South American Shockwaves Bring the New Silk Road Into the Americas as Neo-Liberal Order Crumbles

Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture

Over the past several years Latin America has become a strategic battleground which involves much more than merely “geopolitical power plays” between the USA vs China as many commentators are asserting. Of course this is not to say that there are no geopolitical battles occurring. The entire western sponsored regime change operation in Venezuela couldn’t be understood unless one realized that China and Russia see Venezuela as a strategic ally in the Americas and a future zone for Belt and Road projects which are sweeping across the world… but something more is happening.

Over the past three years, over 17 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations have signed onto the new operating framework of the Belt and Road Initiative which extends far beyond the limited China-to-Europe corridor which many presumed it to be when it was announced in 2013. With its focus on long term planning and interconnectivity, China is already number one in vital infrastructure investments globally and while not number one in overall trade in the Americas, has now produced over six times more investment into Latin American energy infrastructure than the World Bank.

This new paradigm has been a breath of fresh air for many nations of the south that have been gripped by Western drug money laundering, poverty, debt slavery and organized crime which has been kept in place by over four decades of IMF-World Bank dictates enforced by London/Harvard trained economists positioned as local governors over the bodies of nationalist leaders.

In spite of the 17 nations on board the BRI, the big four powers (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia) have not yet joined, which has been a frustrating obstacle for the greater vision of integrated infrastructure to blossom. However, in the past few weeks, even this has begun to change.

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Ecuador’s Globalist Regime Received Billions to Sell Out Julian Assange

Big League Politics

Ecuadorean President Lenín Moreno thrust a dagger into the heart of free speech today after he allowed a foreign country’s authorities into his nation’s embassy in Britain to arrest heroic whistle-blower and award-winning journalist Julian Assange.

What was Moreno’s price to commit this betrayal? A 4.2 billion loan guarantee from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it seems.

The Economist published a profile on Moreno showing how he has reversed the policies of his predecessor, Rafael Correa. Correa was a populist who used oil revenues to fund social programs and stood firmly with Assange.

Moreno has moved Ecuador toward being a submissive vassal state of the globalists, begging international financiers for handouts to keep his corrupt regime afloat.

“Thanks to the firm decisions I have made, we are not what Venezuela is today . . . we have recovered democracy,” Moreno said in February. “This money will create work opportunities for those who have not found something stable.”

 

The IMF deal was announced on the seven-year anniversary of Julian Assange’s asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, hardly a coincidence. It was clear in Moreno’s rhetoric that they were bowing to their global masters and readying to throw Assange under the bus.

“Our government is recovering its credibility,” Moreno said as he sold his nation to the IMF syndicate, also announcing that other globalist entities like Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank would be trampling over Ecuadorean sovereignty as well. “The fact that the world trusts us shows that we are on the right path.”

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Leaked Doc Reveals US Military Use of IMF, World Bank as “Unconventional” Weapons

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News
 

This “U.S. coup manual,” recently highlighted by WikiLeaks, serves as a reminder that the so-called “independence” of such financial institutions as The World Bank and IMF is an illusion and that they are among the many “financial weapons” regularly used by the U.S. government to bend countries to its will.

 

WASHINGTON – In a leaked military manual on “unconventional warfare” recently highlighted by WikiLeaks, the U.S. Army states that major global financial institutions — such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — are used as unconventional, financial “weapons in times of conflict up to and including large-scale general war,” as well as in leveraging “the policies and cooperation of state governments.”

The document, officially titled “Field Manual (FM) 3-05.130, Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare” and originally written in September 2008, was recently highlighted by WikiLeaks on Twitter in light of recent events in Venezuela as well as the years-long, U.S.-led economic siege of that country through sanctions and other means of economic warfare. Though the document has generated new interest in recent days, it had originally been released by WikiLeaks in December 2008 and has been described as the military’s “regime change handbook.”

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Ecuador Bows to US and IMF, Entering New Neoliberal Era

Elliot Gabriel

Mint Press News

The warmth displayed by authorities over the past month to visiting U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and the IMF, respectively, further proves that Ecuador is melting back into the arms of international financial interests.

UITO, ECUADOR – Ecuador’s passionate re-embrace of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offers one of the clearest and most dramatic signs that the country’s leadership is dead-set on shedding any vestiges of the “post-neoliberal” era it was said to have entered a decade ago during former President Rafael Correa’s Citizens’ Revolution.

