It’s good to see the Greeks aren’t taken the theft of their pensions and other rights lying down, but while it’s heartening to see banks burn (not so much to hear three people died in it), this anger is still too unfocused. The real fuckers are elsewhere. It’s the credit ratings agencies that need to get some of that anger thrown at them. As Wikipedia explains:
The international credit rating agencies – Moody’s, S&P and Fitch – have played a central and controversial role in the current European bond market crisis. As with the housing bubble and the Icelandic crisis, the ratings agencies have been under fire. In the current bond market crisis the agencies have been accused of conflict of interest. In the case of Greece, the market responded to the crisis before the downgrades, with Greek bonds trading at junk levels several weeks before the ratings agencies began to describe them as such. Germany’s foreign minister suggested the European Union should create its own rating agency. He spoke after downgrades of Greece and Portugal roiled financial markets.
Government officials have criticized the ratings agencies and the German finance minister has said traders should not take global rating agencies “too seriously” following downgrades of Greece, Spain and Portugal. Guido Westerwelle, German foreign minister, called for an “independent” European rating agency, which could avoid the conflicts of interest that he claimed US-based agencies faced. According to the Financial Times “The latest furore over the agencies’ role in the sovereign debt market” is likely to bring about more supervision of these agencies.
Petrol bombs at local branches in Athens are futile; if only the people making money creating this crisis could directly feel the pain they’re attempting to inflict on the Greeks. And on the Portuguese. And on the Spanish. And on….