The European Central Bank’s political decision to blackmail Athens is arrogant and dumb. An institution buying vast quantities of toxic assets from banks ought to be also providing the Greek government with the necessary breathing space now, so that a solution to the European debt crisis can be negotiated.
The practice of officials who have no democratic legitimacy setting themselves up as lords over the fate of whole countries must finally come to an end. This applies to not only the ECB, the Troika, but also the rating agencies, whose judgment still decides the fortunes and misfortunes of entire national economies. It is an indictment of Europe and the ECB that they continue to make themselves so dependent on the judgments of these rating agencies, even though they did such a massive damage during the last financial crisis.
People in Europe have had enough of the financial dictatorship that, in the interest of rich oligarchs, distributes trillions to banks while dictating ruthless wage and welfare cuts at the same time. This financial dictatorship was voted out in Greece, and other countries will follow.
Sahra Wagenknecht is Vice Chair of the Left Party in Germany. The original statement “EZB muss Erpressungspolitik beenden” was first published on the Web site of the Left Party fraction in the Bundestag on 5 February 2015. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).