BANKRUPTED Greece, still up to its neck in debt, is to sell five-year bonds, in the country’s first long-term debt sale since its international bailout started four years ago.
Last month, the Greek lender, the Piraeus Bank sold its first bond in more than four years. The bond offered investors a yield of 5.125% and now trades with a yield of about 4.125%.
The news came as thousands of Greek workers took part in a general strike action and marched on parliament to protest against job and spending cuts.
The Finance Ministry debt sale proclamation reads: ‘The Hellenic Republic announces today it has mandated international banks for an imminent five-year benchmark bond issue.’
The debt bonds to be sold are, in reality, smothered in the blood of millions of workers and youth.
This is the blood of the 28% adult unemployed, and the 60% youth unemployed, from the shrinking of the Greek economy by 25%. It is the blood of the hundreds of thousands who have been sacked and the 28% of the Greek people who are living well below the poverty line, existing on charity, as well as the workers, youth and children who have died early deaths as a direct consequence of this capitalist crisis and its Greek medicine.
At first sight, buying Greek debt seems to be mad. However it is the madhouse created by the world capitalist crisis, with bankers seeking to profit from buying the debt of a completely bankrupted country!
The only way this can produce a profit is through the Greek bourgeoisie imposing its ‘Iron Heel’ on the neck of the Greek workers, pensioners and youth, even more brutally than it has to date.
By buying Greek debt, the international bankers are saying to the Greek bosses and government, ‘Well done, we will buy your debt, but we expect to make a profit, therefore you must build on what you have done and drive the working class back to past generations.’
The Greek bourgeoisie, the IMF, the World Bank and the world’s bankers are in a deadly and desperate alliance to engage in a permanent war on the working class to produce their profits.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to meet Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in Athens today to celebrate the floating of Greek debt bonds.
The adopting of a permanent civil war against the Greek working class, which has been getting more and more desperate, has produced ever more serious and savage clashes in the big cities between the youth, the working class and the state backed by the Golden Dawn fascists.
The army has already been put on stand-by on a number of occasions to take serious and deadly actions against demonstrators.
Now it has been revealed that there is an open line between the bourgeois political leadership and the Golden Dawn fascists who try to act as the government’s ‘stormtroopers’.
The working class has stood up to these forces, fighting them off when they have attacked migrants, workers, youth and the elderly on behalf of the Greek and international bankers.
It is clear that mass demonstrations, while mobilising the masses of workers, cannot defeat the government, the army, police and fascists that stand behind it.
The ruling class and the state apparatus must be smashed through a workers revolution What is required is the building up of the Greek section of the Fourth International to lead the working class, the youth and the rural poor in an insurrection to take the power and establish socialism.
The working class is now on the brink of insurrections, The party to lead the struggle to take the power must be rapidly build to provide the necessary leadership.
The events in Greece, the absolute pauperisation of the working class, the emergence of the Golden Dawn fascistsm all are a warning to the working class of the world just what the capitalism has in store for it.
There can be only one response and that is to organise and lead the world socialist revolution to smash capitalism and imperialism and replace both with socialism.
