Chapter 4, Debt System Mechanism in Greece reveals the mechanisms devised by the agreements that were implemented since May 2010. They created a substantial amount of new debt to bilateral creditors and the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), whilst generating abusive costs thus deepening the crisis further. The mechanisms disclose how the majority of borrowed funds were transferred directly to financial institutions. Rather than benefitting Greece, they have accelerated the privatization process, through the use of financial instruments.
Chapter 5, Conditionalities against sustainability, presents how the creditors imposed intrusive conditionalities attached to the loan agreements, which led directly to the economic unviability and unsustainability of debt. These conditionalities, on which the creditors still insist, have not only contributed to lower GDP as well as higher public borrowing, hence a higher public debt/GDP making Greece’s debt more unsustainable, but also engineered dramatic changes in the society, and caused a humanitarian crisis. The Greek public debt can be considered as totally unsustainable at present.
Chapter 6, Impact of the “bailout programmes” on human rights, concludes that the measures implemented under the “bailout programmes” have directly affected living conditions of the people and violated human rights, which Greece and its partners are obliged to respect, protect and promote under domestic, regional and international law. The drastic adjustments, imposed on the Greek economy and society as a whole, have brought about a rapid deterioration of living standards, and remain incompatible with social justice, social cohesion, democracy and human rights.
Chapter 7, Legal issues surrounding the MOU and Loan Agreements, argues there has been a breach of human rights obligations on the part of Greece itself and the lenders, that is the Euro Area (Lender) Member States, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and theInternational Monetary Fund, who imposed these measures on Greece. All these actors failed to assess the human rights violations as an outcome of the policies they obliged Greece to pursue, and also directly violated the Greek constitution by effectively stripping Greece of most of its sovereign rights. The agreements contain abusive clauses, effectively coercing Greece to surrender significant aspects of its sovereignty. This is imprinted in the choice of the English law as governing law for those agreements, which facilitated the circumvention of the Greek Constitution and international human rights obligations. Conflicts with human rights and customary obligations, several indications of contracting parties acting in bad faith, which together with the unconscionable character of the agreements, render these agreements invalid.
Chapter 8, Assessment of the Debts as regards illegtimacy, odiousness, illegality, and unsustainability, provides an assessment of the Greek public debt according to the definitions regarding illegitimate, odious, illegal, and unsustainable debt adopted by the Committee.
Chapter 8 concludes that the Greek public debt as of June 2015 is unsustainable, since Greece is currently unable to service its debt without seriously impairing its capacity to fulfill its basic human rights obligations. Furthermore, for each creditor, the report provides evidence of indicative cases of illegal, illegitimate and odious debts.
Debt to the IMF should be considered illegal since its concession breached the IMF’s own statutes, and its conditions breached the Greek Constitution, international customary law, and treaties to which Greece is a party. It is also illegitimate, since conditions included policy prescriptions that infringed human rights obligations. Finally, it is odious since the IMF knew that the imposed measures were undemocratic, ineffective, and would lead to serious violations of socio-economic rights.
Debts to the ECB should be considered illegal since the ECB over-stepped its mandate by imposing the application of macroeconomic adjustment programs (e.g. labour market deregulation) via its participation in the Troïka. Debts to the ECB are also illegitimate and odious, since the principal raison d’etre of the Securities Market Programme (SMP) was to serve the interests of the financial institutions, allowing the major European and Greek private banks to dispose of their Greek bonds.
The EFSF engages in cash-less loans which should be considered illegal because Article 122(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) was violated, and further they breach several socio-economic rights and civil liberties. Moreover, the EFSF Framework Agreement 2010 and the Master Financial Assistance Agreement of 2012 contain several abusive clauses revealing clear misconduct on the part of the lender. The EFSF also acts against democratic principles, rendering these particular debts illegitimate and odious.
The bilateral loans should be considered illegal since they violate the procedure provided by the Greek constitution. The loans involved clear misconduct by the lenders, and had conditions that contravened law or public policy. Both EU law and international law were breached in order to sideline human rights in the design of the macroeconomic programmes. The bilateral loans are furthermore illegitimate, since they were not used for the benefit of the population, but merely enabled the private creditors of Greece to be bailed out. Finally, the bilateral loans are odious since the lender states and the European Commission knew of potential violations, but in 2010 and 2012 avoided to assess the human rights impacts of the macroeconomic adjustment and fiscal consolidation that were the conditions for the loans.