 

The warmth displayed by authorities over the past month to visiting U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and a team from the IMF, respectively, further proves that Ecuador is melting back into the arms of international financial interests. Yet, despite authorities’ almost apologetic attitude toward foreign capital over the spats and breakups of the past, the people of Ecuador appear destined to suffer further abuse at the hands of the domestic and transnational capitalist interests that inflicted such grievous harm on it in the past.

Pence’s visit to the Andean nation last month to meet with President Lenin Moreno offered one such occasion for the groveling attitude the once-proud government of Ecuador has adopted toward the U.S. and IMF. It comes amid the rolling reversal of fortunes faced by the wave of left-nationalist social democratic governments that rose in response to the devastation wrought by U.S.-dictated neoliberalism.

On June 29, Economy and Finance Minister Richard Martinez told reporters at the Carondelet Presidential Palace in Quito, that the country requires U.S. backing to obtain new loans from international institutions amounting to nearly $4 billion.

“We communicated to the vice president the need for support to permit multilateral organizations to generate sources of financing with favorable conditions for Ecuador,” said Martinez.

Days prior, the Ecuadorian presidency received approval from the National Assembly to move forward with the Law on Productive Development, which critics blasted as a threat to the country’s social services and welfare programs. The law will require that the government approves only budgets that result in revenue — i.e., taxes– outweighing expenditures on such vital state functions as public education, health care, national defense and public security.

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Argentina Just Made History With Biggest IMF Bailout Loan Ever

Zero Hedge

Just a few weeks after Argentina became ground zero for the coming Emerging Market crisis, when its currency suddenly collapsed at the end of April amid soaring inflation, exploding capital outflows and a central bank that was far behind the curve (as in “13% of rate hikes in a week” behind)…

… the IMF has officially bailed out the country – again – this time with a $50 billion, 36-month stand-by loan, and coming in about $10 billion more than rumored earlier in the week, it was the largest ever bailout loan in IMF history, meant to help restore investor confidence in a nation that, between its soaring external debt and current account deficit, prompted JPMorgan to suggest that along with Turkey, Argentina is in effect, doomed.

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Argentina Is Suddenly on the Verge of ANOTHER Economic Collapse

Daisy Luther
Activist Post

The economic collapse of Argentina in 2001 is the stuff of prepper legends. For years, it was the example that we pointed to when trying to convince others that, yes, it really can happen. (Now, of course, that example has been replaced by the dramatic fall of Venezuela.) There’s even a fantastic book about the Argentinian collapse with survival lessons that has fueled many a prepper to get stocked up, in which Fernando Aguirre, also known as FerFal, shared the inside story.

And now, sadly, it looks like just as hopeful Argentinians believed the country was getting back on its feet, another collapse could be imminent.

President Mauricio Macri, a business tycoon who vowed to reincorporate Argentina into the global economy, has asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a hefty credit line of at least $19.7 billion to see the country through the rest of his term, which ends in 2019.

When the IMF gets involved, it tends to be the beginning of the end, as we saw in Greece, whose crisis was at its peak between 2009 and 2016.

What happened during the previous Argentinian collapse

Back in the late 1990s, Argentina was suffering. Wages were decreasing, unemployment was increasing, and the government was getting deeper and deeper into debt. This all came to a head in 2001 when the Argentinian government defaulted on a whopping 100 billion dollars of that debt.

Overnight, interest rates skyrocketed and there was a run on the banks. The government froze all the accounts and allowed patrons a small trickle of money only once per week. The banks converted all dollar accounts into pesos at the previous exchange rate (pre-default) and suddenly everyone with a deposit account lost 3/4s of their wealth, just like that.

This, of course, resulted in social unrest, riots, and rage against the government and the banking system. What followed was several years of extreme poverty and desperation for the Argentinian people.

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Greek Bank Run Re-accelerates: Massive Deposit Withdrawals Despite Capital Controls

Zero Hedge

Delays in the talks between Greece and its lenders have brought back the ghost of Grexit.

The grave disagreement between the International Monetary Fund and the European lenders, Grexit bombshells flying around and Greece’s reluctance to accept additional austerity measures have increase uncertainty among citizens – for one more time.

