JANE BURGERMEISTER REPORT: ‘Deutsche Bank writes German Finance Ministry’s Greek debt policy, ARD documentary reveals’

Deutsche Bank writes German Finance Ministry’s Greek debt policy, ARD documentary reveals

The German government’s policy on debt restructuring for Greece is lifted directly from policy papers prepared by the Deutsche Bank, it has emerged.

The proposal floated at the beginning of June by the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble for a voluntary bond swap leading to a prolongation of the outstanding Greek sovereign bonds by seven years is based on a document by Deutsche Bank, investigative reporters from Germany’s ARD TV station have revealed.

http://www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/sendungen/2011/0616/Griechenland.php5

The Deutsche Bank document called “Proposal for Greek liability management exercise – burden sharing without haircuts” insisted, not surprisingly, on a voluntary participation by banks.

The revelation that the Finance Ministry in Berlin just takes over the contents of policy papers of Deutsche Bank offers yet more proof that Chancellor Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schäuble are puppets of the commercial banks.

Merkel and Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann attended this year’s Bilderberg conference in Switzerland and would have had ample opportunity to discuss ways and means to expropriate yet more money from the tax payers under one pretext or another.

The Deutsche Bank plan brings no real relief to Greece from the loan sharking operation run by the EU and ECB, which, acting like the Federal Reserve, flooded the Greek economy with cheap money in a boom phase before helping to ignite a bust, allowing banks like Deutsche Bank to call in the debts, seize collateral and imposing loans at penal interest rates which tax payers across the eurozone have to pay.

Also, Deutsche Bank itself broke a voluntary agreement to retain Greek souverein bonds, offloading them in stealth on the ECB. The ECB holds billions of dubious Greek debt against the rules and it is the tax payer’s who will have to pay.

What worth are voluntary agreements when Deutsche Bank breaks them?

The proposal by Schäuble was a PR stunt to hoodwink the electorate and the increasingly restive German parliament, worried that the scenes in Athens might soon be repeated in Berlin.

Yet another theatrical PR stunt was the announcement by Merkel at a joint press conference with Nicholas Sarkozy today that Germany is not going to insist on private creditors reducing their interest rates for Greece, after all. What a surprise!