Global Finance and the Greek Elections: The Political Establishment’s Worst Nightmares

Sunday, January 18, 2015
By Paul Martin

By Ernst Wolff
Global Research
January 18, 2015

With the Greek elections only days away, the governments and the media of the European Union have once again stepped up their campaign of threatening the Greek people and stirring up anti-Greek sentiments. While the IMF has shown its contempt for democratic elections by suspending all payments to Athens, the German government keeps refusing to deny allegations that the EU is prepared to dismiss Greece from its currency zone and let it reintroduce the drachma.

To anyone familiar with global finances it is highly improbable for a country with government debt running at almost 330 billion euros to leave the euro zone without dramatic consequences not only for the euro, but also for the global financial system. Germany’s allegations should therefore not be taken at face value. However, they should be seen as a very serious threat to Greek voters. The message sent from Berlin: Do not elect a government that dares resist the measures imposed upon Greek working people by the troika.

Five years have passed since Greece was put under forced administration by the troika made up of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. After the euro crisis hit Greece in 2009, the country’s major banks were facing bankruptcy, so the Greek government saved them by handing huge sums of taxpayers’ money to the financial industry. These payments in turn tore big holes into the state budget, which had to be refilled. This is where the troika stepped in, officially “aiding” the ailing Greek economy by passing out loans to Athens.

The working people of Greece were told that these loans were designed to help the country get its finances in order again and that everybody would benefit from them in the long run. However, the majority of these loans went straight into the coffers of large banks. Here’s just one example: Of the 18 billion euros released by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) in June 2012 6.9 billion euros went to the National Bank, 5 billion euros to Piraeus Bank, 4.2 billion euros to the EFG Eurobank Ergesias and 1.9 billion euros to the Alpha Bank.

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