Banks Are Responsible for the Economic and Social Crisis in Greece
Banks are Responsible for the Economic and Social Crisis in Greece By Eric Toussaint Region: Europe Global Research, January 09, 2017 Theme: Global Economy, Poverty & Social Coalition for the Abolition of Illegitimacy Inequality Debt 9 January 2017 The present study shows that the Greek crisis that broke out in 2010 originated in private banks, not in excessive public spending. The so-called bail-out was designed to serve the interests of private bankers and those of dominant countries in the Eurozone. Greece adopting the euro played a major role among the various factors that contributed to the crisis. The analysis developed here was first presented in Athens on 6 November 2016 during a meeting of the Truth Committee on Greek Public Debt. At first sight, between 1996 and 2008, the development of Greece’s economy looked like a success story! The integration of Greece within the EU and from 2001 on within the Eurozone seemed successful. The rate of Greece’s economic growth was higher than that of the stronger economies in Europe. This apparent success actually concealed a vicious flaw, just as had been the case in several other countries – not only Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, the Baltic Republics and Slovenia, but also Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Austria…, countries that had been badly hit by the 2008 financial crisis.1 | Not forgetting Italy, which was caught up by the banking crisis a few years after the others. In the early 2000s, the creation of the Eurozone generated significant volatile and often speculative financial flows 2| | that went from economies of the Centre (Germany, France, the Benelux, Austria…) towards countries of the Periphery (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, etc.).
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