Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is an excellant primer on what is happening in Greece and shows how the IMF has spent decades marching around the globe impoverishing country after country, forcing the sale of natural resources and other commonly held assets to multi-national 'private' interests in their role as a hedgemonic tool of American and other western capitialist corporate owned regimes.
Greece's debts were not brought on by overspending on social programs-as the financial markets keep bellowing-but by the spending forced on them by the EU's arm's dealers-especially the German arm's dealers-when Greece panicked in response to the paranoid security fears of America after 9/11 during the lead up to the 2002 Olympics and by profit hungry bankers who now demand that the poor in Greece cover their bad bets. The exorbitant interest on Greek bonds appeared to offer a free lunch to the bankster mafia. Because of the bond insurance scheme it seemed they'd win no matter what happened to Greece. But there is no free lunch. As we've seen in the other derivative schemes the insurers can't pay so either both the insurers and the bondholders lose or the poor are forced to bail them out. It's all just carnival capitialism.
Substitute the word Greece for Argentina and you'd have a nearly perfect account of the present crisis. As in Karl Marx's famous dictum 'history always repeats itself, once as tragedy, second as farce'. The de facto imposition of a technocratic prime minister and what is essentially a demand that the Greeks suspend democracy will end as it did in Argentina who's long march back to economic salvation only began after President Fernando de la Rúa had to be helicoptered out of office with the rioters at his door. The people in the streets of Greece aren't fooled, they know Marx was right, they know who has the real power and they know better times lie ahead once the banksters get the boot..
