Will a major economic crisis hit us before June 23? A transcript of a telephone conference call among top International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials provides an alarming hint that the IMF may be getting set to pull off a destabilizing “event” in Europe that could cause global shock waves before that date. A new WikiLeaks document released on April 2 points to a created crisis before June 23, when British voters go to the polls for the so-called Brexit vote, to decide whether Britain exits, or stays in, the EU. As we have reported previously (see here, here, and here), the globalist establishment at the IMF, European Commission, United Nations, World Economic Forum, Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution, Peterson Institute for International Economics, and corporatist mainstream media have been in a frenzy to scare voters and stop the Brexit.
The recently leaked document is the purported transcript of a telephone conference call on March 19, 2016, among Poul M. Thomsen, a Danish economist and director of the IMF’s European Department; Delia Velculescu, a Romanian economist and head of the IMF Mission to Greece; and Iva Petrova, a Bulgarian economist and IMF negotiator on the Greek debt crisis. These are the IMF’s top technocrats dealing with the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the Greek government.
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Bloomberg News reported on April 3 that the Greek government “said in an e-mail to reporters on Saturday that the leaks show that the Fund has been considering a plan to cause a credit event in Greece and destabilize Europe.” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called on the IMF to replace its top officials in Greece, accusing them of a breach of trust that precludes continuing negotiations with them in good faith.
In the conference call, Thomsen and Velculescu are clearly upset that Greek, German, and EU officials are catering too much to the political dictates of their domestic constituencies rather than following the lead of the IMF and sticking to its mandates on the Greek deal. They are worried that the Brexit vote may delay or even scuttle the IMF’s plans.
Here are some excerpts:
THOMSEN: Well, I don’t know. But this is … I think about it differently. What is going to bring it all to a decision point? In the past there has been only one time when the decision has been made and then that was when they were about to run out of money seriously and to default. Right?
VELKOULESKOU: Right!
THOMSEN: And possibly this is what is going to happen again. In that case, it drags on until July, and clearly the Europeans are not going to have any discussions for a month before the Brexits and so, at some stage they will want to take a break and then they want to start again after the European referendum.
VELKOULESKOU: That’s right.
THOMSEN: That is one possibility. Another possibility is one that I thought would have happened already and I am surprised that it has not happened, is that, because of the refugee situation, they take a decision … that they want to come to a conclusion. Ok? And the Germans raise the issue of the management … and basically we at that time say “Look, you Mrs. Merkel you face a question, you have to think about what is more costly: to go ahead without the IMF, would the Bundestag say ‘The IMF is not on board’? or to pick the debt relief that we think that Greece needs in order to keep us on board?” Right? That is really the issue.
VELKOULESKOU: Correct!
The IMF transcript continues:
VELKOULESKOU: When is that going to happen? I don’t know, I am surprised that it has not happened yet … I am hoping it’s going to happen with these debt discussions that are starting in mid April.
THOMSEN: But that is not an event. That is not going to cause them to … that discussion can go on for a long time. And they are just leading them down the road…. Why are they leading them down the road? Because they are not close to the event, whatever it is.
VELKOULESKOU: I agree that we need an event, but I don’t know what that will be.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde dismissed Prime Minister Tsipras’s concerns over the leaked transcripts, and instead attempted to turn the exposure into an indictment of the Greek government for allegedly violating the privacy rights of the IMF officials. “Successful negotiations are built on mutual trust, and this weekend’s incident has made me concerned as to whether we can indeed achieve progress in a climate of extreme sensitivity to statements of either side,” Lagarde said in a letter to Tsipras released by the IMF on April 3. “On reflection, however, I have decided to allow our team to return to Athens to continue the discussions.”
“The IMF conducts its negotiations in good faith, not by way of threats, and we do not communicate through leaks,” Lagarde said in her letter. “Any speculation that IMF staff would consider using a credit event as a negotiating tactic is simply nonsense,” she said.
Nonsense? For those who have been following the IMF’s destructive policies and the moves by globalist forces to transform the IMF into a “supersized” global Federal Reserve, it is not nonsense. The New American has reported in depth, for instance, on the IMF’s horrendous “bail in” scheme that stole the bank savings and checking accounts of the people of Cyprus, which is being proposed by the IMF as a model for a “one-off capital levy” (an IMF euphemism for a tax) of 10 percent on all savings worldwide. The pretext for such drastic measures is “to bring down public debt to pre-crisis levels.” However, Lagarde and her fellow globalists have no intention of reducing public debt and government spending. If proof of this is needed, simply look no further than Lagarde’s statements on March 31 and April 4 calling on governments to spend more on “public investment” for research and development to boost business productivity. What this would amount to is more central planning and further transformation of the “capitalist” economies into corporatist/fascist economies, with more Public-Private Parterships translating into more privileges and subsidies for the politically connected companies.
Lagarde has also repeated her charge that a vote in favor of the Brexit is considered by the IMF — in the words of the UK’s Independent, as one of the “immediate threats to the global economy.” The Independent reported on April 5:
The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, has put Britain voting to leave the EU in June’s referendum among what she says are immediate threats to the global economy. The Brexit is “clearly part of the uncertainty we have at the moment” Lagarde said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Frankfurt, noting the impact it may have on London’s financial sector.
In a matter of days (April 15-17), the IMF and World Bank Group will be holding their annual Spring Meeting in Washington, D.C. Congressional committees must call Lagarde and other IMF officials on the carpet to answer questions about the “event” talk concerning the Greek debt, and the repeated Lagarde/IMF threats and improper involvement in the domestic affairs of British voters regarding the Brexit.
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