The shit hits the fan in Greece

[StylinRed]

Originally Posted by BaoXu

they are showing their dissaproval of the government bankruptting the whole fucking country!

no they're not

they're showing their disapproval of getting loans and as a result are going to make a lot of cuts.. which they don't want

the greeks don't realize they're deep in the crapper and they just want things to continue as they are...



my friends are right in the middle of it at the moment, they say its not as bad as the media is showing it (not large scale that is)

I just hope there's no protests when i head over for a wedding -_-

[Tegra_Devil]

^^^my family has said its also not nearly as bad as they show it on tv.....there are just some bad apples...but they are mostly peaceful protestors..

that being said, most of them live on corfu

[Carl Johnson]

Blame the god damn rating agencies too. Those fucking morons downgrading PIGS's debt when they are already in trouble with the market frozen.

Remember these are same guys who rated Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's debt and securities AAA rating back in 2006 - 2007.

[iEatClams]

^ the government in greece spent like mad for the last 10 years and kept taxes to a minimum. what did they expect to happen? Now the economy is bad and they can't make debt payments. The problem is that 1/4 of the country is working for the government public sector and they dont want to take any wage cuts or decrease the standard of living. There's also a significant proportion in large unions as well.

Because they converted to Euros, they cant devalue their currency to make their country more competitive.

as a metaphor, they basically bought big screen tvs and nice cars all on credit, and now they just got a pay cut and cant make all their debt obligations,. . . hoping for brother and sister to bail them out.

many are to blame for this, including the government for messing up their cashflow the last 10 years, the people who elected them, and the people who dont want to take recessions in their standard of living when the economy is bad.

[maxx]

when the Euro devalues bad, the last strong currency we have, - we go to world war 3

[Meowjin]

Originally Posted by Greenstoner

who give a shit about Greece

i will fucking murder you.

Anyways. These protests are mostly anarchists and KKE members. Greece is embarrassing the world but the major concern is that when we take this loan that we literally sell greece to the germans. The shame that we can't devalue the euro and increase foreign trade... if we had the drachma still it would be fine. I saw this coming when they switched to the euro many years ago. The euro was horrible for greece since day 1.

[iwantaskyline]

Greece should have never joined the EU. For such a small economy it was a stupid idea. Getting the Euro only increased the price of all products in the country.

[Meowjin]

Originally Posted by azndude69

^ the government in greece spent like mad for the last 10 years and kept taxes to a minimum. what did they expect to happen? Now the economy is bad and they can't make debt payments. The problem is that 1/4 of the country is working for the government public sector and they dont want to take any wage cuts or decrease the standard of living. There's also a significant proportion in large unions as well.

Because they converted to Euros, they cant devalue their currency to make their country more competitive.

as a metaphor, they basically bought big screen tvs and nice cars all on credit, and now they just got a pay cut and cant make all their debt obligations,. . . hoping for brother and sister to bail them out.

many are to blame for this, including the government for messing up their cashflow the last 10 years, the people who elected them, and the people who dont want to take recessions in their standard of living when the economy is bad.

Ugh, I'm sorry alot of people dont know the history of greece. PASOK has bankrupted the country several times and all politicians in greece are crooks. Infact the only reason that PASOK and the papandreaou government got voted in was because of a scandel involving monastary land and the exchange of millions of eurors. It's been like this for the past 30 years. They keep switching governements (PASOK and NEO DEMOCRATIA), and when elected they keep bankrupting the country. People avoid paying taxes like the plague, and mostly because they can't afford it. With the introduction of the euro, it shot the cost of living up. When I went in 1999, when the drachma was there it cost about 30 cents canadian to buy a coke, when I returned 4 years later, the euro brought that price of the coke up to $2 dollars canadian. Yes there is money to be made in greece if you want to work, but the just don't have the economy for it. When greeks youths were rioting last year, it was due to frustration of being considered the 500 euro generation. The greeks rioting now, are just sick of the governement.

