Posted on 10/08/2012 9:57:55 AM PDT by mojito
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will tell Greeks she wants to keep their country in the euro when she visits Athens this week, but she faces a hostile reception from a people worn down by years of austerity and recession.
Many Greeks blame Merkel, who has publicly chastised them for much of the past three years, for the nation's plight. Opponents, some of whom have caricatured her as a bullying Nazi, have promised protests on Tuesday during her first visit to Greece since the euro zone crisis erupted there in 2009.
"She does not come to support Greece, which her policies have brought to the brink. She comes to save the corrupt, disgraced and servile political system," said Alexis Tsipras, who leads the opposition Syriza alliance. "We will give her the welcome she deserves."
About 6,000 policemen will be deployed in the capital for her 6-hour visit, turning the city centre into a no-go zone for protest marches planned by labour unions and opposition parties.
(Excerpt) Read more at in.reuters.com ...
Sounds like a really bad idea.
Yup..there’s videoconferencing..
Agreed.If the Greeks want to talk they can meet her in Frankfurt,the city made possible by the German workforce and from which Greece's bailout will come.
I don’t get this. Why are they made at Merkel? Because she won’t give them any more money? This is like picketing the bank because they turned down your loan. Get a job.
Lovely country and on a particular afternoon of site seeing we decided to heed the local waiter at one of the street cafe's and sat down for lunch.....bad idea. Our service took two hours just to get through lunch and we had to ask for the check so we could continue our day seeing the remainder of our wish list of historical buildings etc. and the waiter and the management came over trying to talk us out of it...while making it a scene for all the locals around us.
They apparently were very insulted that we only had so much time before we had to go back for our company events that evening. They made it very clear that they expected us to spend the day with them...eating and drinking ourselves into oblivion.
We left thinking, how can a country full of people sitting around in cafe's eating and drinking all day make a living?.......
The rest of our day was changed by that encounter and we stopped spending money on their shop goods because of the bad taste it left in our mouths.
The following day we went back and took four more with us to the local market area nearby. The same waiter tried to get the attention of one of our party, I grabbed our friends arm and told them that if they sat down at that cafe they would be expected to stay the next 4 hours or so or the wait staff and management would make a scene to get them to stay. You should have seem the shock and the sneer on that waiters face when our friend decided to walk away.....tough luck pal!
The question is... how long can they afford to blame the banker before the banker says "Good luck your on your own......."
I think the time has come.
Just two words for ya......Archduke Ferdinand
(Cue that smallest of violins...what, one or two years of 'austerity' it's been?) Also a people formerly fattened by decades of gluttony on euro largesse...no worries, they'll keep for a while, slimming down to their former selves.
Admittedly I'm no expert on Euro economic matters, but this was my first thought as well. I simply cannot imagine the mindset of anyone -- much less an entire country -- who believes they're entitled to someone else's earnings.
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