And so, as KeepTalkingGreece.com notes, what do citizens do when they feel political and economical insecurity? The run to banks and withdraw deposits.

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IMF admits disastrous love affair with the euro and apologises for the immolation of Greece

Comment: This is tragi-comedy. What this shows above anything else that the sheer stupidity of these people is beyond dispute. They were not informed?? Really? They're like spoilt children playing with people's lives. "Sorry, we destroyed a country and its its citizens. We'll do better next time and put in measures that ensure a country's wealth passes into our and the banking fraternity's coffers in a more civilised and less transparent way."

The IMF is an enabler and tool of neo-liberal economic policy thus it cannot be reformed. The only course of action is to erase it from existence as soon as humanly possible.

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Telegraph

 

“The possibility of a balance of payments crisis in a monetary union was thought to be all but non-existent,” it said. As late as mid-2007, the IMF still thought that “in view of Greece’s EMU membership, the availability of external financing is not a concern".

At root was a failure to grasp the elemental point that currency unions with no treasury or political union to back them up are inherently vulnerable to debt crises. States facing a shock no longer have sovereign tools to defend themselves. Devaluation risk is switched into bankruptcy risk.

“In a monetary union, the basics of debt dynamics change as countries forgo monetary policy and exchange rate adjustment tools,” said the report. This would be amplified by a “vicious feedback between banks and sovereigns”, each taking the other down. That the IMF failed to anticipate any of this was a serious scientific and professional failure.

In Greece, the IMF violated its own cardinal rule by signing off on a bailout in 2010 even though it could offer no assurance that the package would bring the country’s debts under control or clear the way for recovery, and many suspected from the start that it was doomed.

The organisation got around this by slipping through a radical change in IMF rescue policy, allowing an exemption (since abolished) if there was a risk of systemic contagion. “The board was not consulted or informed,” it said. The directors discovered the bombshell “tucked into the text” of the Greek package, but by then it was a fait accompli.

The IMF was in an invidious position when it was first drawn into the Greek crisis.  The Lehman crisis was still fresh. “There were concerns that such a credit event could spread to other members of the euro area, and more widely to a fragile global economy,” said the report.

The eurozone had no firewall against contagion, and its banks were tottering. The European Central Bank had not yet stepped up to the plate as lender of last resort. It was deemed too dangerous to push for a debt restructuring in Greece.

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French court rules IMF chief Lagarde to stand trial in €400mn payout case

Comment: Couldn't happen to a more deserving person....

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RT

IMF chief Christine Lagarde must stand trial for her role in a €400 million payout case while she was French finance minister back in 2008, France's highest appeals court has ruled.

News that the IMF chief may face a negligence trial in France had been circulating in the media for several years.

Bernard Tapie, a former owner of Marseilles football club, was awarded €400 million ($440 million) compensation in a lawsuit against the French bank Credit Lyonnais, which he accused of undervaluing his stake in multinational sportswear company Adidas. Lagarde, who was former President Nicolas Sarkozy's finance minister at the time, sent the case to arbitration and ratified the payout.

Tapie, who along with his business interests was also a politician, was a key shareholder in Adidas.

In search of funds in 1993, he began to look for buyers of his stake, which he eventually sold to Credit Lyonnais for 2 billion francs.

A few months later, the bank - which then belonged to the state - resold the assets to businessman Robert Louis-Dreyfus for twice the price. Tapie accused Credit Lyonnais of fraud and demanded compensation for lost profits, which was eventually paid out in 2007.

In 2007, then-Finance Minister Lagarde intervened in the process and appointed a special committee to resolve the issue. The committee eventually ruled in favor of Tapie and decided to pay him about €400 million.

In 2013, Tapie was placed under formal investigation for organized fraud. The scandal threatened to expose an alleged corrupt system at the highest level in the country during Sarkozy's presidency.

The same year, French authorities searched Lagarde's home over the probe. She has been under investigation since 2011, but has denied any wrongdoing.

In March 2014, after the third investigation into the case, the IMF chief said she had "always acted in the interest of the country and in accordance with the law." She confirmed she faced "negligence" charges in a multi-million-euro fraud case in August 2014.

However, Lagarde's lawyer said that he is convinced that the trial will show that the IMF head is innocent, Reuters reported. 

De-Globalization: Hungary asks IMF to leave the country after early payback

RT 

 

Hungary has announced plans to repay its bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund early and asked the organization to leave the country.