Essentially they were making 500 euros a month, when realestate prices and rent decimated greece because of foreign investment (alot of rich brits, swedes and germans driving real estate up)

This is all government misspending. This actually had nothing to do with greek banks, but Goldman sachs had their hand in it as they hid greek debt so they could enter the euro and then Illegaly took bets against greece.

Seriously it's starting to see that goldman sachs owns the world.

[Meowjin]

hahah just watched the video right now, and they are all yelling putanes and giving the greek version of the finger.

You have doubtlessly been informed that Greece is bankrupt and had to recourse to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). You might be wondering who are those responsible for Greece's bankruptcy. If your country was bankrupt, wouldn't you ask for those responsible to be brought to justice? I guess so. This is what the Greeks ask for as well. However, in Greece there are none responsible for the bankruptcy. Nobody has been charged and nobody has been brought to justice. Nobody! Is this hard to believe? Read the newspapers of your country, search on the web and you will see that Greece's bankruptcy is an orphan. Those that made the country bankrupt and moved their assets to foreign banks are still free and still govern Greece.
Read the rest of this entry
Greece is in effect under a political and financial oligarchy which controls the media and the justice system. Essentially, Greece is under a dictatorship. Some tens of families rule the place for decades. Greece, the birthplace of Democracy, is under a modern dictatorship.

Now, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund gave new loans to Greece. These funds will not help the Greek people but the governing dictators, the financial oligarchy and the owners of the media outlets. Yes, it might seem strange, but the loans from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund are being managed by the same people who led Greece into bankruptcy.

During the military dictatorship in Greece (1967 – 1974) there were international pleas for citizens not to visit Greece, in order to suffocate the colonels. This is what I am asking of you now.

Don't visit Greece. Don't visit Greece until this dictatorship falls. Help us to liberate Greece.

We don't need money. First of all, we need democracy. I ask that you help Greece to become a democratic country again

he's right about the fact that like 4 families have ran greece for the past 70 years.

Their current president wasn't even born in greece!

another article

At 2.03pm today, on the third floor of a neoclassical building in the heart of Athens, three people died – and Greece changed. As the bank employees tried to beat back the flames, ignited by a firebomb tossed into the building by protesters, the economic crisis enveloping the debt-stricken country not only claimed its first lives: it shifted from bewilderment and disappointment into violence carried on an unpredictable current of rage.

The young bank employees, a man and two women, one of them four months pregnant, died in the fire which came within an hour of irate protesters laying siege to the Greek parliament.

"All of us are angry, very, very angry," bellowed Stella Stamou, a civil servant standing on a street corner, screaming herself hoarse, a block away from where the bank had been set alight.

"You write that – angry, angry, angry, angry," she said, after participating in one of the biggest ever rallies to rock the capital since the return of democracy in 1974. "Angry with our own politicians, angry with the IMF, angry with the EU, angry that we have lost income, angry that we have never been told the truth."

Across Athens today the signs of that anger were everywhere: in the central boulevards and squares that resembled a war zone, the burning cars, the burning hotels, the burning government buildings and rubbish bins and shattered windows and pavements.

Surveying the debris, Karwan Ahmet a 28 year-old Iraqi Kurd caught up in the chaos, described the scene as "being straight out of Iraq. It reminds me of all the shit we saw in Kirkuk."

What had started as a general strike called by unions to protest against deeply unpopular austerity measures turned into a tidal wave of fury as an estimated 100,000 private and public sector workers took to the streets screaming "let the plutocracy pay".

By midday that rage had assumed a new and determined dynamism as demonstrators – including once-stalwart supporters of the governing socialist Pasok party – began to shout "thieves, thieves".

Their venom soon turned towards the large sandstone building that is the Greek parliament. After scuffling with police, chasing the ceremonial guards away from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and taking axes to the monument, hundreds tried to storm the building, screaming "let the bordello burn".