The debt to private creditors should be considered illegal because private banks conducted themselves irresponsibly before the Troika came into being, failing to observe due diligence, while some private creditors such as hedge funds also acted in bad faith. Parts of the debts to private banks and hedge funds are illegitimate for the same reasons that they are illegal; furthermore, Greek banks were illegitimately recapitalized by tax-payers. Debts to private banks and hedge funds are odious, since major private creditors were aware that these debts were not incurred in the best interests of the population but rather for their own benefit.
The report comes to a close with some practical considerations. Chapter 9, Legal foundations for repudiation and suspension of the Greek sovereign debt, presents the options concerning the cancellation of debt, and especially the conditions under which a sovereign state can exercise the right to unilateral act of repudiation or suspension of the payment of debt under international law.
Several legal arguments permit a State to unilaterally repudiate its illegal, odious, and illegitimate debt. In the Greek case, such a unilateral act may be based on the following arguments: the bad faith of the creditors that pushed Greece to violate national law and international obligations related to human rights; preeminence of human rights over agreements such as those signed by previous governments with creditors or the Troika; coercion; unfair terms flagrantly violating Greek sovereignty and violating the Constitution; and finally, the right recognized in international law for a State to take countermeasures against illegal acts by its creditors , which purposefully damage its fiscal sovereignty, oblige it to assume odious, illegal and illegitimate debt, violate economic self-determination and fundamental human rights. As far as unsustainable debt is concerned, every state is legally entitled to invoke necessity in exceptional situations in order to safeguard those essential interests threatened by a grave and imminent peril. In such a situation, the State may be dispensed from the fulfilment of those international obligations that augment the peril, as is the case with outstanding loan contracts. Finally, states have the right to declare themselves unilaterally insolvent where the servicing of their debt is unsustainable, in which case they commit no wrongful act and hence bear no liability.
People’s dignity is worth more than illegal, illegitimate, odious and unsustainable debt
Having concluded a preliminary investigation, the Committee considers that Greece has been and still is the victim of an attack premeditated and organized by the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. This violent, illegal, and immoral mission aimed exclusively at shifting private debt onto the public sector.
Making this preliminary report available to the Greek authorities and the Greek people, the Committee considers to have fulfilled the first part of its mission as defined in the decision of the President of Parliament of 4 April 2015. The Committee hopes that the report will be a useful tool for those who want to exit the destructive logic of austerity and stand up for what is endangered today: human rights, democracy, peoples’ dignity, and the future of generations to come.
In response to those who impose unjust measures, the Greek people might invoke what Thucydides mentioned about the constitution of the Athenian people: "As for the name, it is called a democracy, for the administration is run with a view to the interests of the many, not of the few” (Pericles’ Funeral Oration, in the speech from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War).
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That is like declaring that all banksters are blood sucking vampires.
Some are vampire squids though.
Sounds like it's time for a tea party!
Bring it. Fuck the EU.
Long Physical Assets.
RIPS
The Grexit - part 1: The never ending story
The Grexit part 2: It's Happening This Weekend.... For Reals This Time
The Grexit - part 3: The epic saga continues
The Grexit part 4: Germany Strikes Back
The Grexit - part 5: Greece pivots
The Grexit - part 6: Enter the IMF Dragon
The Gexit - part 7: Loan sharknado
The Grexit - part 8: the bankers dozen
The Grexit - part 9: the bailout begins
The Grexit - part 10: atms the new frontier
The Grexit - part 11: Drachma fever
The Grexit - part 12: fiat wallpaper blues
The Grexit - part 13: drackma park
The Grexit - part 14: terminator euro II
The Grexit Returns: Raiders of the lost bailout
The Grexit - part 15: pretty in pink slips
The Grexit - part 16: grumpy old bankers
"It aint me IMF, naw, it aint me."
Who could have seen this coming?
Years overdue
and is anyone in Greece going to ever admit how badly their previous government at the time along with the help of the Goldman Sachs gang LIED about their debt in order to get into the Euro in the first fucking place???
And it's total bullshit that Draghi or anyone else in Brussels had no idea this was all big fucking lies from the beginning.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=how+greece+lied+about+its+debt
ODIOUS!?
