State and banks, hidden aspects of a historical hold up

Conference by Myret Zaki and Etienne Chouard

Moderation: fabio Lo Verso (La cité)

First conference

"The State, Hostage of the financial sector"

By Myret Zaki

I'll stay here taking notes because there will be an article about this topic in the next issue of

newspaper "La Cité" coming out next week

we'll come back on tonight's discussion

Thank you very much Fabio, and good evening to all of you

I am delighted to be here with professor Chouard

and to discover "l'usine Kugler"

and to work in collaboration with "la cité" newspaper

I personally work for an economics magazine called "Bilan"

I've written a few books denouncing the

drift of the financial sector

these last years

I've been following the evolution of finance the last 15 years

and I've seen how they played a central role in what we now call "the crisis"

so we are in the middle of a crisis as you probably noticed

But we don't really know why now

we suddenly said that Greece was in crisis

Can anyone tell me why, according to them,

what triggered the "Greek crisis"

that is a enormous crisis since end of 2009

What started all of that in the first place

if you tell me it is because of its debt

I will tell you that Greece has the same debt level since several years

who decided there is a crisis? does anyone know?

Nicolas Brillet who knows all the answers :-)

The bad advices of Goldman Sachs and the way they've hidden

a part of their debt has contributed greatly

ok good thread. The advices of Goldman sachs

contributed to the crisis. I agree

everything started when at the end of 2009 the notation agencies

have said that Greece was having little financial difficulties

as several countries of western Europe

Their debt rate had slightly declined lately

and that they needed to improve the way they manage their finance

that's all

rating agencies never said that Greece was in bankrupt

All they said ...(sorry I am speaking too loud in this mic)

In the coming years Greece should

try to have a better management of its finances

and that was in 2009

what did really trigger the crisis is that

there was a meeting between 5 hedge funds

american hedge funds in a restaurant in new York

an american newspaper told that story

this is not a fiction

one of the speculator present that day was Georges Soros

the man who hit the bank of england several years ago

and earned 2 billion dollars on an operation to devaluate

the british pound.

in the seventies

So george Soros and a few other american speculators have decided

now the subprime crisis is over

they needed to find a new prey to make a lot of money

It was in february 2010 precisely in a New Yorker restaurant

And those people have decided together

to attack the euro first through

Grece and then through small outlying countries

the idea is that if you sink a small countrie such as Grece,

there will be a phenomen of panic on the markets which will involve that the other neighbours countries will be contaminated too

because the investors will sell their titles too on those countries

and that those speculators we were talking about, will be able to grow rich in the infinity

on, in reality, the bankruptcy of Europe's periphery and even of the whole Europe

somewhere, G.Sorros was trying to creat the same blow

he had done and that made him billionaire in the seventies.

It hasn't been told a lot, it doesn't interest a lot of people

when you speak about it to personns working in the financial and banking sector

they say no, all this is very marginal and isn't for something

But we know very well that

those hedge funds have then massively

selled the debt

speculator earn money on the drop

of the debt or the actions of a country

you can really make money on the drop if

you bet with derivatives on the collapse of

of a market and this is how

loads of millionaires and billionaires have form themselves

during the last years with the european crisis.

It is the facts and the figures

We know which hedge funds are involve, which managers

We know them, there are mostly British and Americans

and they know perfectly the art of spectulation

They have accumulated sell positions, during end 2009 and on the begining 2010 against Grece

The Greek economic minister was touched about it

Indeed Greek gorverment can see the moves made on their debt: they asked themselves what is going on

our debt is suddenly the subject of a fierce downward bet

effectively what are these attacks going to induce

How can these attacks really sink a country

Because when you sell massively the debt of a small country like that

the interest rates that this small country must pay on his debt are explosing

Because if the country's obligations drop dramatically of its value

the interest rate increase itself automatically

this is then how suddenly Grece have to pay 7% and up to 20% recently

This is how Grece have been expulsed of european capital market

She couldn't finance herself anymore on the international debt market

It comes from markets. Grece has been in crisis through

the anglo saxon speculatives attacks.

As have Nicolas, here by present, noticed:

So, Goldman Sachs had advice Grece to adopt very complex financial tools

that Goldman Sachs had set up

to mask their real indebtedeness situation to the rest of the E.U

Goldman Sachs had in a first time from the years 2000

help Grece reduce their real debts only in appearances

What has Goldman Sachs done meanwhile?

Godlman Sachs went to see some hedge funds which were their clients

(these speculatives funds for whom they work)

and said: Hey you know what I have a very good information to share with you

Grece is much more indebt that she is in reality

'Insider trading' this is how it is called

Goldman Sachs has shared this information with her clients

which allowed speculative funds

to attack this debt by advance

knowing that the real balance figures of Grece were going to be revealed beginning 2010

So you motivate Greece to adopte misleading instruments

which will bring her to have more debts than she had

then you benefit of the problems

that are caused and you share the information with other hedge funds

And then took place a kind of butchering of the greek debt

the hedge funds went straight on it

and the other investors, like the sheeps that they are

because finnally the investement world is very herd

when they saw that there was a kind of "alert" on the Greek debt market

they all started to sell.

If you want, speculative funds act like an elite cavalry

which comes first and destabilize a country

Then come pensions funds and investissors from all over the world

who, though they do not understand anything about this story, start selling as well when they saw the risk rising up,

That is how you ruin a country.

Because a country seeing is debt collapsing like that, and which have to pay some 20% interests

can only enter in quasi-default and get out of the capital market

So, seeing that they made a so nice strike, the edge fodns didn't want to stop on a so good way,

they carried on. Then, the same happened to Portugal, then Irland, then Spain. Then it came to Belgium, then Italy.

And the last new ones have been: France, and even GERMANY. Germany which is the more solvent country in the world, the stronger country in the word

has been more or less attacked on the international debt market.

What are we talking about now? We are talking about a phenomenon which is: If you are a country which have his debt quoted on a market,

you are completely vulnarable to some attaks, some RAIDS I would even say

some real raids from some scrupleness financiers,

and, especially the most important is that these people are not regulated at all.