As MPs inside debated the draconian economic reforms that eurozone nations and the IMF have demanded in return for the biggest bailout in history, riot police outside fired off rounds of acrid teargas to keep the crowd at bay. "All of them are dirty and have eaten from the trough," said one man brandishing a large wooden club. "Our politicians are squarely to blame and the worst of the culprits know it because they have fled the country."

With Greece facing a 19 May deadline to refinance its staggering €300bn euro debt, the EU and IMF agreed last week to inject up to €120bn euro into its cash-starved coffers on condition that Athens makes unprecedented budget cuts.

The tough regime, which also includes a freeze on public sector wages and pensions in addition to tax hikes, has not been seen since the country emerged from the privations of civil war in 1949.

"Why should we, the little man, pay for this crisis?" said Giorgos Didimopoulos, a 55-year-old jeweller who belongs to a communist-backed union which on Tuesday stormed the ancient Acropolis to make precisely that point.

"What people forget is that we Greeks don't like authority. We have always resisted when we think something is unfair. We fought against the Persians at Marathon, the Germans during the second world war and we will fight the IMF because in reality we no longer have a government. It is foreign forces who are in charge of us now."

Polls show that he is not alone. The perception is growing that it is low-income Greeks, already hit by three previous packages of austerity measures, who are being made to suffer disproportionately from the three-year fiscal and structural programme. In repeated surveys the vast majority have said they will take to the streets to oppose the "barbaric" measures. For many, today's violence is a taste of what is to come.

With unions backing the general strike – a walkout that crippled the country and isolated Greece from the rest of the world – the protests were seen as a key test of prime minister George Papandreou's determination to carry out the reforms. Germany, which will be picking up the lion's share of the emergency aid, has been quick to warn that if Athens strays the money will dry up.

But he clearly has a battle on his hands. "No longer can they say that these are isolated incidents of violence carried out by stone-throwing anarchists," said Makis Papadopoulos, who owns a popular tourist store in the capital's historic Plaka district where shopkeepers were fearfully boarding up premises.

"People are being pushed to the hunger line. With the intervention of the IMF things have changed. We now have an explosion situation and no one knows what the limits of Greeks are, how far people will go to vent their spleen." Resolution, say some, will only come with a root-and-branch clean up of Greece's corrupt political system.

Papadopoulos said: "This crisis has taught us that we can't go on acting the way we did, living off loans, treating the state as an endless treasury to be raided, never thinking about our future."

btw be ready to accept a new wave of greek immigrants. You'd be suprised how many greeks hold canadian passports!

also alot of greeks still hate germany because of wwII. They never gave repirations to greece for all the gold they plundered from our treasury.

[twitchyzero]

if im not mistaken the greek gov't pension plan can kick in at age 55
which is one of the reasons why germany is urging other EU nations not to help greece out

is this true?

[CRS]

Originally Posted by twitchyzero

if im not mistaken the greek gov't pension plan can kick in at age 55
which is one of the reasons why germany is urging other EU nations not to help greece out

is this true?

Germany has a vested interest in Greece. It doesn't make sense why Germany won't help bail-out Greece since they are one of the major exporters for Greece. In essence, the money they put in will just go back to them.

It may seem odd but I think that this is just Germany's way of saying "bad Greece, spend your money more wisely next time".

[StylinRed]

bet the EU is wishing they let Turkey in instead

and Turkey must be like "phew, thank god we're not stuck in that mess"

[achiam]

In a nutshell, the two main problems plaguing Greece are excessively paid Civil Servants and tax fraud.
In summary:
-Greek civil gov jobs are guaranteed for life, and virtually impossible to get fired from.
-Full retirement at 55
-If you die as a pensioner and your child is unmarried, they continue receiving YOUR pension
-Many civil servants are called "ghost workers" - they don't even show up to work and work at a second job (two salaries).

Second problem is tax fraud -- even the majority of Physicians collect fees in cold hard cash.