The head of Hungary’s Central Bank Gyorgy Matolcsy wrote a letter to IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Monday asking for it to close its representative office in Budapest as it was "not necessary to maintain" it any longer.

The IMF says it is ready to agree since the current IMF representative in Hungary is due to leave soon anyway.

Hungary is heading for a general election next year, and many see the move as an attempt to show the government’s ability to avoid austerity programs and to act without outside help.

In 2008, amid the global crisis Hungary was saved from bankruptcy with a $26 billion rescue package from the IMF and the EU. Two years later Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government decided not to renew the deal to avoid closer IMF scrutiny of its economic policies.

However, in 2011, Economy Minister Matolcsy turned to IMF for a precautionary deal but didn’t get any reply.

In February 2013 Prime Minister Orban issued the country’s first international bond since 2011, thus demonstrating the country could go it alone by borrowing on global financial markets.

Relations between Orban’s government and the IMF have always been strained. In 2010, when Orban came to power, his government issued new laws, which were criticized as curtailing democracy, the justice system and freedom of speech. 

The European Parliament responded with a resolution calling on Hungary to repeal the "anti-democratic changes."

Hungary still owes $2.125 billion to the IMF from its original credit line of $25.5 billion.

Government Officials Admit to ECONOMIC False Flag Operations

Washington's Blog

False flag attacks don’t just involve physical deaths and wars …

They also involve faked economic events and financial casualties.

For example, two officials of the International Monetary Fund said last month that they needed the threat of an imminent financial catastrophe to force other players into accepting its measures such as cutting Greek pensions and working conditions, and – as the Greek government put it (via Bloomberg) – the IMF was “considering a plan to cause a credit event in Greece and destabilize Europe.”

High-level officials also admitted to intentionally destroying their own nations’ economies in order to “justify” structural economic reforms.

For example, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Japanese central bank officials admitted that they kept Japan’s economy in a deflationary crisis to promote “structural reform” which would allow the Japanese economy to be looted by foreign interests. Japanese central bank officials admitted the same thing.

Japan Times noted in 2003:

Official statements by BOJ executives [reveal]: The BOJ can be helpful by not being helpful. The princes recognized that such structural change was so opposed to the special and general interests of most Japanese — citizens, businessmen, bureaucrats and politicians — that it could be achieved only by crippling the economy and preventing its recovery.

Something similar happened in Thailand and the EU.

Indeed, the former head of the Bank of England said  last month that the depression in the EU was more or less a “deliberate” policy choice.

And an economist at insurance giant AIG – and former head of the European Commission’s unit responsible for the European Monetary System and monetary policies – said in 2008 that what European leaders wanted was to create a crisis to force introduction of “European economic government.”

Indeed, Greece (more), Italy, Ireland (and here) and other European countries have all lost their national sovereignty to the ECB and the other members of the Troika.

ECB head Mario Draghi said in 2012:

The EU should have the power to police and interfere in member states’ national budgets.

***

“I am certain, if we want to restore confidence in the eurozone, countries will have to transfer part of their sovereignty to the European level.”

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“Several governments have not yet understood that they lost their national sovereignty long ago. Because they ran up huge debts in the past, they are now dependent on the goodwill of the financial markets.”

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UK to increase defense spending by 30% in the midst of massive social spending cuts

RT

The British government says it will boost anti-terrorism spending by 30 percent, including buying new stealth fighter jets. The announcement comes on the eve of expected massive spending cuts that could decimate public services.

The decision to increase security spending was made by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne on Sunday, who said he wants to make sure that London is capable of doing its part in the fight against terrorism.

"We are going to step up the aircraft carrier punch of the United Kingdom. We are going to make sure that when these aircraft carriers are available they are going to have planes that can fly from them in force," Osborne told BBC television.

"By 2023, we will be able to have 24 of these jets, some of the most powerful in the world, the F-35, on the decks of these carriers."

To pay for increased anti-terrorism spending, Osborne plans to slash social welfare spending in what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is calling the most aggressive austerity plan amongst the world's developed nations between now and 2020.

The UK chancellor also refused to rule out introducing spending cuts to the police force. "Every public service has to make sure it is spending money well," he told the BBC.