Now that's really mean..
Thems fightin werds..
Trying to prevent the squeaky wheelers and dealers from getting the Greece.
This thing is longer than the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
This MF'er is going Roots.
pods
Well that escalated quickly on some folks...
It seems to have unsettled the markets, I wonder what Janet's raise in interest rates in a few hours will do? June options 20% out of the money are still cheap.
I smell Credit Default Swaps NOT being triggered here!
"The Troika is a full right down, right?"-Kyle Bass
I'll just leave this here for your entertainment.... https://youtu.be/czKd8YVafgU
I wonder if the Ukrainian Finance Minister is paying attention?
Boris is English not so good, but is odious not to mean "bad stench"...?
Quite right. Strictly speaking, the entire Troika is "odious." The same could be said about all things neoliberal. This sentence sums things up nicely: "People’s dignity is worth more than illegal, illegitimate, odious and unsustainable debt." <-- Very much in the spirit of Lord Acton: "The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." THE TIME IS NOW.
Looked carefully at this article and it's encouraging content. Even searched for the word "Onion" just to make sure. Hurray for the real Greeks!
I am reminded by this phrase "mission aimed exclusively at shifting private debt onto the public sector " of an analysis posted here at ZH about 3 to 4 years ago which stated :
The banking powers (FED, IMF, ECB, China, etc) have tried with difficulty to address the debt burdens and debt related links to the world economy to preserve the status quo. But structural changes associated with several flavors of resource depletions (for which there may not be any easy substitutions available) may force changes to the status quo. These changes are likely to be first shunted by the government and corporate interests onto the general population with austerity measures and higher government debt levels.
See http://web.archive.org/web/20111112074159/http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
Throw those pathetic Greek deadbeats out of Europe already.
Don't be ignurnt.
@ BuddyEffed: You nailed it. "Sustainability" as we see it pushed in corporate media is about OLIGARCHIC sustainability.
@JustObserving
I must point out, as spokesman on behalf of the "Octupus and Distant Relatives Self-Preservation Society" that some of our members find any comparison between that "third party" (we assume the ones you imply are on "God's work") deeply offensive - to such an extent that some even commit Kali-Mari.
It would be appreciated if you could refrain from such distateful equivalences forthwith (for the squidlets, you understand).
You may, however, feel free to draw comparisons between the aforeunmentioned and the face-huggers from Aliens, to whom we, as a family, are in no way related.
Yours
The Edge
Throw those pathetic Euro bankster deadbeats out of Greece already.
No Boris,
That is odorous or malodorous,
Odious means deserving or causing hatred; hateful; detestable.
k thx i thort odious was garfield's dog
edit aw crap just read down thx1178 beat me to the gag :(
All I can say now, "GO GREEKS" show the world the light of fredom once again
And of course PMs aren't doing anything on the news!
Smart negotiation tactic. That's what this boils down to.
DOA version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqR9SQGrlBE
So what is the troika going to do, send in NATO to seize control of the banks!!! Hello Vlad, you know that pipeline deal we were talking about? Bwahahahaha, the banksters are fucked and they know it...
You spelled Nazis wrong.
If we're really nitpicking the correct term is zio-nazis.
Or Zio-NATO
Me too! They just trade those things back and forth and charge fees to each other. Or to put put it in simple terms everyone should understand: They are robbing the Bank in broad daylight.
Wake the fuck up people.
How could they if the debt is odious ?
Odious? Resembling the dog from garfield?
"Outrageous, egregious, preposterous!" -- Jackie Chiles
https://youtu.be/X8rxPrV-tn4
Since haircuts are not an option, outright default it be!
We odiized some folks.
Too bad. Just another failed state. Socialism and unions - man's best beast.
And bankers. Don't forget bankers. After all, without them, none of this magnificent mess would be possible.
And we must not forget the paid-for politicians that allowed the banksters to take control and kill the goose...
"The more you know!"
PBS Kids would like to say that this is all possible thanks to viewers like you!
why of course, we "tolerated" (accepted) all of them...
I'm thinking Game of Thrones... The last chapters haven't even been written yet.
Standard Reminder: "The Iron Bank will have its due".
Longer than "War and Peace"...only the Russians can write a saga this long, and this MELODRAMATIC.