The problem with the Greek situation is that 45% of its debt is owned by France and Germany, the strongest countries in the EU. If the EU & IMF cannot prevent Greece from defaulting and going bankrupt, it is likely that Spain/Ireland/Portugal will also collapse. If this happens, the Euro currency will plunge even further.

Because many banks and funds invest all over the world, the Euro collapse could bring about a second crisis, and of course affect the globe.

[gdoh]

"Now, over to Europe where event risk has clearly moved to the front burner. Key elections in the UK and Germany late this week already had markets (and the euro) on the defensive. The Greek crisis continues to roil markets on fears that the severe cutbacks would neither be sufficient to bridge the fiscal gap, nor accepted by citizens. There were also fears of contagion to other countries which are suffering from their own budgetary issues. Yesterday, Greece’s parliament voted to pass an austerity package, but by mid-afternoon television networks were again dominated by footage of protests and riot police on the streets of Athens. In this context, yesterday’s decision by the ECB not to provide any additional stimulus was widely viewed as a disappointment."

along with that....Speculations are that a trade by Citigroup (C) for 16 million shares was actually placed for 16 billion causing investors to panic and the market to dive

[Carl Johnson]

EU, IMF agree $1 trillion emergency fund

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUST...+Business+News)

(Reuters) - Global policymakers unleashed an emergency rescue package worth about $1 trillion to stabilize world financial markets and prevent the Greek debt crisis from destroying the euro currency.

The rescue, hammered out by European Union finance ministers, central bankers and the International Monetary Fund in marathon talks at the weekend, was the largest package in over two years since G20 leaders threw money at the global economy following the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The size of the package surprised financial analysts and the euro rose close to 2 percent while stocks in Asia firmed.

The U.S. Federal Reserve reopened currency swap lines with several central banks and Group of Seven and Group of 20 finance ministers weighed in with their backing for the measures.

EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told a news conference the package of measures "proves we shall defend the euro whatever it takes."

The emergency measures are worth much more than any previous attempts by the 27-country EU or the 16-state single-currency group to calm markets.

They come after the Greek crisis drove sovereign debt yields and insurance on this debt to record levels.

Financial markets had started to punish other euro zone debt of members with bloated budgets such as Portugal, Spain and Ireland, in what Sweden's finance minister described as "wolfpack behaviours."

The $1 trillion package consists of 440 billion euros in guarantees from euro area states, plus 60 billion euros in a European instrument.

EU finance ministers said the International Monetary Fund was expected to contribute 250 billion euros, taking the total to 750 billion euros, or around $1 trillion.

However, IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn did not offer any specifics but said any IMF action would be on a "country-by-country basis."

The European Central Bank said it will buy euro zone government bonds to help support fractured markets, abandoning its resistance to full-scale asset purchases.

The ECB said in a statement that the step, dubbed the "nuclear option" by many economists, was justified because of government promises to meet strict budget targets and step up consolidation efforts.

The euro currency, which last week sank to a 14-month low against the dollar, rose as high as $1.2950 before slipping back on the ECB decision to buy debt. By mid-morning it was changing hands at $1.2930.

"Getting them to agree on a number is crucial," said Tony Morriss, market strategist at ANZ in Sydney. "But to me what appears more important is the establishment of swap lines and quantitative easing (QE). And while QE may weigh in the longer term, the euro seems to be stabilizing, at least in the near term," Morriss said.

The ECB said the scope of the purchases was yet to be determined, but added they would be offset by liquidity-absorbing operations so that the stance of monetary policy is unaffected.

The ECB last year announced a 60 billion programme to buy covered bonds but this would be its first move into buying government debt.

Gold prices, considered a safe haven investment, fell as much as 1.5 percent after touching near record highs last week.

EASE FEARS

The central bank swap facility is meant to ease fears of a dollar shortage as investors dump riskier assets and move back into the U.S. dollar. The cost of interbank three-month U.S. dollar funds saw its largest rise in 16 months on Friday.

