Greece’s Creditors Go for Blood

It is clear that a decision has been made to go for blood to destroy the Greek government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The issue is not the cuts, but the debt and Greece’s relationship with the BRICS.

The Eurogroup meeting on June 24 of the euro area finance ministers began 25 minutes after midnight and broke up 90 minutes later, with the EU throwing Greece’s proposals, which were all marked up in red ink, back into Tsipras’s face, a point revealed particularly in the British press led by The Times.

On top of the list of rejections were, of course, Greece’s demands on the debt, which were rejected out of hand. The creditors all but rejected Greece’s tax proposals, again insisting on the cuts in the pension system, and across-the-board increases in the value-added tax (VAT), which affects the poorer the most.

The so-called technical talks resumed on June 24 and again ended with both sides far apart; Tsipras was scheduled to hold another meeting yesterday morning with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem, and Klaus Regling, Managing Director of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, who heads the government coalition partner, the Independent Greeks, is also in Brussels for the NATO meeting. It is reported that he had been meeting with Tsipras as well.

While this is going on, the creditors are carrying out hostile operations against Greece. There is lockstep coordination between the ECB’s Draghi and the treacherous Bank of Greek Governor Yannis Stournara, who have decided to be even more stingy with the Emergency Liquidity Assistance to the Greek banks. They have allowed the so-called safety cushion to drop below the original EU3 billion, releasing only the necessary amount of liquidity.

Meanwhile, Juncker is meeting with former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who is heading to Brussels for a meeting of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats’ faction in the European Parliament), where he just might present a “proposal” about which he spoke to the Greek media, to form a transitional government that would implement the demands of the creditors.

The Greek media are otherwise filled with anti-creditor headlines: “The Europe of Shame” reads the headline in To Pontiki; “Germans’ Coup d’Etat To Bring Tsipras Down,” Kontra TV channel claims; “D-Day Europe Decides on Its Future,” says Syriza’s Avgi; “Battle for the Debt,” reads Ethnos; and Ta Nea reports, “Tsipras Does Not Take a Step Back on Debt.”

While there was speculation that the European summit would discuss the Greek issue, that has been denied with the claim that only after the technical talks come to an agreement will it be discussed, which is another slap in the face of the Greeks, who are demanding a compromise and statement on the debt at the political level.