And just like that Krugmans “debt doesn’t matter because one persons liability and another’s asset thus a zero sum game” has been shown to be a bunch of nonsense!!!
Not that we didn't already know that but its good to see defaults blow holes in that theory.
. . . LOL on Krugman. Yeah, it doesn't matter until the borrower defaults, the liability gets written off and the asset goes to zero.
As much as I'd hate to agree with Krugman on anything (and I of course don't agree with "debt doesn't matter"), the "zero sum" part still holds in a default - just the wording changes: "one person's non-liability is another's non-asset". 0+0=0
Great comment on how it all started. Seems no one wants to ask that question.
Call it predatory leading and ask the US to prosecute, because some of the debt is held in America. Calling Lynch in Car 54, where are you?
Just the fact that Goldman Sachs had a hand in orchestrating the debt burden suggests this was planned from the beginning.
1. Greece fails.
2. Global bank meltdown.
3.REAL chaos in the streets of the US-and the police aren't being nice anymore.
4.People hate Greece, but hate the central bankers more.
5. More dirt come in about Central Bankers, the FED and Fiat currency.
6. THE BIS and United Nations take hold and declare a global emergency to establish law & order through a gold/currency basket peg throughout the world, led by Brussels and enforced by UN mandates.
7. People will love it after all the death, dying and hunger they have gone through.
8. TPTB have a OWO, one currency and one policing agency throughout. Problem-Reaction-Solution.
" admit "?
That fact will be written on waxpaper stapled to the corpses' heads hanging from Parliament on Constitution Square in Athens.
Preferably on the parapet of the Grand Bretagne, between the 5th and 6th floors. Hopefully it'll be a nice sunny day like in this:
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/C476A2/hotel-grande-bretagne-syntagma-square-at...
I am long rope.
Makes sense to me. Now let's end the Fed, Shut down the IRS etc.
That ain't gonna happen without extreme, egregious, and odious acts of violence.
It may be long overdue but the Greeks are not looking at a real solution. They plan a new central bank to implement the same system of credit based money but on a national level rather than European level. You think they would have learned something after all this. No hope in sight.
I respectfully disagree. The report carries a strong message of nationalism and morality, antithetical to EMU and the EU. Drachma resurrection seems likely, although considering the relatively small size of the economy involved, strong ties should be established quickly with larger trade partners to protect against devaluation in foreign exchange (Troika 'punishment'). And if the drachma is resurrected, expect measures to ensure it is backed meaningfully. "Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done." We have entered a new kind of arms race, a money race. May the best money win.
I hope they issue a gold Drachma backed by their share of TVM-LSM-666.
What the old Polish government said before they all died in a plane crash.
Well, of course. Greece had to spend all the borrowed money first.
Now they expect to be loaned money in order to make loan payments.
Could happen...
The Greeks just redefined IOU to IIO.
They've definitely got a point. Now it should proceed swiftly.
How many of those hamburgers do think Wimpy really paid back on Tuesday?
Looks like the final act is opening with an aria. Is this going to one of those opera's where everybody dies at the end?
Everyone always dies. Some opera's are just longer than others.
Yeah, Wagner goes on forever and this is, after all, a German led opera......
A 1000 year Reich?
Sieg heil, Wolferi.
Fraudulent Conveyance
The Greek default totally threw a monkey wrench into the timing of the economic collapse plans they have now. When it happens, it will be quick, and it will be painful. Onward to true freedom.
Maybe it's part of the plan.
While they blame it all on Greece.
Knuck's, I read that as "flatulent conveyance"...
If there's a breeze.....same difference.
Bit-Drachma Bitchez!!
For realz. Backed by olive oil and sardines.
Backed by Oil & Gas Terminal Operations, Pipelines, Port Activities, Military & Navy Retro Fit in the Ship Yards, and they can Contract with the US Military for Preposition War Equipment Maintenance and Port Off Loading.
Everyone knows Uncle Sugar is loaded and always active in the Middle East Nearby.
LOL
No I just meant a joke, Young people can get busy on the Bit-Drachma to prove all the Smearing of Greece in the News is just Propaganda.
2008 Greece had a GDP of $320 Billion. Pretty good.
I bet the neocons are putting out part of the propaganda about Greece being terrible and spoiled. yeah it is family oriented and is similar to Latin America, the Italians, the Portuguese. So what. Nazi frenzy on Greece.
