Schaueble Denies Hiding Greek Bailout Costs

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, whose country has insisted on harsh austerity measures in Greece in return for being the biggest contributor to $325 billion in two bailout loans, said that Berlin is not hiding the real costs to German taxpayers until after Parliamentary elections on Sept. 22.
“The development in Europe does not take into consideration election days in individual countries. This is a widespread assumption that is simply false,” Schaeuble said in an interview with German national radio station Deutschlandfunk.
He said Greece’s receipt of aid is linked to its fulfilling of conditions set by international lenders. “The pressure is still on. Therefore it has nothing to do with the date of the election,” he said. Critics have said that Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to keep the Greek bailout price tag hidden and is anxious to avoid social unrest in Greece or Germany until after the elections.
Critics have said that’s because there’s still a chance Greece will walk away from much of its debt to the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) and stick the taxpayers in the other 16 Eurozone countries with the bill to pay for decades of wild Greek overspending.
Despite the bailouts and three years of pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions, Greece is in the sixth year of a deep recession with a record 26.9 percent unemployment rate and its debt is 160 percent of Gross Domestic Product, the highest in the Eurozone, and its deficit is some three times that of the ceiling allowed by the bloc.
Schaeuble stood by his comments a day earlier in which he said Greece would not be allowed to write off debt to public investors the way the Troika allowed it to do to private investors, stiffing them with 74 percent losses, nearly wiping out some small bondholders and destroying the Cypriot banking system.
“This is certain; there will not be a second haircut for Athens,” he told Bild Am Sonntag in an interview. The minister said Greece will continue to receive aid if needed after 2014, when its current program expires, as long as the country meets conditions set by international creditors, an indication that Greece could be on welfare loan aid for many years.
Schaeuble was in Athens earlier this month to back Prime Minister Antonis Samaras for keeping Greeks’ nose to the grindstone of austerity and show Germany’s support for his following of Troika orders and those from Berlin.