Obama to Europe “We’ll wreck your economy if you don’t wreck Greece’s economy” —Michael Hudson
No 326 Posted by fw, November 4, 2011
“The Greek debt scandal has also pitted U.S. banking interests against France, Germany and other European powers. The Americans are putting immense pressure on Europe saying, ‘We will wreck your economy if you don’t wreck Greece’s economy.’ . . . So, what’s at stake is whether Europe — Greece and other countries — are going to be democratic or whether they’re going to be run by a financial oligarchy, run by the E.U. bureaucracy, basically the European Central Bank, that’s neoliberal, anti-labor, anti-government, and totally in the pockets of the most predatory banks.” Michael Hudson
So spoke Michael Hudson in an interview yesterday on Democracy Now. Watch the embedded 11-minute video below or go here to the Democracy Now website where you can also download a full transcript of the broadcast. My edited version of the transcript with added subheadings and text highlighting follows the video.
Wall Street v Greece: G20 Opens as Greek PM Pushes For Referendum on EU Bailout Plan aired on Democracy Now, November 3, 2011
TRANSCRIPT
Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and author of Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire. His website is Michael-Hudson.com.
Amy Goodman — Welcome to Democracy Now!, Michael Hudson. What is happening right now? The significance of Obama being in the south of France at the G20 meeting, and the possibility of the Greek prime minister being thrown out?
Wall Street to Europe — “We will wreck your economy, if you don’t wreck Greece’s economy.”
Obama is here to represent the interests of the American banks. And the Europeans are very angry that a few weeks ago Tim Geithner, the bank lobbyist, came over and insisted that Europe not forgive Greece’s bank loans, not let Greece write down the loans, and indeed that it not even claim that Greece should do what Argentina is and write down the loans as a premise, because Mr. Geithner explained to the Europeans that the largest insurers of the Greek debt are American money market funds and hedge funds. And he said American hedge funds and banks would lose money and actually would crash the U.S. economy, if Europe made a concession to Greece to bring debts down to the ability to pay. So, instead of a debt write-down or a haircut, the banks said, “OK, we will agree with what the Americans are insisting on, and we will ask for a voluntary write-down by the banks on the Greek debt they hold.” Obviously, European banks who are not part of the credit default swaps have disagreed with this. So the Americans are putting immense pressure on Europe, saying, “We will wreck your economy, if you don’t wreck Greece’s economy.”
Papandreou opts for referendum but then . . .
Now, because of the problem in Greece, you have had the riots in the street, you have had the demonstrations. All of these demonstrations in Athens are very much like the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations here, and the similar demonstrations in Iceland. They were to show that the Greek people were not behind the bailout and to let the international banks know that if the so-called rescue operation — that is, the German and European rescue of the French banks and the German banks and the American banks that hold the Greek bonds, not the rescue of Greece — were to go through, that the fact that this was unpopular, under international law, meant that the Greeks could repudiate the debt. So, you heard two days ago, or on Monday, indeed, Mr. Papandreou said, “We’re going to have a referendum on whether to pay the—go along with the austerity plan or not.” The principle is the same that the president of Iceland said earlier this year: if you’re going to plunge an economy into a decade of depression and force much of its population to leave to find jobs, the workers have to have a vote — the population has to have a vote.
. . . he meets with Merkel and Sarkozy who pressure him to ‘beguile’ Greeks by rephrasing the question
Well, just a few minutes ago, the clip that you played at the beginning of the program was something quite different. Yesterday, when Mr. Papandreou met with Angela Merkel and Sarkozy in France, they said, “Look, all the opinion polls show that the Greeks are going to vote against the referendum, so let’s think of something nice. Would they rather be human beings or monkeys? What would they rather do?” And they came up with another question: do the Greeks want to be part of Europe or not? Well, obviously, the Greeks—66 percent of the Greeks do want to stay in the eurozone. They want to stay in the euro. So, by trying to rephrase the question in a way that will get a “yes” vote, they avoid asking the really important question: do you Greeks want to push yourself into a decade of depression and impose austerity and sell off the public domains, sell off the Athenian water supply, sell off your islands, sell off, yeah, your mineral rights in the sea, sell off even the Parthenon—do you want to do that so that the American banks will not lose money? Well, obviously, that would get a “no” vote. So there is some kind of trickery here going on.
Events change by the hour if not the minute. Outcomes remain uncertain
Nobody knows exactly what the referendum will be, or right now, whether there even will be a referendum, because, as you also noted earlier, the other politicians in Greece are now jockeying for position and are trying to get rid of Papandreou and to replace him, in a very opportunistic mood, to prevent any kind of a referendum happening at all.
High stake game — Will Greece remain a democracy or will it be run by predatory banks?
Yesterday, the headline in the Frankfurter Zeitung was “Democracy is Crap,” and—or “Democracy is Junk.” And the reason that was the headline was the financial sector was saying democracy is incompatible with collecting debts, and when they can’t pay, with foreclosing on the public domain and privatizing a country. You can’t have democracy, and you can’t have debts grow beyond the ability to pay and impose austerity, like the IMF used to do in the third world countries. So, what’s at stake is whether Europe—Greece and other countries—are going to be democratic or whether they’re going to be run by a financial oligarchy, run by the E.U. bureaucracy, basically the European Central Bank, that’s neoliberal, anti-labor, anti-government, and totally in the pockets of the most predatory banks.
Right now it appears the Greek people and their public assets will be sold down the river to the gangster banksters
[Papandreou’s ouster] could mean a number of things. Either it means that other members of his party—the finance minister, who is against the referendum—will come in and not hold a referendum at all and try to keep Greece on the austerity plan, or there will be a fall in the government, a no-confidence vote, and people will presumably vote for the Conservative Party, which, there, is very much like the Republican Party in the United States.
The reason there have been all of these demonstrations is the same reason that the Occupy Wall Street movement is in New York and the rest of the United States. The frustration is not only at the financial overhead, the debt overhead; it’s at the political fact that there is no choice. Both the Conservative Party and the Socialist Party in Greece, just like the Republicans and Democrats here, are both taking the side of the banks. So people don’t even have a chance to express a democratic alternative to essentially being ground down by debt peonage and letting the economy polarize even further between creditors and debtors.
Obama’s razor – Europe has to cut its own throat to save Wall Street
He’s making the threat that Europe has to cut its own throat in order to save the United States hedge funds and banks from taking a loss on the Greek bonds that they’ve insured. One of the reasons that people have been willing to buy Greek bonds is they bought credit insurance. And the European banks, mostly—maybe not Barclays or Deutsche Bank, but most banks—are not willing to write credit insurance, because everybody at the conference here in Berlin, at the Böckler Foundation conference, every single economist says there is no conceivable way in which Greece can pay its debts. But the Americans, hedge funds and bankers and—have come in and said, “We’ll write a guarantee.” And then they lean on President Obama and Tim Geithner to tell the Europeans, “You have to make Greece pay, so that we win the bets that we’ve made, because if we lose the bets, then we go under, and the stock market crashes, and a lot of people can’t collect on their money market funds.” So, this is just the naked, brute force that Mr. Obama is doing. He’s basically telling Europe, “Don’t go the democratic route. Support Wall Street.”
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