“Bondholders Reap Much of Greece’s Bailout Money,” screamed the Washington Post headline as if it was news. Yep, they got $52 billion of the $91 billion dollars from the initial bailout funds:
“More than half of the money lent to Greece so far by the International Monetary Fund and European nations has gone to repay bondholders, a transfer of billions of dollars from taxpayers around the world to European banks and pension funds that invested in the troubled Mediterranean nation.”
“As the country struggles with a collapsing economy, violent strikes and historic levels of unemployment, a new analysis of an international bailout program shows the degree to which money provided to support Greece has been used to pay off its debts to the private sector.”
That’s what a bailout in today’s times mean: transferring taxpayers money to banks, creditors and bondholders where countries like Greece are merely pass-through paymasters for the lucky recipients. As discussed elsewhere in this blog, that unfathomable transfer is being done to make those banks, creditors and bondholders whole at 100 cents on the dollars.
