Don Quijones: “Uncreative” Destruction – The Troika’s Hostile Takeover of Europe

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/04/don-quijones-troika-hostile-takeover-of-europe.html

After four long years of “service”, the Troika’s frontline role in sustaining and exacerbating crisis conditions in Southern Europe is finally beginning to attract some of the attention it deserves. In my home city of Barcelona, a coalition of left-wing groups recently held an event to raise awareness about the Troika’s “neo-liberalisation” of Southern Europe. Even Europe’s shoe-shine institution, the European Parliament, has promised to launch an enquiry into the Troika’s operations after the European elections in May.

Since its inception at the beginning of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, the unholy alliance between the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission has visited untold damage on the economies and societies of a long and fast-growing list of countries.
A Three-Pronged Attack

In many ways, the conditions set by the Troika in the EU bail-out economies resemble those that a conquering army might impose on a country it occupies. The government of Greece, for example, has been reduced to mere vassal status as the country’s welfare state and public services are stripped to the bone by corporate vultures.

As the Chilean writer and political activist Luís Sepulveda said in an interview for the Greek documentary Catastroika, “What is happening in Greece is terrible. Democracy was born there and the international financial system now decides it should die there as well.”