On The Odiousness of Greek Debt

Abstract

Unlike the popular narrative, which suggests that the Greek debt crisis was the result of lavish spending, this article demonstrates that the 'crisis' was generated by a transformation of purely private debt into public debt. This finding is supported by the preliminary report of the Greek Parliamentary Committee on the Truth of the Greek Debt, which clearly showed that the exponential increase of private debt in Greece risked the collapse of the private financial institutions exposed to it, namely Greek, French and German banks. This resulted in pressure on the Greek government to recapitalise and nationalise Greek banks through Eurozone and IMF funding. This funding, which came to be known as 'bailout for Greece' was nothing more than the rescue of private banks through EU taxpayers' money, only 5% of which went into the Greek economy. The article shows that the process by which the debt was transformed, as well as the post-crisis bailout were odious, illegal and illegitimate and the ensuing debt itself was unsustainable and wholly against fundamental human rights.

Appraising the “Greek Truth Committee” in the Age of Debt: Counter-Expertise, “Battle Truths,” and the Struggle Against Post-Crash Neoliberalism

“…The most sustained engagement with the TCPD has come from legal scholars who have recently shown that the Committee's arguments are well supported in international law and significantly challenge the Troika's narratives. 53 Others have used the findings outlined in the Preliminary Report to support their own claims about the illegitimacy of the debt. 54 Despite the TCPD's untimely demise, then, this body of scholarship ultimately affirms the value of engaging with the Committee's work as a legal strategy for sovereign debt cancellation, with implications beyond the immediacy of the Greek context.…”

Memory, counter-memory and resistance: notes on the ‘Greek Debt Truth Commission’

“…Recent research affirming the legitimacy of the TCPD's arguments under international law (Bantekas & Vivien, 2016) affords a certain confidence in the central tenets of its approach, and as such raises the possibility of the model's appropriation, development, and transformation in future. In this sense, perhaps the legacy of 'Greek Debt Truth Commission' is to sketch out a terrain of struggle -memory -and a set of tools that are equal to it and may, someday, contribute to our escape from the debt economy.…”

“…Although the TCPD was prematurely closed as a consequence of political schisms that opened up within SYRIZA (Toussaint & Lemoine, 2017: 34-53), legal scholars have recently shown that the arguments it developed are well supported in international law and significantly challenge the Troika's narratives regarding the debt from an economic, legal and political perspective (Bantekas & Vivien, 2016). Despite its untimely demise, the TCPD thus has much to offer in terms of legal strategy and practice regarding the cancellation of sovereign debt beyond the immediate context of the Greek crisis.…”