Osborne is expected to announce an estimated £20 billion ($30 billion) worth of budget cuts on Wednesday, as the Conservative government aims to run a budget surplus by 2020.


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Meanwhile, in Iceland, the 26th banker has been jailed for their role in the 2008 financial crisis

The Independent i100

While British and American bankers who brought the world's economy to its knees in 2008 have barely faced the consequences for their actions, in Iceland, it's a different story.

The Nordic nation, which was one of the worst affected by the 2008 financial crisis, has sentenced 26 bankers to a combined 74 years in prison.

In two separate rulings last week, the Supreme Court of Iceland and Reykjavik District Court sentenced six top managers of two national banks for crimes committed in the lead up to the banking sector's collapse, bringing the total number of people who have faced the music for their roles in the crash to 26. 

At the moment the maximum penalty for white collar crime in Iceland is six years. 

Iceland deregulated its financial sector in 2001, and manipulation of the markets by bankers led to a system-wide meltdown when the global economy tanked in 2008. 

Iceland's economy is now in comparatively rude health since the country was forced to borrow heavily from the International Monetary Fund seven years ago. 

As Iceland's president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson said when asked how the country recovered so quickly:

"We were wise enough not to follow the traditional prevailing orthodoxies of the Western financial world in the last 30 years."

"We introduced currency controls, we let the banks fail, we provided support for the poor, and we didn’t introduce austerity measures like you’re seeing in Europe.

In the US and the UK, of course, we just bailed them out. 

HT US Uncut

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More:This banker has raised millions for the Conservative party. He's just been knighted
More: Bankers more likely to lie, cheat

Puerto Rico Says Services Come Before Agency Debt Payment

Bloomberg

Puerto Rico’s budget director ratcheted up the risk of a default on some agency securities, saying cash from the commonwealth’s operating budget won’t be redirected to make debt payments due next month.

The comments from Luis Cruz, director of the Office of Management and Budget, come as Standard & Poor’s slashed its rating on the Public Finance Corp.’s bonds to CC from CCC-, calling an Aug. 1 default on the securities a “virtual certainty.”

Puerto Rico said last week the agency failed to transfer $36.3 million to a trustee to cover the Aug. 1 debt payment because the legislature didn’t appropriate the funds. Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla last month directed island officials to create a debt-restructuring plan by Aug. 30, saying the commonwealth can’t sustain its $72 billion debt burden.

“We all know the difficult situation we are facing in terms of cash flow,” Cruz said during a press conference Monday in San Juan. “And we have to decide how we handle that cash flow and our priority is to provide services to citizens: health, safety, education.”

A $1 million block of Public Finance Corp. tax-exempt bonds maturing August 2024 traded Monday at 24.5 cents on the dollar, for a yield of 31.8 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

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Greece: Sound and Fury Signifying Much

Paul Craig Roberts

All of Europe, and insouciant Americans and Canadians as well, are put on notice by Syriza’s surrender to the agents of the One Percent. The message from the collapse of Syriza is that the social welfare system throughout the West will be dismantled.

The Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has agreed to the One Percent’s looting of the Greek people of the advances in social welfare that the Greeks achieved in the post-World War II 20th century. Pensions and health care for the elderly are on the way out. The One Percent needs the money.

The protected Greek islands, ports, water companies, airports, the entire panoply of national patrimony, is to be sold to the One Percent. At bargain prices, of course, but the subsequent water bills will not be bargains.

This is the third round of austerity imposed on Greece, austerity that has required the complicity of the Greeks’ own governments. The austerity agreements serve as a cover for the looting of the Greek people literally of everything. The IMF is one member of the Troika that is imposing the austerity, despite the fact that the IMF’s economists have said that the austerity measures have proven to be a mistake. The Greek economy has been driven down by the austerity. Therefore, Greece’s indebtedness has increased as a burden. Each round of austerity makes the debt less payable.

But when the One Percent is looting, facts are of no interest. The austerity, that is the looting, has gone forward despite the fact that the IMF’s economists cannot justify it.

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The Euro-Summit ‘Agreement’ on Greece – annotated by Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis

The Euro Summit statement (or Terms of Greece’s Surrender – as it will go down in history) follows, annotated by yours truly. The original text is untouched with my notes confined to square brackets (and in red). Read and weep… [For a pdf copy click here.]

