Greg Palast: Between Two Vultures

International gumshoe reporter Greg Palast tells RT’s Max Keiser how the fate of the Argentinian economy will be decided by a legal battle between the White House and Paul Singer — “the great vulture speculator in America” and “probably the top donor, or organizer of donors for the Republican party” — over the profits of big banks.

“[Singer’s] latest caper,” Palast says “is banging the government of Argentina. If you remember years ago, Argentina financially collapsed in the year 2000. An agreement was worked out in which … Argentina cut a deal that it would pay when its economy recovered. And several banks — JPMorgan, Citibank and others — have made a killing because in effect they’ve got stock in the economy of Argentina. Argentina pays the banks a percentage of their growth in their GDP. So literally banks have got stock in Argentina.”

“Three percent of those bonds, just 3 percent, fell into the hands of Paul ‘the Vulture’ Singer. Singer, now, nearly two decades later, is in court saying ‘No, I don’t want that deal that everyone accepted 20 years ago. I’m not gonna accept it. I want payment in full on these bonds plus penalties, plus multiple fees.’ And in effect he wants something on the order of 2000 percent profit on his bonds from Argentina. If he wins, Argentina goes from a great driver of the world economy, and a great economic success story becomes simply bankrupt. So this would bankrupt Argentina. And, by the way, it would take a big bite out of U.S. banks because Singer wants them to give up the money that Argentina paid them.”

Viewers who want to hear the rest of the story can save themselves from a lot of high-volume ranting and raving by the otherwise valuable Keiser by skipping ahead to the 12:50 mark, when Palast’s segment begins.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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