Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has earned the ire of Greek politicians after she made comments that they say brand the Greek people as tax-dodgers in comments to a British newspaper.

In an interview published on Friday, Largarde told Britain's Guardian newspaper she has to tell poor countries with per capita incomes of three to five thousand dollars per year to cut their budgets, poor countries who have no or inadequate health care or education, while at the same time Greeks have been evading taxes for years.

"I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens," said Lagarde according to the Guardian.

Evangelos Venizelos, president of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, accused Lagarde of trying to "humiliate" the debt-stricken country, which is facing its second election in six weeks.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/05/201252723320467618.html

Reaction to Lagarde's comments was swift and almost universally negative: the IMF head's Facebook page was hit with nearly 12,000 comments within hours of the interview being published. "You should say that to the relatives of the 3,000 Greeks that have committed suicide, to the one million unemployed," a user said under the name Ntavos Paok. Many of the more abusive comments were later removed.

The BBC reports that condemnation from Greece's political parties has come from all sides. Evangelos Venizelos, leader of the socialist Pasok party, said: "Nobody can humiliate the Greek people during the crisis. I say this today addressing specifically Ms Lagarde… who with her stance insulted the Greek people."

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the hard-left Syriza party which is currently riding high in the polls, insisted: "Greek workers pay their taxes, which are unbearable. The last thing we seek in Greece is her sympathy." He suggested that "for tax evaders", Lagarde should turn to the mainstream Pasok and New Democracy parties "to explain to her why they haven't touched the big money and have been chasing the simple worker for two years".

In France, where Lagarde was a right-wing finance minister under former president Nicolas Sarkozy, left-wing politicians lined up to denounce the IMF head. Socialist minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem told Canal+ TV that Lagarde should not have made the comments. "I find [her point of view] rather simplistic and stereotypical. I think that these days it shouldn't be about trying to teach people a lesson," she said.

European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde on Friday revealed that her son lost nearly all of his investments in digital assets, despite her warnings not to trust cryptocurrencies.

Lagarde, whose long-standing stance against the crypto market is well-known, told students at an event in Frankfurt that her son “ignored me royally” and “lost almost all the money that he had invested.”

“It wasn’t a lot but he lost it all, about 60% of it. So, when I then had another talk with him about it, he reluctantly accepted that I was right. I have, as you can tell, a very low opinion of cryptos,” she stated, noting, that while “people are free to invest their money where they want,” they “should not be free to participate in criminally sanctioned trade and business.”

Lagarde has two sons in their mid-30s and didn’t specify which she was talking about. She first admitted one was investing in crypto last year, adding at the time that she follows his activities “very carefully,” but would never invest in crypto herself.

The ECB chief has often called cryptocurrencies highly risky, speculative and worthless, and has on many occasions warned that they are not to be trusted, as they are often used by criminals for money laundering and other illegal activities. She has for long also been calling for global regulation of the crypto market.

Lagarde is enthusiastic, however, about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) – a digital form of fiat money. The ECB has already announced its plans to launch a digital version of the euro and is currently in the “preparation phase” for this, and will need two years before it decides whether to roll it out, the regulator said last month.

https://www.rt.com/business/587923-ecb-lagarde-crypto-losses/

READ FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....