{"id":21031,"date":"2015-06-16T12:31:22","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T16:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=21031"},"modified":"2015-06-16T12:31:22","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T16:31:22","slug":"the-imf-defense-of-it-actions-against-the-greeks-is-an-unintended-confession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2015\/06\/16\/the-imf-defense-of-it-actions-against-the-greeks-is-an-unintended-confession\/","title":{"rendered":"The IMF \u201cDefense\u201d of it Actions against the Greeks is an Unintended Confession"},"content":{"rendered":"

To set the stage, let’s take a little detour into the preposterous article by Reuters<\/em>, Greek PM tears into lenders, euro zone prepares for ‘Grexit’<\/a><\/p>\n

\n“In the event a solid reform package is not presented, then a ‘Grexit’ would have to be accepted if necessary,” said Michael Grosse-Broemer, a senior lawmaker in Merkel’s Christian Democrats. “I’m not so sure anymore if the Greek government is really interested in averting damage for the people of Greece.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How much worse can it get than what Germany has already forced on Greece? We know who isn’t really interested in averting damage for the people of Greece. This is a ploy often used by our Republicans. They know perfectly well what a damaging policy is when they choose it. In fact they think it is so damaging that the accuse the other side of doing it. The gall of it is almost beyond belief had we not seen it with our own eyes.<\/p>\n

OK, let’s return from the detour to the article on New Economic Perspectives<\/em>, The IMF \u201cDefense\u201d of it Actions against the Greeks is an Unintended Confession<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nThe IMF, the heedless horseman of the troika that announced it would stop negotiating with the Greeks and go home, has attempted to justify its position through Olivier Blanchard, its \u201cEconomic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department.\u201d Blanchard entitled his defense \u201cGreece: A Credible Deal Will Require Difficult Decisions By All Sides.\u201d That is a \u201cserious person\u201d title, but it is also economically illiterate \u2013 and no one knows that better than Blanchard. After all, it is the IMF\u2019s deeply neo-liberal economists whose research has confirmed that the IMF\u2019s austerity policies are self-destructive responses to the Great Recession and that fiscal stimulus programs are even more effective than economists had predicted.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reason why this ought to be of so much interest in the USA, is that if we let the oligarchs get away with this behavior in Greece, it only strengthens the arguments for doing it here. If we get the chance to prove them wrong in a definitive way, then we can more easily defeat them here. Who was it said that we’d rather defeat them over there than have to fight them over here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To set the stage, let’s take a little detour into the preposterous article by Reuters, Greek PM tears into lenders, euro zone prepares for ‘Grexit’ “In the event a solid reform package is not presented, then a ‘Grexit’ would have to be accepted if necessary,” said Michael Grosse-Broemer, a senior lawmaker in Merkel’s Christian Democrats. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21032,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21031\/revisions\/21032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}