Excellent. I fervently hope he can help call time on the "fiscal waterboarding". Here's the truth: the EU bailouts of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain were m

Excellent. I fervently hope he can help call time on the "fiscal waterboarding". Here's the truth: the EU bailouts of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain were mainly about protecting private creditors from taking losses on their investments. In fact this week the IMF had this to say about the Irish bailout: "The failure of policy makers to impose losses on some bank creditors at the height of Ireland’s financial crisis was a mistake that forced Irish taxpayers to foot a bill that should have been borne by the wider eurozone, according to the International Monetary Fund. The failure to 'bail-in' unsecured creditors to a bank rescue that cost Irish taxpayers €64bn and bankrupted the country was based on the view that doing so would have serious adverse 'spillover' effects in other eurozone countries, even though such risks were 'not obvious'."[1] All of the developed world bailouts have benefited the most well-connected, the most wealthy, entrenched interests, i.e. banks and investors. And in the case of the U.S. banks this has not led to an end to Too Big To Fail, in fact, they've just gotten bigger and the relatively modest reforms that were passed are now even in danger of being rolled back.[2] All of these extraordinary measures have led to paltry growth at best. And this includes quantitative easing which has not worked in Japan, has not worked in the U.S. and is not likely to work in Europe...unless you are wealthy or a bank, in which case it has worked just fine.[3][4] No wonder we have Davos-man plotting his escape.[5] Any fool can see this kind of economic leadership is not sustainable. ## [1] http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5f3131a4-a7ca-11e4-8e78-00144feab7de.html#axzz3QKHoCwxb http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5f3131a4-a7ca-11e4-8e78-00144... [2] http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/republican-led-u-s-house-to-vote-on-diluting-financial/article_b3f171f0-21dd-55ca-aa61-705f25e23803.html http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/republican-led-u-s-ho... [3] http://www.ibtimes.com/was-qe-effective-europe-awaits-qe-questions-remain-about-its-success-us-1793564 http://www.ibtimes.com/was-qe-effective-europe-awaits-qe-que... [4] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery/?_r=0 http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-ri... [5] http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/jan/23/nervous-super-rich-planning-escapes-davos-2015 http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/jan/2...