Greg Palast: Vulture’s Picnic

The older you get the more you realize how often things are connected and how sometimes things that you thought were at opposite ends of the spectrum actually come full circle and intersect. Such is the case here… see side story at the bottom.

Video: Greg Palast "I Do Investigative Reporting! I Don't Think It's Legal Under Patriot Act 4 In The U.S."

Lazy Ouzo-Swilling, Olive-Pit Spitting Greeks
Or, How Goldman Sacked Greece

Here's what we're told:

Greece's economy blew apart because a bunch of olive-spitting, ouzo-guzzling, lazy-ass Greeks refuse to put in a full day's work, retire while they're still teenagers, pocket pensions fit for a pasha; and they've gone on a social-services spending spree using borrowed money. Now that the bill has come due and the Greeks have to pay with higher taxes and cuts in their big fat welfare state, they run riot, screaming in the streets, busting windows and burning banks.

I don't buy it.  I don't buy it because of the document in my hand marked, "RESTRICTED DISTRIBUTION."

I'll cut to the indictment:  Greece is a crime scene.  The people are victims of a fraud, a scam, a hustle and a flim-flam.   And––cover the children's ears when I say this––a bank named Goldman Sachs is holding the smoking gun.

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This is an adaptation of an excerpt from Vultures' Picnic, Greg Palast's new book, out next week, an investigator's pursuit of petroleum pigs, power pirates and high-finance fraudsters. Read the first chapter or just get the book here.

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In 2002, Goldman Sachs secretly bought up €2.3 billion in Greek government debt, converted it all into yen and dollars, then immediately sold it back to Greece.

Goldman took a huge loss on the trade.

Is Goldman that stupid?

Goldman is stupid—like a fox. The deal was a con, with Goldman making up a phony-baloney exchange rate for the transaction.   Why?

Goldman had cut a secret deal with the Greek government in power then.  Their game:  to conceal a massive budget deficit.  Goldman's fake loss was the Greek government's fake gain.

Goldman would get repayment of its “loss” from the government at loan-shark rates.

The point is, through this crazy and costly legerdemain, Greece's right-wing free-market government was able to pretend its deficits never exceeded 3 percent of GDP.

Cool. Fraudulent but cool.

But flim-flam isn’t cheap these days: On top of murderous interest payments, Goldman charged the Greeks over a quarter billion dollars in fees.

When the new Socialist government of George Papandreou came into office, they opened up the books and Goldman's bats flew out.  Investors' went berserk, demanding monster interest rates to lend more money to roll over this debt.

Greece's panicked bondholders rushed to buy insurance against the nation going bankrupt.  The price of the bond-bust insurance, called a credit default swap (or CDS), also shot through the roof.  Who made a big pile selling the CDS insurance?  Goldman.

And those rotting bags of CDS's sold by Goldman and others? Didn't they know they were handing their customers gold-painted turds?

That's Goldman's specialty.  In 2007, at the same time banks were selling suspect CDS's and CDOs (packaged sub-prime mortgage securities), Goldman held a “net short” position against these securities. That is, Goldman was betting their financial "products" would end up in the toilet. Goldman picked up another half a billion dollars on their "net short" scam.

But, instead of cuffing Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein and parading him in a cage through the streets of Athens, we have the victims of the frauds, the Greek people, blamed.  Blamed and soaked for the cost of it.  The "spread" on Greek bonds (the term used for the risk premium paid on Greece's corrupted debt) has now risen to — get ready for this––$14,000 per family per year.

Euro-nation, the secret Geithner memo, and the Ecuador connection

Why did the Greek government throw its nation's fate into Goldman's greasy hands?  What the heck was in the "RESTRICTED" document? And why did I have to take it to Geneva, to throw it down in front of the Director-General of the WTO for authentication, a creepy French banker I otherwise wouldn't bother to spit on, and then tear off to Quito to share it with the grateful President of Ecuador?

To give you all the answers would require me to write a book.  I have:  Vultures' Picnic––in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters.

It's really quite important to me that you read it, that you get it now.  That's a funny statement, I suppose, from an author.  But if you've been reading my stories in The Guardian or watching my reports on BBC Newsnight, you've gotten the facts; but I really want to let you inside the investigations, to cross the continents with me and follow down the leads so that you can get a full picture of The Beasts.  The Beasts and their trophy wives, intelligence agency go-fers, political concubines and bone-breakers.  And besides, it's enormous fun when it's not scary as sh*t.

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Here's a taste of Chapter 12 - The Generalissimo of Globalization - from the film-enhanced eBook edition.  [And more on the 1% Greece-ing us, check out the upcoming issue of In These Times.]

VIDEO:  Vultures' Picnic - Chapter 12 - The Generalissimo of Globalization

Note:  I will be in Chicago for In These Times on November 29, part of our 15 city tour that begins this coming Sunday, November 13, in Portland, then moves to San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Denver, Boulder, New Mexico, Albuquerque, Chicago, Madison, New York, DC, Houston, Burlington, and Atlanta. Find out more info here.

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Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, which will be released on November 14 by Penguin USA.

Greg Palast just wrote Vultures' Picnic

Video:  Vulture's Picnic, 1% Vultures Praying on 99% Greg Palast Interview

Related: 

Video: UKIP Nigel Farage – How dare you tell the Italian and Greek People Wath to do!!!  - Nov 2011

Out of the blue I received information from a friend on Greg Palast’s new book:  Vultures' Picnic 

In 1970 two politically active kids were Presidents of their high school classes in Southern California.  Both went through the next 40+ years of their lives involved in writing, photography and political activism… one a progressive and the other a tea party type.  One is Greg Palast and the other is the writer of this was well as several other blogs, Marion Algier.