Agreed. I tried to make that point about Greek GDP long ago, but you are probably right. TPTB want everyone thinking that Greeks are nothing more than goat herders with no economic prospects.
And many of us have repeatedly made reference to the fact that debts which cannot be repaid will not be repaid. This is really little more than a bankruptcy that should have occurred long ago, and anyone so foolish as to keep writing checks to Greece deserves to be burned. This is all the fault of greedy financial manipulators and corrupt politicians. Let this house of cards tumble and the pieces fall where they may. Greece can and will rise from the ashes, but only after the debt fire burns out. Otherwise, there is no hope for the Greek people beyond perpetual bondage.
Personally, I hope this is a template for 'odious debt' to be used as the ultimate weapon against the financial tyranny of the money printers usury schemes.
I think any debt incurred under Obama is odious because he's not eligible to be president and therefore never was. Any debt incurred under Bush is odious because he wasn't really elected to his first term and his second election was demonstrably rigged. Furthermore, his adminstration coordinated 9/11, a horrific treason and mass murder and therefore lost any legitimacy it had . . . and the neocons were pretty much just fucking odious from top to bottom. How am I doing?
Pretty good, in my opinion.
You are doing great but let's start with:
Any debt (fiat currency) incurred under the FED Reserve Act beginning in 1913 is odius, illegal and a ponzi scheme.
Better still. Any debt without my signature on a promissory note is NOT MINE!
ALL third party debt is odious.
Agreed. That is what needs to happen.
Personal responsibility.
I will also add that any notes which you may have signed without the lender doing a due dilligence check on your ability to pay is also odious.
This removes the incentive for lenders to fraud the ignornat and Financially Illiterate.
Yes we do have to protect the infants and those unable to protect themselves.
If the borrower can demonstrate to the court that he is an idiot then the loan is invalid....just like the borrower who is also declared as an invalid.
Of course this will remove about 90% of the population as quality loan applicants and destroy a lot of banks who prey upon the invalid.
But, after all, that is the goal.
END THE FED.
Love it! And hey the Constitution is there for anyone to read; they should know better. A city can't sell bonds in violation of its charter.
How about: Issue enough debt to payoff a good part of the debt held outstide the US; have the Fed buy the bonds with the fresh airbucks. Payoff the some portion of the outside held debt with the new FRNs. Then cancel all debt held by the Fed; cancel its charter, seize its assets and issue new constitutional greenbacks.
Bastiat,
Bingo. Ole Bush said he wasn't going to nation build, however... 911 led to 6 plus trillion dollar quagmire.
Now that is odious.
Good summary there.
I do like the idea of a physical commodity / asset backed digital currency using the block chain.
Maybe the future will hold something like each country or cultural group has their own non-centrally controlled (manipulated) backed by locally produced goods or resources which is converted to bitcoin or precious metals for international trade? One could hope at least...
Think you are right about the barrage of anti-greece propaganda we will be seeing in the future too.
Meanwhile in Washington, President Ohbummer has reasigned the 7th USAF Drone Division from Laughganistan to Greece. Stay tuned.
"It has also come to the understanding of the Committee that the unsustainability of the Greek public debt was evident from the outset to the international creditors, the Greek authorities, and the corporate media. Yet, the Greek authorities, together with some other governments in the EU, conspired against the restructuring of public debt in 2010 in order to protect financial institutions."
WHEN ARE WE GOING TO FINALLY HANG THE FUCKING BANKERS???
EDIT 1
ADD THE 'CORPORATE MEDIA' EXECS TO THAT LIST TOO!!!
"Default is coming!"
In other words. Suck My Dick!
Grexit-part 17: The young Bitcoin.
Grexit-part 18: Fuck EU, the government and the socialist retards.
Grexit-part 19: Old PM's to the rescue !
Grexit-part 20: Liberty found back !
yup long phsical assets is where you will go very right!
Everyone keeps talking about the stinkin’ FED raising rates.
Aussie I listen to called the the stock market crash 5 months before it happened, and has been saying physical assets for months. Video is here ==> http://www.bit.ly/1GgvUtE calls are rediculously accurate.
