Extra! Extra! U.S. Taxpayers Bail Out Greece... And EU Banks!

When a too-big-to-fail bank (or country) fails, the powers-that-be look around for someone with money they can tap to bail them out. The EU folks looked and looked locally for someone to bail out Greece, but eventually ended up where all other good bailouts end up: In the U.S. taxpayers pockets. From PragCap:

Most Americans probably haven’t connected the dots yet, but you’re going to be signing an enormous check over to Greece over this weekend.  That’s right, as the largest contributor to the IMF the United States taxpayer is on the hook for the Greek bailout.  The numbers aren’t set in stone quite yet, but the latest rumors are for a $160B bailout over three years.  Of course, the most despicable part of this whole thing is not just the fact that the U.S. is helping to bail out Greece, but that this bailout is actually another bank bailout!  That’s right.  This isn’t really about the people of Greece.  They are going to be forced into years of austerity and painful economic times regardless of the situtation.  What this is really about is the $189B in Greek debt that the European banks have on their books.  No one wants them to take a 70% haircut on the debt.  So, connecting the dots here for you – Americans are once again bailing out banks – this time via the IMF.

They are hiding it by having the "IMF" bail them out, but that's just a smokescreen. We are the largest contributor to the IMF and will end up losing a lot of $$$ to help Greece pay for a bunch of programs and public workers that have zero benefit for us and to make whole the banks that loaned them money (unwisely).  Nice.

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