Eastern European austerity in 2009 existed to protect Western banks

Evidence

At this point, the EU and the IMF intervened and orchestrated a massive bailout of the Central and Eastern European financial systems—in other words, of the Western banks’ wholly owned foreign subsidiaries—just at the point when current accounts in these states were exploding. In Vienna in 2009, and long before any Greek or Irish bailout, an agreement was signed between the Western banks, the troika (EU-IMF-EC), and Romania, Hungary, and Latvia that committed Western European banks to keeping their funds in their Eastern European banks if these governments committed to austerity to stabilize local banks’ balance sheets. … It’s an earlier form of what is going on in the Eurozone with the periphery states’ sovereign debt and the core banks’ exposures. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 601

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the Eurozone periphery dynamic Mattei discusses — internalizing bank losses as sovereign austerity. — connects to: The 2009 bailout rescued bankers while imposing austerity on workers — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 391; German banks were exposed indirectly through Austrian lending to Eastern Europe — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 154; European austerity is a bait-and-switch to save banks from themselves without admitting it — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 208 (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: Supports the sacrifice essay’s theme of bank losses socialized onto public balance sheets.

Broader Connections

• The 2009 bailout rescued bankers while imposing austerity on workers #expands (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 391
• European austerity is a bait-and-switch to save banks from themselves without admitting it #corroborates (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 208
• German banks were exposed indirectly through Austrian lending to Eastern Europe #expands (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 154
• Economics escaped crisis blame because the banking sector it protected escaped unscathed #expands (0.70) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 555