PLus his ideas for banks, and ways to play rising interest rates are rediculously good.
I know everyone out there is panicing, but there are tons of way to do well in teh next 12 months. >LOTS.
Sounds like we're gonna need more popcorn...
Throw those pathetic Greek deadbeats out of Europe already. They want it so badly, lets do it.
You are also a member of "The Deadbeat Club", Wolferi.
The whole European Union of Socialist States are DEADBEATS.
Fuck the European Union.
Fuck the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.
Fuck them all.
I agree. Throw them out. Throw all of the Deadbeats out of Europe. Just do not come to the Western Hemisphere. Your ilk is not welcome here. We need no SOCIALISTS in America.
(We need to ship all of them over to Europe, the Socialist Paradise. Give them all a European Vacation with a One Way Ticket.)
Clue- and pointless drivel. And ... who wants to live in USSA or the "western hemisphere" anyway?
Ask Columbus, La Salle and Hudson. They'll fill you in.
You. The socialists, like YOURSELF, after they have beggared thy neighbor until their neighbor has no more to give will want to steal our resources.
Your stasi state will be easier to implemment than ours as you haven't any guns to protect yourselves from the Government thugs..
Remember that even your hero, Hitler, had massive popular support. That is how easy it is to manipulate your countrymen, Wolferi.
You are a National Socialist of the same breed.
Sieg Heil!
My German ancestors got out in the 1880s just as Bismarck was ramping up the welfare state. They were skilled glass workers brought to America by Capt. Ford of PPG. They wrote home and said "Our dog gets more meat in a day than you do in a week," and their relatives followed.
Alas, but that was the America of old. We get all the meat we want today, even the poor. But our poor are obese, and we live in an encroaching police state that can afford war but not to take a real hard look at what is wrong and try to fix it. It is perverse.
I'm gonna disagree here El Vaq, American's can't aford meat (real meat), the can afford little debbies, bottles of coke, and refrigerated pizzas. And 'afford' is even questionable as uncle sug pays the major part of this bill.
America of old is gone. Replaced by some bastard stepchild that is obese, pregnant with a mixed race baby and homeless...
Pittsburgh was a great city back then. Looks like Carengie Mellon is bringing high tech into city - hopefully renovate & revitalize.
Capt. Ford was so cool he built his own city.
Panoramic map of Ford City, PA 1896
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/map_item.pl?data=/service/gmd/gmd382/g3824....
The Pentagon/MIC exist on using other peoples money-Socailism-you gonna complain about that?
Wolfgerl:
"Clue- and pointless drivel." Objectively nonsense, but that was a creative use of a hyphen! Well done.
Somalia Pirates will overrun Greece by sundown.
doesn't Tsipras meet with Putin tomorrow?
Then the deadbeat: Italians, Portugese, Spaniards, French, Irish, then Germans.
No more E.U. Back to everyone being more locally responsible. Then maybe we'll hang all the bankers.
Get a job?
What for?
I am trying to think.
I know. Mommy Government will take care of me.
I belong...to The Deadbeat Club.
The European Socialist Union theme song...
The Deadbeat Club...B 52s.
Enjoy.,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRfMc_Q5SYU
Be careful what you ask for. You might just get it. I hope you are ready for EU TBTF to fail, and all of the supply chain lockups that entails.
There is no such thing as too big to fail. It will all fail eventually, and the longer it takes, the worse it will be.
Of course, the natural human thing is to just hope it doesn't fall apart and affect you too much, but fail it will. Just lke an infected sore will eventually produce gangrine, and gangrine will cause ever more damage until death occurs if not cut off.
How about TBTS-Too Big to Save?
How about TBTF = TBTE (Too Big To Exist)
Considering this Europe is a continent and Greece is a nation within this continent, you are suggesting that Greeks shoul be thrown out of their own country.
How German of you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MLry6Cn_D4
Or, you have no clue about Europe. But that´s not unusual for the average uneducated `Murican with a college degree.
Either you are an idiot or you are a paid plant. You must know what will happen to German banks and all of the EU when Greece debts go bust. Why the bitching troll?
My, Wolferl is having his menstrual period pains again.
Time for the Midol
Still no CDS triggered...this is not a default, we repeat not a default....in the event of a real default you will hear a large sreaching noise followed by the message default
the Greeks will be smearing baklava
all over their bodies
and be dancing naked
around the fires soon ..