The move is designed to ensure there is enough money and confidence in the global financial system to stave off 2008-style credit crunch.

Ministers from Spain and Germany said euro zone countries would speed up their efforts to tackle their fiscal problems.

Jitters over euro zone finances have set global markets on edge and created the conditions for a nearly 1,000-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average on Thursday. Authorities are investigating what triggered the dramatic move.

Both the EU and the IMF has already approved a 100 billion euro package to support Greece, whose budget deficit blew out last year to 13.6 percent of GDP.

To secure the funds, Greece has committed to deep budget cuts that have already caused violent public protests in the country as it moves to get the deficit back down to the EU limit of 3 percent.

"WOLFPACK"

Policymakers around the globe are worried the crisis in Greece could spread to other countries, fears compounded by the unexplained shock plunge in U.S. stocks on Thursday.

In Europe, officials said they would fight speculative investors they blame for aggravating the public debt crisis.

"We now see ... wolfpack behaviours, and if we will not stop these packs, even if it is self-inflicted weakness, they will tear the weaker countries apart," Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg told reporters in Brussels before the EU meeting.

Economists estimate that if Portugal, Ireland and Spain eventually come to require bailouts similar to Greece's, the total cost could be some 500 billion euros.

(Additional reporting by Jan Strupczewski, John O'Donnell and David Brunnstrom in BRUSSELS and Lesley Wroughton in WASHINGTON; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Neil Fullick)

[StylinRed]

an IMF loan is like a death sentence

[achiam]

Good time to buy a vacation home there. The Canadian dollar is so strong.

[gdoh]

olted by last week’s slide in the currency and soaring bond yields in Portugal and Spain, European Union finance chiefs met in a 14-hour session in Brussels overnight. The 16 euro nations agreed in a statement to offer as much as 750 billion euros ($962 billion), including International Monetary Fund backing, to countries facing instability and the European Central Bank said it will buy government and private debt.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=alxKmD3w0yqY

[Meowjin]

man conspiracy theorists must be having a field day right now.

[RollingStone]

Originally Posted by MajinHurricane

man conspiracy theorists must be having a field day right now.

care to elaborate?

[nipples]

I'm guessing NWO? Foreign politics(bankers) governing zombie people?
Posted via RS Mobile

[twitchyzero]

Originally Posted by achiam

In a nutshell, the two main problems plaguing Greece are excessively paid Civil Servants and tax fraud.
In summary:
-Greek civil gov jobs are guaranteed for life, and virtually impossible to get fired from.
-Full retirement at 55
-If you die as a pensioner and your child is unmarried, they continue receiving YOUR pension
-Many civil servants are called "ghost workers" - they don't even show up to work and work at a second job (two salaries).

Second problem is tax fraud -- even the majority of Physicians collect fees in cold hard cash.

The problem with the Greek situation is that 45% of its debt is owned by France and Germany, the strongest countries in the EU. If the EU & IMF cannot prevent Greece from defaulting and going bankrupt, it is likely that Spain/Ireland/Portugal will also collapse. If this happens, the Euro currency will plunge even further.
.

were these issues in place before the EU was started? wonder if other nations knew about these issues prior to the coalesence

[CRS]

Originally Posted by twitchyzero

were these issues in place before the EU was started? wonder if other nations knew about these issues prior to the coalesence

Yes.

Greece has always had issues with members of parliament being corrupt and civil jobs protest way too much, as a result, corrupt members get elected then extend benefits to the civil jobs that protest.

[Meowjin]

Originally Posted by CRS

Yes.

Greece has always had issues with members of parliament being corrupt and civil jobs protest way too much, as a result, corrupt members get elected then extend benefits to the civil jobs that protest.

Corruption has always been huge with politicians in greece. Like my parents who fled the military junta in the 70's I think were going to get a new influx of greeks.

[bengy]

NICE! Give a trillion euro loan to the same people that bankrupted the country. Effin GENIOUSES!