Euro Summit Statement Brussels, 12 July 2015

The Euro Summit stresses the crucial need to rebuild trust with the Greek authorities [i.e. the Greek government must introduce new stringent austerity directed at the weakest Greeks that have already suffered grossly] as a pre-requisite for a possible future agreement on a new ESM programme [i.e. for a new extend-and-pretend loan].

In this context, the ownership by the Greek authorities is key [i.e. the Syriza government must sign a declaration of having defected to the troika’s ‘logic’], and successful implementation should follow policy commitments.

A euro area Member State requesting financial assistance from the ESM is expected to address, wherever possible, a similar request to the IMF This is a precondition for the Eurogroup to agree on a new ESM programme. Therefore Greece will request continued IMF support (monitoring and financing) from March 2016 [i.e. Berlin continues to believe that the Commission cannot be trusted to ‘police’ Europe’s own ‘bailout’ programs].
Given the need to rebuild trust with Greece, the Euro Summit welcomes the commitments of the Greek authorities to legislate without delay a first set of measures [i.e. Greece must subject itself to fiscal waterboarding, even before any financing is offered]. These measures, taken in full prior agreement with the Institutions, will include:

By 15 July

• the streamlining of the VAT system [i.e. making it more regressive, through rate rises that encourage more VAT evasion]and the broadening of the tax base to increase revenue [i.e. dealing a major blow at the only Greek growth industry – tourism].

• upfront measures to improve long-term sustainability of the pension system as part of a comprehensive pension reform programme [i.e. reducing the lowest of the low of pensions, while ignoring that the depletion of pension funds’ capital due to the 2012 troika-designed PSI and the ill effects of low employment & undeclared paid labour].

• the safeguarding of the full legal independence of ELSTAT [i.e. the troika demands complete control of the way Greece’s budget balance is computed, with a view to controlling fully the magnitude of austerity it imposes on the government.]

• full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, in particular by making the Fiscal Council operational before finalizing the MoU and introducing quasi-automatic spending cuts in case of deviations from ambitious primary surplus targets after seeking advice from the Fiscal Council and subject to prior approval of the Institutions [i.e. the Greek government, which knows that the imposed fiscal targets will never be achieved under the imposed austerity, must commit to further, automated austerity as a result of the troika’s newest failures.]

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Greece votes no - Let the chaos begin...

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse

The result of the referendum in Greece is a great victory for freedom, but it is also threatens to unleash unprecedented economic chaos all across Europe. With almost all of the votes counted, it is being reported that approximately 61 percent of Greeks have voted "no" and only about 39 percent of Greeks have voted "yes". This is a much larger margin of victory for the "no" side than almost everyone was anticipating, and it represents a stunning rejection of European austerity. Massive celebrations have erupted on the streets of Athens and other major Greek cities, but the euphoria may not last long. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is promising that Greece will be able to stay in the euro, but that gives EU bureaucrats and the IMF a tremendous amount of power, because at this point the Greek government is flat broke. Without more money from the EU and the IMF, the Greek government will not be able to pay its bills and virtually all Greek banks will inevitably collapse. Meanwhile, the rest of Europe is about to experience a tremendous amount of pain as financial markets respond to the results of this referendum. The euro is already plummeting, and most analysts expect European bond yields to soar and European stocks to drop substantially when trading opens on Monday morning.

Personally, I love the fact that the Greek people decided not to buckle under the pressure being imposed on them by the EU and the IMF. But amidst all of the celebration, the cold, hard reality of the matter is that your options are extremely limited when you are out of money.

How is the Greek government going to pay its bills without any money?

How are the insolvent Greek banks going to operate without any money?

How is the Greek economy going to function without any money?

Now that the Greek people have overwhelmingly rejected the demands of the creditors, it will be very interesting to see what the EU and the IMF do. Prior to the referendum, European leaders were insisting that a "no" vote would put an end to negotiations and would force Greece to leave the euro.

Now that the results are in, are they going to change their tune? Because the ball is definitely in their court...

"This does two things: it legitimises the stance of the Greek government and it leaves the ball in Europe's court," ANZ Bank analysts said in a note.

"Europe either folds or Greece goes bankrupt; over to you Merkel."

So would they actually let Greece go bankrupt?