I've got beer and popcorn standing by. Hurry up and crash already, I'm getting impatient.
It's gonna happen one day, right? I'm beginning to wonder...
Patience.
Your death, as well as mine, is oncoming. It will collapse and that will kill most of us...in a Thermonuclear Holocaust.
So enjoy it and pass the popcorn. And...Don't bogart the Popcorn Bowl. Pass some over.
I can do plenty about my personal well-being and preparedness. I cant do anything about thermonuclear war...seems like Christians welcome the rapture...i dont...but beers and popcorn the same.
I really think that there's a hole in my cooler....my beers keep disappearing. BUURP!
RIPS
Nothing is guaranteed at this point. And you can do something about thermonuclear war. Figure out where the likely targets are going to be in your area, understand that airbursts don't produce tons of fallout, but groundbursts do, figure out where the likely areas of fallout are, (hint, downwind of hardeend underground targets,) then decide based on your personal situation whether you want to give survival a shot or be at ground zero if it happens.
Ground Zero for me.
You may survive the Nuke Blasts. You may even survive the fallout.
But a Nuclear Winter is pretty much written in the cards. That is pretty much a certainty if we play a game of Global Thermonuclear War. That is ON THE TABLE.
You will not survive that. (Why will you want to linger on? For what purpose? To needlessly suffer before you succumb?)
Vaq...good thoughts but Toms right here IMHO... nuclear winters a slow painful death for all.
Thats the main reason im betting its not going to happen and continue being prepared the same.
Will they really use the sampson option? I hope not.
RIPS
Go back through and look at all of the actual research on nuclear winter. It is by no means a certain thing. And when volcanoes cause a global cooling, there are two things that you should keep in mind: The known instances where it was significant, more energy was released than would be by a nuclear war, and they also spew stuff up into the upper atmosphere that keeps the sunlight from getting to the ground that is not produced by nuclear detonations.
Highly radioactive stuff from volcanoes with long nuclear half-lives?
Oh, there is some stuff that you really don't want to be around, but in the case of air bursts, most of it stays up high long enough for the worst of it to decay, and in the case of ground bursts, it only travels so far. One thing that people need to keep in mind with radioactivity is this: The more highly radioactive something is, the faster it decays. And yes, even for the places that miss out on the big plumes of fallout, there would be increases in various kinds of cancer. But I suspect that starvation would be a much bigger worry. It would only take a few bombs to knock out our power grid, probably for good.
Who needs a power grid.
http://intalek.com/AuroraTekInfo/PUP3000UC_SpecSheet.pdf
The known instances where it was significant, more energy was released than would be by a nuclear war, and they also spew stuff up into the upper atmosphere that keeps the sunlight from getting to the ground that is not produced by nuclear detonations.
That is debatable.
Most of the energy released by eruptions of Volcanoes is not released in the atmosphere but absorbed by, and thus heats, the Crust of the Earth...
The expected FIRESTORMS from the elevation of Atmospheric Temperatures near detonation sites will create most of the soot, El Vaq. Think Dresden times 1000. How many cities are targeted. How much mass do they have?
What percentage of mass of those cities will turn into ash? What about the vegetation which surrounds them? Will it catch fire? (I know that you are in a desert but many are not.)
Massive Firestorms will consume anything burnable across wide geographical areas of land. The soot and ash released by Volcanic Eruptions are negligible when compared to the soot and ash from the resultant Firestorms of a Nuclear Holocaust.
Do you really want to live through one to find out?
No false hopes...
Global Thermonuclear Wars are not winnable or survivable, El Vaq....FOR ANYONE.
In terms of mass spewed into the air, what our nuclear arsenal would release would be a drop in the bucket compared to a VEI7, which is what Tambora was. Life has survived much, much larger events than Tambora. The Toba eruption, for example, was something that humans survived. That was VEI8. That dwarfs anything that humans have ever built. ~2,000 cubic kilometers of ejecta was flung into the atmosphere.
Again, go back on the research of a nuclear winter. It was pushed by Carl Sagan, and he was way outside of his area of expertise on this one, but people latched onto it because he was Carl Sagan.
