There is an unsavory analogy to lenders offering under-collateralized, low-interest loans with “gotchas” built into the terms: Pushing these types of loans at interest rates which do not reflect prudent risk management is akin to offering an inexperienced young maiden a large sugary drink that is heavily spiked with a tasteless alcohol, with predatory designs.
So when the maiden wakes up groggily the next morning sans clothing in a strange bed, is it really fair to say, tsk, tsk, she should have known better? Doesn’t this ethical symmetry miss the reality that the risks of predation were masked and asymmetrical by design?
The banks that lent vast sums to Greece were in essence offering “too good to be true” loans at rates of interest that did not reflect prudent risk management. Anyone who glanced at Greece’s history of defaults might have wondered if Greek rates should have been almost as low as those in Germany.
Was the “collateral” any sounder than that offered in the many previous instances of default?
We’re left with only two possible conclusions:
1. The big banks which lent stupendous sums of money to Greece at low rates of interest were hapless incompetents when it came to risk assessment and management, or
2. The loans were predatory from the start.
#1 is patently absurd, and so we are left with #2: the banks designed and offered these loans with predatory intent. Now the banks are offering their political lackeys a menu of predation to choose from:
1. Deliver the wealth of the Greek nation directly to the banks via transfer of national assets
2. Deliver the wealth of the nation over time via “austerity” programs that in essence divert the surplus national income to the predatory banks
3. Increase taxes on the “core” Euroland nations’ taxpayers to fund a “bailout” of Greece that is in essence a direct transfer of those taxpayers’ wealth to the big predatory banks; the “bailout” is just a pass-through to the banks.
If you think this through, there is only one ethical thing for the maiden to do: toss the spiked sugary drink in the face of the predator and deliver a swift, hard kick between his legs “where it counts.”
Greece should respond to this planned predation with complete and total default: not a “haircut” or “extended terms,” a complete and total refusal to pay any of the debt.