Amazing how two people, coming from the same high school with opposite points of view can come full circle and actually find some common ground…  agreeing on fraud, corporate greed, inept and corrupt government, banksters and the list surely goes on, while still disagreeing on so much. And fun to look back!

Poly Class Presidents 1970  - Left:  Greg  and Middle: Marion

By Marion Algier

Ask Marion~  -  h/t to Jean Stoner

Voters steer Europe to the right

Spain's centre-right Popular Party was one of the night's big winners

Centre-right parties have done well in elections to the European Parliament at the expense of the left.

Far-right and anti-immigration parties also made gains, as turnout figures plunged to 43% - the lowest since direct elections began 30 years ago.

The UK Labour Party, Germany's Social Democrats and France's Socialist Party were heading for historic defeats.

The centre-right European People's Party (EPP) looks set to continue to hold power in the parliament.

Jose Manuel Barroso, who seems set for a second term as European Commission president following the centre-right success, thanked voters and assured them their voices would be heard.

FALLING TURNOUT

1979 - 62%

1984 - 59%

1989 - 58%

1994 - 57%

1999 - 50%

2004 - 45%

2009 - 43%

Results from Europe's big six

UK Labour's historic defeat

Robinson: Brown in a hole

In pictures: Highs and lows

"Overall, the results are an undeniable victory for those parties and candidates that support the European project and want to see the European Union delivering policy responses to their everyday concerns," he said.

Socialist leader Martin Schulz said his group's defeat would be analysed.

"It's a sad evening for social democracy in Europe. We are particularly disappointed, [it is] a bitter evening for us," he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised the EPP's performance, saying: "This result shows that the core of society in Europe has become stronger."

Vice-president of the European Commission Margot Wallstrom said the low turnout was a "bad result".

Green gains

Fringe groups appear to have benefited, with far-right and anti-immigrant parties picking up seats in the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Slovakia and Hungary. The British National Party won two seats - its first ever in a nationwide election.

The political parties in power have not taken this election seriously enough. Let this be their wake-up call

BBC News website reader Bert Hidding, The Netherlands

Readers' reaction to results

High-level reaction

Send us your comments

Greens also made gains - the Green-European Freedom Alliance bloc has so far taken 50 seats, compared with 43 in the last assembly.

Sweden's Pirate Party, which wants to legalise internet file sharing, won 7% of the national vote and one of the country's 18 seats in the European Parliament.

Several governments battling the economic downturn are facing a heavy defeat, says the BBC's Oana Lungescu in Brussels.

However, governing parties in France and Germany appear to have done relatively well despite the crisis.

Angela Merkel described the increase in the vote of her Christian Democrats over the Social Democrats as "sensational" and said it boded well for her chances in the nation's general election in September.

In results so far:

• French President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP trounced socialist opponents, while greens from the Europe-Ecologie party also made gains
• In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom party won most votes - 35% - although that was well below his prediction. The anti-immigrant Northern League made strong gains
• In the UK, the governing Labour Party suffered a serious defeat, gaining its lowest share of the vote for a century
• Spain's conservative Popular Party beat the ruling Socialists, but the four percentage point margin was lower than they had expected
• Poland's governing centre-right Civic Platform gained ground at the expense of the Eurosceptic Law and Justice Party
• Portugal's conservative Social Democrats secured about 31% of the vote. The ruling Socialists fell a massive 18 percentage points from the last European election, to about 26%
• Austria's far right increased its vote on the last European election but was well down on its percentage in last year's national polls
• Greece's Socialist party, PASOK, bucked the European trend by securing the largest vote percentage, ahead of the ruling conservatives

Voters have been choosing representatives mainly from their own national parties, many of which then join EU-wide groupings with similarly-minded parties from other countries.

Hungary's Jobbik party was one of several far-right groups to do well

The centre-right EPP retains its place as the largest grouping over the past five years, securing an estimated 264 of the 736 seats (the overall number of seats in the assembly has been reduced from 785). The socialists are on 183, while the liberal ALDE has an estimated 84.

Provisional figures released by the EU suggested turnout was at an all-time low in some countries, including France, where it dropped to 40.5%.

Lowest turnout was seen in Slovakia (19.6%) and Lithuania (20.9%), while the highest figures came from Luxembourg (91%) and and Belgium (85.9%) - both countries where voting is compulsory.

Overall turnout has fallen at each European election in the last 30 years, from a high of nearly 62% in 1979.

Social democrat failure

Mark Mardell| 01:16 UK time, Monday, 8 June 2009

Whether you look at this as 27 individual elections or a snapshot of the EU as a whole a picture does emerge.

At a time of severe economic crisis, when it's almost traditional for people to give their governments a kicking, they refrained. In Poland, Germany, France and Italy ruling parties of the centre right have done well. In part this may be because many in continental Europe see this recession as made in the USA, and UK, by Anglo-Saxons - not their own leaders.

But the other side of the coin is the EU-wide failure of social democracy. They lost some votes to parties further to their left. In France and Germany in particular the main party of the left has been in a mess for a while. And in Germany, where the party is in a coalition government, it hasn't looked like anything but the junior partner.
An economic crisis, which many blame on a market that's too free, in a world where people feel insecure, and might look for more social protection - it should have been an open goal for the social democrats. In Europe they have lacked inspiration, organisation and anything approaching a new idea.

Source: BBC Online

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

• EU moving...right?

• March of the right