And I'm not saying that we want to experience nuclear war, because the world as we know it would end, and there would be hazards of a very special kind. It would be the end of industrial civilization with a lot of areas where you have to worry about the uptake of fallout into your food.
How many cubic kilometers of mass do we have in our cities?
(I understand that 2000 kg3 is truly immense.)
How many cubic kilometers of vegetation exist on the Great Plains ..on .the steppes of the Ukraine...elsewhere?
Just the Northern Great Plains has 180 Million Acres of Surface Area.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/places/northern-great-plains
Since 1 Acre = 0.00404685642 Square Kilometers then we can multiply that 180 Million Acres which yields roughly 728,000 km2.
Now let's suppose that the average Grass Height is roughly 1 meter of .001 km.
Then the aveage Volume of Grasses in the Northern Great Plains is about 700 km3...One third the volume of the ejecta of the Toba eruption.
Now I understand that all of that volume is not packed with matter which will be oxidized to ash. But I am writing of a relatively small area when compared to that of the entire Great Plains, the United States, the Ukraine Steppes, and all of the rest of the other heavily vegetated areas on Earth.
And if that were all to be caught up in an uncontrolled Firestom conflagration then it would be far worse than anything that we have witnessed or will ever witness.
Now you can debate that this wil not happen. Perhaps you may be right. However I strongly believe, with the available empirical evidence, that we will not survive a Global Thermonuclear War. None of us.
It will be an ELE. The only winning move is not to play.
Of course this is with all due respect, sir.
Except, when you go back and look at the empirical evidence, a lot of it is computer models where the people building them had to input a lot of assumptions, and not actually empirical evidence at all. These are models that often cannot be validated.
Since we have never had a Global Thermonuclear War then I guess that we do not have any real data.
Perhaps we need one to prove ourselves right, or wrong?
I am not willing to take that wager.
Are you?
As I said before, even without nuclear winter, it's not something that we want to try. It wouldn't take a full scale exchange to bring the entire power grid down. Imagine this country without refrigeration or JIT delivery systems. 3/4 of us could perish simply due to disease and a lack of food and clean water.
You may be missing a serious problem if thermonuclear war breaks out. The fallout generated by a single bomb is survivable by the human race of course. It's not the war heads that are the problem, it's the 500 domestic nuclear power plants scattered over the NH. One of these plants may contain 100,000 hiroshima's, just one.
No, the world cannot tolerate a regular WWIII let alone a nuclear WWIII. We are skating on such thin ice that I have to agree with TT, we are fucked.
Carl Sagan was wrong on on almost every pronouncement he ever made (a modern academic douchebag par excellence). an example being his invention of the greenhouse effect in his hallucigenic analysis of the Venusian atmosphere (900 degrees F at ground level) which eventually morphed into the anthromorphic genesis theory of the green house effect on Earth....
Think about it...a fraction of a second.
http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-f774c2afbeb9c044c1c687a321abbc87?convert_to_webp=true
I do not think that he had any time to feel it.
Smack.
I have heard of carbon footprints. First time I have seen a carbon body print.
Didnt you say several months ago we were all going to die of EBOLA? I am not saying you are wrong about nuclear holocaust, but it seems with you the predictions fall a little short.
Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
I am not too disappointed with my predictive failures.
Why?
Are you disappointed?
I am pleased that I am fallible.
Aren't you?
I was actually just giving you a hard time. I appreciate your comments and input. And no, I am not dissapointed...
We're staring at a once in a thousand or more year process. It's not going to happen overnight, and people aren't going to believe that it's happening until they have no choice. How many people here think that the people in Rome thought that the Western empire would be dead during their lifetime 5 years before Alaric sacked Rome? Rome had plenty of systemic problems prior to that.
But neither faction had the ability to wipe out humanity.
Yet they still got knocked back 1000 years.
Fantastic ! I did say so years ago . How is it possible to organize national debts throught interest rate fixes . Libor scandals , Forex tricks , Goldman Sachs cooking the books , Previou Greeks PM corrupted that got money from bankers for betrayal of the national Interests . I woudl go even further . All previous creditors arrangements pertaining to previous business, national properties , sites of intetests , should be declared null and void .
This is called renationalizing properties given as payments to creditors .
Will be really interesting to see if this becomes a trend, or if it is contained to a single country. I sincerely hope this is just the first domino and many more follow.