Americans like to think of the Greek financial fiasco as a European problem. What a majority probably don't know is that they are going to help foot the bill. The United States supplies 20% of IMF funding. This means that US taxpayers will be providing around $8 billion dollars of the $145 billion package to rescue Greece from default. The scam doesn't stop there.
It also looks like the IMF loan is being made "junior" to existing Greek debt. Instead of how in normal finance, the last lender is usually "senior". This means it should get the money back first. Not the case here. Greece is going to pay first, with the new money, the seedy unscrupulous bankers who loaned it the money to get into this mess in the first place. Then when the cash runs out again, and it looks like it will, most analysts only calling this package a "band-aid", Greece will have nothing to pay back the countries, e.g Germany, the US, that have bailed it out. Our loan is never going to be paid back.
This is yet another example of the recent trend of bailing out and rescuing companies that have made bad choices. It is not the responsibility, in any way, of taxpayers or governments to pay companies for making bad investment and lending choices. What happened to risk? These companies and banks have gotten so big and important, "too big to fail" through fraud, that not bailing them out would be disastrous. How long can we keep subsidizing incompetent crooked companies?
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