Karolina Tagaris and Lefteris Papadimas, "Greeks defy Europe with overwhelming referendum 'No'" (July 5, 2015), http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/05/us-eurozone-greece-idUSKBN0P40EO20150705
Majia here: Now things will get interesting. I hope the Greek people are not forced into further austerity as a result of their resistance.
The average Greek citizen is not responsible for Greece's financial situation, as the media would have you think (see discussion at Global Research here). Nor can Greece's financial problems be explained exclusively in terms of the nation's lack of financial discipline. Credit default swaps may have also been used to exacerbate Greece's sovereign debt problems and force default by predatory financiers. Credit default swaps were for example implicated in the collapse of Greece’s bond market (Satyajit Das, p. 237). In 2010, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou called for “tougher rules for credit default swaps and a ban on some activities such as ‘naked’ short-selling of sovereign debt or trading ‘naked’ credit default swaps (CDS) without owning the underlying bonds” because of the growing weaponization of finance. Even mainstream media sources held hedge funds responsible for aggravating Greece's debt crisis by using CDS to bet on a government default ( Lawder, D., & Youngla, R. 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62900820100310). Credit default swaps can be deployed as financial weapons, particularly when combined with naked short selling. Greece was ripe for the taking by financial vampires.
Das of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2010, FT-Prentice Hall). Also see article at Naked Capitalism http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/08/satyajit-das-grecian-derivative.html
N. D. Schwartz and E. Dash “Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide,” The New York Times (2010, February 25): p. A1.
O. Besancenot and P. Grond “The Greek People Are the Victims of a Carefully Engineered Financial Extortion Racket,” Originally published May 14 Le Monde by Richard Fidler. Published in English by socialistproject.ca at Global Research [on-line] (2010, May 19): http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19226.
My heart goes out to the greek people and all the american people who were hurt by banker criminality and corporate malfeasance before and after 2008. Greece is nonnuclear which is to their advantage. hope they stay that way
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