Portugal: Is there an alternative to bailout?

An article relating to the so-called bailout of Portugal by the IMF and questioning the wisdom of the Portuguese Government effectively throwing in the towel.
On Friday evening, as its former Managing Director languished in a New York prison on charges totally unrelated to high finance, the International Monetary Fund announced that it had approved a $36.8 billion loan for Portugal to – as Reuters put it – “help the country recover from a debilitating sovereign debt crisis”.

The flip side is that in order to qualify for this “bail out”, the Portuguese government has agreed to make “steep spending cuts, raise taxes, reform its labor and justice systems, and embark on an ambitious privatization scheme”.
No one, least of all the Portuguese people, should be taken in by this rhetoric of helping the country to recover. What the IMF has done, is intent on doing, is propping up the gargantuan Ponzi scheme known as the international banking system, because the people who run it realize that as soon as one player is permitted to default, the entire corrupt edifice will collapse around their heads like a house of cards.
The suggestion that savage cuts in the Portuguese economy, the Greek economy, the Irish economy, or any economy, benefits the people is particularly insulting when one sees the salaries top bankers are paid.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/307000#ixzz1N5NxZKhf