Left Behind

I don't literally want to be a "man of the Left," but sometimes you have to envy how nothing liberals or socialists do is ever their fault. Case in point: Greece's socialist PM says he will be looking into bringing fraud claims against the US bankers he holds responsible for his nation's Euro-destabilizing economic crisis: Greece Considering Legal Action Against US Banks for Crisis

Greece is considering taking legal action against U.S. investment banks that might have contributed to the country’s debt crisis, Prime Minister George Papandreou said.

“I wouldn’t rule out that this may be a recourse,” Papandreou said, in response to questions about the role of U.S. banks in the crisis, in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.” The program, scheduled for broadcast today, was taped on May 13. Neither Papandreou nor Zakaria mentioned any banks by name.

...

Papandreou said the decision on whether to go after U.S. banks will be made after a Greek parliamentary investigation into the cause of the crisis.

“Greece will look into the past and see how things went,” Papandreou said. “There are similar investigations going on in other countries and in the United States. This is where I think, yes, the financial sector, I hear the words fraud and lack of transparency. So yes, yes, there is great responsibility here.”

Come on! Even a corpse in the desert has enough dignity to not rail against the vultures circling above him! US banks didn't spend a decade cooking Greece's books to hide its unsustainable entitlements and back breaking debt. Greeks did that all by their little selves. The "speculators" causing trouble now are simply taking advantage of the hole that the Greeks dug for themselves.

Papandreou is welcome to demagogue "bankers" and "the US" all he wants. Hell, it might even work since the Greek people have shown a vigorous enthusiasm for being lied to. But, there is no avoiding the simple fact that we are not living through a crisis of capitalism, but a crisis of Big Government and the welfare state.