Whats Going on in Greece?

[Corwyn]

Might I suggest a referendum in the rest of Europe: "Do you want to continue paying 0,64 Euros every day for another five years so that Greece's paychecks and pensions stay 3-4 times higher than similar sized economies?"

And I'm not making it up, we each pay an average of 0,64 E every day to EU budget, totaling about 105 Billion Euros each year... and Greece has spent 250-ish Billion of these money in the last 5 years, with no improvement or promise that if another 250 Billion are given, in 5 years we won't be back to square one.
Pensions make up 9% of Greece GDP compared to 3% in friggin Germany, the strongest economy in Europe...

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/15/unsustainable-futures-greece-pensions-dilemma-explained-financial-crisis-default-eurozone
 

[Philby]

Might I suggest a referendum in the rest of Europe: "Do you want to continue paying 0,64 Euros every day for another five years so that Greece's paychecks and pensions stay 3-4 times higher than similar sized economies?"

And I'm not making it up, we each pay an average of 0,64 E every day to EU budget, totaling about 105 Billion Euros each year... and Greece has spent 250-ish Billion of these money in the last 5 years, with no improvement or promise that if another 250 Billion are given, in 5 years we won't be back to square one.
Pensions make up 9% of Greece GDP compared to 3% in friggin Germany, the strongest economy in Europe...

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/15/unsustainable-futures-greece-pensions-dilemma-explained-financial-crisis-default-eurozone

Problem being that Greece doesn't have the biggest budget deficit in Europe, nor has it had the largest deficit throughout the crises. The problem is not having a deficit, the problem is not willing to implement the neo-liberal policies of the dominant countries, and European  bureaucracy. A.K.A not using your budget to benefit corporations. Economics being used as a weapon to bend countries to their will.
Get out while you can!

[magentus]

Might I suggest a referendum in the rest of Europe: "Do you want to continue paying 0,64 Euros every day for another five years so that Greece's paychecks and pensions stay 3-4 times higher than similar sized economies?"

And I'm not making it up, we each pay an average of 0,64 E every day to EU budget, totaling about 105 Billion Euros each year... and Greece has spent 250-ish Billion of these money in the last 5 years, with no improvement or promise that if another 250 Billion are given, in 5 years we won't be back to square one.
Pensions make up 9% of Greece GDP compared to 3% in friggin Germany, the strongest economy in Europe...

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/15/unsustainable-futures-greece-pensions-dilemma-explained-financial-crisis-default-eurozone

Problem being that Greece doesn't have the biggest budget deficit in Europe, nor has it had the largest deficit throughout the crises. The problem is not having a deficit, the problem is not willing to implement the neo-liberal policies of the dominant countries, and European  bureaucracy. A.K.A not using your budget to benefit corporations. Economics being used as a weapon to bend countries to their will.
Get out while you can!

This is the nub of it. Corporations are bigger than elected governments now and wield way more power and cannot be voted in or out and now have the same rights as an actual person! 

Powernoodle - if you're interested in what's really going on, take a look at this forum:

http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/

[Steinar]

Just a quick snippet on Iceland: Iceland's debt was privately owned Icelandic banks collapsing. Iceland's two fingers up weren't refusing to pay national debt, it was refusing to take up private debt as national debt. I.e. refusing to make the common citizen give an economic guarantee for whatever the banks cook up, as is common in the rest of the West. The reason this then turned into an international incident was because UK and the Netherlands had bailed out the British and Dutch customers of the Icelandic banks (other countries were involved to, but the larger sums were these two countries), in the belief Iceland would pick up the bill fram the banks. When UK and the Netherlands then wanted money from Iceland... Now, this had huge consequences short term, and Iceland had some brain drain, but it seems to my uninformed eyes they, as usual, have got the wheels turning again.

So, the correct analogue to Iceland's situation and Greece would probably be the ECB not buying (much of) the privately held part of the debt of Greece (which was done a few years back).

I have tried holding my own personal opinion out of this, and partly failed, but I hope other people keep trying as well. We are very, very close to this turning into a political discussion here. “No crown, no cross,” is IMNSHO one of the keys to this place being nice to hang out in.

[Steinar]

(Re-reading my own post and several others here... We are making political statements all the time, some more overt than others.)

 

[Corwyn]

(Re-reading my own post and several others here... We are making political statements all the time, some more overt than others.)

 

+1 for closing this thread