Greece bailout: MPs approve new cuts to unblock bailout funds
Source: BBC
The Greek parliament has passed new budget cuts and tax rises two days before a eurozone meeting expected to unblock much-needed bailout funds.
The government led by the leftist Syriza coalition passed the widely unpopular bill by 153 votes to 145.
Greece agreed to a third bailout worth 86bn (£67bn; $96bn) last year.
Demonstrators gathered outside parliament on Sunday to protest against the new legislation. Eurozone finance ministers meet in Brussels on Tuesday.
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Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36355435
22 May 2016 Europe
LiberalArkie
(15,719 posts)sulphurdunn
(6,891 posts)run out of strip malls all over America that target poor people.
AntiBank
(1,339 posts)It has taken only nine months for the third memorandum between the near-bankrupt Greek state and its creditors the Quartet of the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to lurch to the brink of crisis.
That deal, which the Syriza-led government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras felt forced to swallow despite the Greek people rejecting an earlier version by over 60% in a referendum last July, will provide the country with 86 billion. About 90% of this will go to paying off debt.
In turn, the tightly policed Greek government must continue to implement a package of strict austerity reforms. These cover pension cuts, tax rises, privatisations and labour market deregulation.
On April 22, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch president of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, said that an in-principle agreement had been reached. This involves the Greek government committing to implement a contingent 3 billion bundle of extra cuts if the country fell behind on its debt reduction targets.
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Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Only a small fraction of the 240bn (£170bn) total bailout money Greece received in 2010 and 2012 found its way into the governments coffers to soften the blow of the 2008 financial crash and fund reform programmes.
Most of the money went to the banks that lent Greece funds before the crash.
Unlike most of Europe, which ran up large budget deficits to protect pensioners and welfare recipients, Athens was then forced to dramatically reduce its deficit by squeezing pensions and cutting the minimum wage.
The troika of lenders first stepped in during the spring of 2010 after Athens could no longer afford to finance 310bn borrowed from a wide range of major European banks.
Two years later, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European commission and European Central Bank (ECB) came up with a second bailout that centred on a 100bn debt write-off by private sector lenders.
Private bondholders saw the value of their bonds drop by 53% and took a further loss by exchanging the debt for securities with a lower interest rate.
Less than 10% of the bailout money was left to be used by the government for reforming its economy and safeguarding weaker members of society.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/29/where-did-the-greek-bailout-money-go
Which banks you ask?
Goldman Sachs made out like bandit.
NobodyHere
(2,810 posts)Javaman
(62,530 posts)Blankfein and his Goldman team helped Greece hide the true extent of its debt, and in the process almost doubled it. And just as with the American subprime crisis, and the current plight of many American cities, Wall Streets predatory lending played an important although little-recognized role.
In 2001, Greece was looking for ways to disguise its mounting financial troubles. The Maastricht Treaty required all eurozone member states to show improvement in their public finances, but Greece was heading in the wrong direction.
Then Goldman Sachs came to the rescue, arranging a secret loan of 2.8 billion euros for Greece, disguised as an off-the-books cross-currency swapa complicated transaction in which Greeces foreign-currency debt was converted into a domestic-currency obligation using a fictitious market exchange rate.
As a result, about 2 percent of Greeces debt magically disappeared from its national accounts. Christoforos Sardelis, then head of Greeces Public Debt Management Agency, later described the deal to Bloomberg Business as a very sexy story between two sinners.
more at link...
bjo59
(1,166 posts)of our own future. Alas, middle class people won't get what's actually going on until they find themselves scavenging through a garbage dump to find their own daily sustenance. Until then.... it could never happen here.