ATHENS (Reuters) 26 May 2010 - Greece is trying to renegotiate the terms of a drastic pension reform required under the terms of an economic rescue deal agreed this month with the EU and the IMF, senior government officials said.
In the first sign of glitches over the 3-year bailout plan, officials said they wanted the EU and IMF to agree full pensions should be payable after 37 years of contributions instead of 40, as set out in the deal, and allow the reform to be implemented later than foreseen.
"The (EU/IMF) memorandum will be implemented but I want to have the option to negotiate to the end," Labour Minister Andreas Loverdos said in a television interview. "I'm fighting for this, I'm not saying I will win."
Greece needs to comply with the memorandum to receive quarterly aid instalments from its international backers, and faces a tough battle if it insists on re-negotiating conditions it must meet under the 110 billion euro ($135.1 billion) deal.
Pension reform is a crucial performance benchmark for the debt-choked country under the EU/IMF plan, and any problems over this could raise doubts about the government's resolve to carry out the harsh austerity programme.
The responsibility of any government is to protect the interest of country and people. It can never be a responsibility of the government per se to carry out austerity programmes, but it is a vital responsibility to keep the economy on a good footing.
That is different.
IMF has never rescued any client country, and if you like you are welcome to check the recent experiences of Argentina and Indonesia just to mention two examples. The role of IMF was the role of a destroyer, not a rescuer and there is amble literature which will document this statement. In this way IMF has operated pretty much like Goldman Sachs which allegedly is doing "God's will".
If CEO Feinstein of Goldman Sachs is right (and who would question the word of one of the Chosen Ones?) this means that God either has signed up to Goldman's strategy of waging war on Christians and all other productive people of this world, which is a notion that does not fit into my concept of our loving God, or his God is Lucifer and he himself is of the Synagogue of Satan. Whilst I do not like the latter conclusion I must admit that it is logical.
No government should take its financial responsibilities lightly and that goes for the Greek government as well. However, it would be nothing short of treason to extend favoured treatment to foreign bankers who were the cause of the financial crisis by defrauding Greece in illegal transactions and subsequently betting against the very economic interests of their client.
Therefore, no austerity measures hitting the Greek population should even be considered without legislation which outlaws non-productive derivatives trading the only scope of which is financial destruction of others for the enrichment of the financiers themselves.