It is going to be fascinating to watch what happens over the next few days. Right now, Greek banks are on life support. If the European Central Bank decides to pull the plug, they would essentially destroy the entire Greek banking system. The only thing that can keep Greek banks alive and kicking is more intervention from the ECB. The following comes from the New York Times... 

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Ron Paul Stunned That George Soros Seeks To "Expand War In Ukraine"

Comment: Psychopath George Soros caught out doing what he's been doing for years: making money out of chaos. This guy is the ultimate shit-stirrer.  

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Zero Hedge

Earlier this week, using hacked and leaked documents and pdfs created by, among others, George Soros' most recent wife who is less than half his age, we showed something fascinating: the puppetmaster behind the entire Ukraine conflict may be none other than George Soros himself. To wit:

Just days after George Soros warned that World War 3 was imminent unless Washington backed down to China on IMF currency basket inclusion, the hacker collective CyberBerkut has exposed the billionaire as the real puppet-master behind the scenes in Ukraine. In 3 stunning documents, allegedly hacked from email correspondence between the hedge fund manager and Ukraine President Poroshenko, Soros lays out "A short and medium term comprehensive strategy for the new Ukraine," expresses his confidence that the US should provide Ukraine with lethal military assistance, “with same level of sophistication in defense weapons to match the level of opposing force," and finally explained Poroshenko's "first priority must be to regain control of financial markets," which he assures the President could be helped by The Fed adding "I am ready to call Jack Lew of the US Treasury to sound him out about the swap agreement."

Needless to say, there was absolutely no mention of any of this in the broader media. However, despite the limited distribution of this very fascinating story which casts a vastly different light on the Ukraine conflict than one shone by the mainstream, it did catch the attention of one person: Ron Paul.

In the following clip Ron Paul looks at the stunning implications of Soros' involvement behind the scenes in Ukraine, how he may be pulling the strings in this most critical proxy war between East and West, and what he stands to gain.

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Central Bankers Gather privately In Washington to Discuss "gold, the renminbi, and the multicurrency system"

Gatae

Attention, mainstream financial journalists! Here’s something else important for you to ignore this week, thanks to the diligent eye of gold researcher and GATA consultant Ronan Manly.

It’s a breakfast meeting to be held Friday in Washington for “a select group of central banks and other official-sector institutions,” sponsored by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum and the World Gold Council, to discuss “gold, the renminbi, and the multicurrency system,” convened in conjunction with the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group, a United Nations agency:

http://www.omfif.org/meetings/briefings/

“Discussions,” the discreet announcement from OMFIF says, “are under Chatham House Rules,” whereby information may be used but never attributed:

http://www.chathamhouse.org/about/chatham-house-rule

While many nations with central banks purport to be representative democracies and while the World Gold Council purports to be the representative of the gold industry, some of whose participants actually have to get their hands dirty every day —

http://www.gold.org/about-us

— attendance at Friday’s meeting will be by invitation only. So for the record GATA has requested one.

But if you don’t get an invitation, you can fairly assume that the valuation of all capital, labor, goods, and services in the world is none of your business. This is after all the central bankers’ world. The rest of us are lucky that they let us even pass through it from time to time, though the impertinent among us might wonder why central bankers should need to talk in secret about something supposedly as irrelevant and retrograde as gold.

Good thing for them that mainstream financial journalists have neither curiosity nor backbone.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer

Greece Drawing Up Contingency Plans To Nationalize Banks, Bring In Parallel Currency: Report

IBT 

According to a report in the Telegraph, sources close to the Syriza-led government said: “We will shut down the banks and nationalize them, and then issue IOUs if we have to, and we all know what this means. What we will not do is become a protectorate of the EU.”

Greece is due to make a payment of 458 million euros ($498 million) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on April 9. But officials told a conference call of Euro Zone deputy finance ministers this week that the country would run out of money by then, raising the possibility of a default on the IMF loan.

Greece's leftist government was swept to power in January, pledging to renegotiate the terms of the country's international bailout, and put an end to internationally supported austerity policies that ministers have said are responsible for a “humanitarian crisis” in the country.

Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis said on Wednesday that the country would have to decide whether to pay back the IMF or pay salaries and pensions. He said it would choose the latter, Reuters reported.

Greece has submitted a list of reforms to its international creditors, which, if approved, will unlock a further tranche of bailout funds. The government is keen to increase revenue by cracking down on the tax evasion that is widespread in the country while maintaining public services.

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