German TV Sensationalized Greek Minister’s Flipped Bird, Says Cameraman
German media pounced this week on footage of Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis raising a middle finger for foreign debt managers during a presentation on his country’s debt crisis. The man who filmed the talk says the clip was taken out of context to divert public attention from the substance of the crisis.German media pounced this week on footage of Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis raising a middle finger for foreign debt managers during a presentation on his country’s debt crisis. The man who filmed the talk says the clip was taken out of context to divert public attention from the substance of the crisis.
“His point was related to events from 2010, when he was in favor of a Greek default within the Eurozone,” said Martin Beros, who filmed Varoufakis’ 57-minute talk. “But this was taken out of context in order to make it seem that he is in favor of not repaying the debt owed to Germany and giving Germany the finger.
“Therefore, the serious political and economic situation that we are faced with in Europe, is being presented as if it is reducible to gestures and posturing. It is one thing if comedians … cut out things out of context to make a joke. It is quite another thing when the global media sphere limits the debate to sensationalism such as this.”
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
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"It sets up a crisis of the first year of the next president's administration," a former congressional staffer says.
“Austerity”—the redirection of funds away from government and public services and toward a country’s creditors—“has devastated Greece just about as much as defeat in total war devastated imperial Germany,” economist Paul Krugman writes in The New York Times.
"The 'vulture' financier now threatening to devour Argentina can be stopped dead by a simple note to the courts from Barack Obama," investigative journalist Greg Palast writes Thursday at The Guardian. "But the president, while officially supporting Argentina, has not done this one thing that could save Buenos Aires from default."
Rather than resolving the debt crisis, lawmakers' 11th-hour deal to raise the debt ceiling, which threatened to push the global economy over the edge, simply delayed it Financial Times chief economics commentator, Martin Wolf, tells Bill Moyers the US debt ceiling is “the legislative equivalent of a nuclear bomb aimed by the U at itself”.
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