Greece, You Don't Get a Say After All

This from Robert Oak on "The Economic Populist" -- follow link to original
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Greece, You Don't Get a Say After All

The Greece Prime Minister, George Papandreou, just rescinded the referendum on the latest Greek bail out:

Prime Minister George Papandreou called off his plan to hold a referendum on Greece’s new loan deal with the European Union, withdrew his previous offers to resign and opened conciliation talks with his conservative opponents.

This is a 180° move to not let the Greek people have a say in austerity and bail outs. Papandreou had announced a referendum, a national vote for the people, on whether they wanted yet another bail out...or not. The idea the Greek people could have a say in what their country did sent politicians, corporations and Wall Street into a tizzy and a spin.

Just yesterday author Numerian told us the real game:

This little episode tells you everything you want to know about the ongoing global credit crisis, and why the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread from one city to another around the world. The fact is that G-20 leaders to a man and woman fear the people. They do not want them to have any say in the multitude of bailout discussions and decisions that have been breaking out since the credit crisis erupted in 2008. And if they don’t want the voters to vote on any of these decisions, you can bet every single dollar or euro or yen left in your bank account that these same leaders are not telling you the truth about what is in these bailout packages and who benefits from them.

Wall Street knows very well who benefits from these bailout programs. The Greek bailout package to traders around the world is an obvious shell game. The €130 billion will be paid to the Greek government, which will promptly remit the money in the form of interest payments to the German, French and other large banks that hold the bulk of the Greek debt in the market. Not one cent of this money is going to be spent on the needs of the Greek people. In fact, the EU is demanding yet more austerity programs be implemented, cutting the wages of workers, destroying pensions, closing schools, and shutting down hospitals. It is true that the EU is forcing the big banks to write down their investments in Greek government debt by 50%. But austerity for the people is not the same as austerity for the banks. There is no money set aside to mitigate the social pain of yet more austerity imposed on the Greek economy, but that special fund used to bail out the banks directly by the EU is going to be increased from €440 billion to €1 trillion. This is not quite Timothy Geithner’s €2 trillion, but it is large enough to ensure no bank suffers any inconvenience from the Greek bailout program.

Greece prime minister Papandreou now claims there is no need for a referendum because the opposition party supports the latest bail out and invited the political opposition to help negotiate the latest bail out deal. Yes, there are riots in the streets of Greece.

Does this remind anyone of something? It should. In 2008, while America was in uproar and outrage over bank bail outs, both political parties endorsed and passed TARP. This is while most of America was opposed to them, absolutely disgusted banks were getting free money from the Federal Reserve while America got pink slips instead.

No surprise, now elections are being declared catastrophic for Greece along with the usual ultimatum, if Greece doesn't accept the bail out terms, then they will be out of the Euro, are proclaimed.

Now the opposition party demands Papndreou resign and that there should be a vote by the Greek people on the latest bail out:

Greek opposition leader Antonis Samaras on Thursday called on Prime Minister George Papandreou to resign and demanded snap elections in six weeks.

Stay tuned folks.