Posted on 02/12/2012 6:04:45 PM PST by EBH
Legislation will allow country to cut debt; protesters set fire to 34 buildings; deputies expelled for opposing vote
The Greek parliament approved on Monday a deeply unpopular austerity bill to secure a second bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund and avoid a messy default.
The vote occurred after 100,000 demonstrators marched to the parliament and buildings were burned down in central Athens. Following the vote, black-masked protesters created a wall of fire with petrol bombs and set fire to cinemas, cafes, shops and banks.
Fifty police officers and at least 55 protesters were hospitalized. Forty-five suspected rioters were arrested; a further 40 were detained.
Following the vote to cut $4.35 billion — which means axing one in five civil service jobs and slashing the minimum wage by more than a fifth — violence spread to other Greek towns and cities, including on the holiday islands of Corfu and Crete.
"I've had it! I can't take it any more. There's no point in living in this country any more," said a man walking through his smashed and looted optician store.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Cops on fire, Athens in flames. Seems like it's pretty cut and dried. I've seen this movie before. It's just been updated to include cell phones.
Sparta, Persia, Rome, self-inflicted, Germany, whatever.
They have a serious problem, with a capital F.
/johnny
Were you an informal advisor for Muammar Gaddafi?
The lights are on.
/johnny
Oh absolutely correct. Sarkosy has big plans with his Mediterranian Group...which I understand, now, the EU is no longer opposing as they were before. As you know, Gadaffi and Mubarack wouldn't play in Sarkosy's game and we know how that turned out.
People say France is weak...but they are fools to Underestimate Sarkosy and his agenda... and the means he'll go to to carry it out. He's one manipulative SOB and doesn't hide it....but he'll smile the whole time.
Hey Dave...does Greece actually produce anything other than tourism? I’m to lazy tonight to check....recollection says little if anything.
>> “Were you an informal advisor for Muammar Gaddafi?” <<
.
Wesley Clark, Mt. Carmel, Waco Texas.
.
Olive oil.
/johnny
It’s just a matter of time before we see a military coup in Greece and a new government run by, and controlled by, the military.
Nope, but Quaddafi’s actions were consistent with government end-games.
I’m merely pointing out what will be crossing the minds of the Greek leadership as their government swirls the drain. If you think they’re some sort of “pure as driven snow” “foundation of western democracy,” you really need to go back and read or re-read the history of Greece following WWII, in particular ‘46 to ‘48. And yes, they were shooting people in the streets back then.
This is merely Act III of the Greek Civil War from the post-WWII era. The irony now is that, in the streets, the anarchists and communists are at each others’ throats, instead of fascists and communists from the past.
The smart move for the US this time is to stay the heck out of it and let them kill as many of each other as possible.
Lots of ag products (highest values are in vegetables and fruits), beverages, tobacco, some manufactured products (leather, rubber, cork, etc), some base metals (copper, aluminum, zinc). Some manufactured products are in the mixx.
They have some of the same big “elephant in the room” types of issues that most western nations do WRT their labor force and economy. One-fifth (!) of their workforce is made of immigrants, who are mostly in ag and construction.
But tourism is their kingpin. It’s something like 15% of their GDP and employs over 16% (last numbers I saw in 2010 when this started) of their workforce.
Losing tourism means losing a Big Freakin’ Deal of money. Losing tourism means that their economy, which is already circling the drain as the government implements the austerity cuts required by creditors, has no way to come back from the brink. Tourism is one of the few things they do that brings money *into* Greece - they run a trade deficit that reached horrible proportions for them in 2008. Since then, it improved a bit, but not enough to reverse this. Part of what is ruining them is this persistent trade deficit - and what is happening to Greece eventually will happen to all nations running a large trade/current account deficit with large debt loads. Including *us*.
This is why I think the government will come to a point where they’re going to want to stomp on the protests really hard. If the protestors keep doing as they’re doing this past weekend (burning banks, government buildings, etc), then the government faces an endgame choice: Go under with the economy sinking as fast as it is (and the stats on the overall Greek economy are getting mighty grim), or come down hard and fast on the protests, lock the place down and start reassuring the tourists that there is order on the streets at night.
They have the history where they’ve shot people in the streets before. I don’t think that they’re beyond doing it again.
I think it could well be possible, but the socialists want desperately to hang onto power. They’ve had power for so long, that they don’t want to let go.
In Detroit, there aren’t 100,000+ people in the streets week after week.
In Detroit, as bad as their economy is locally, they’re able to fall back on the state of Michigan.
In Greece, the M3 (widest possible measure) of their money supply is now contracting at 16% year-over-year. That’s money that is literally evaporating due to defaulted debt, and the capital from the private sector is being pulled out of banks, companies, etc and moving outside the country.
Here’s the lefty outlook on this, which I’m interested in reading because the lefties are behind this stuff:
The looting of a gun shop is interesting.
“Violence, vandalism and destruction have no place in a democracy” said the unelected Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos.
Oh, yea, thanks for reminding me about that.
Papademos’ appearance as an appointed (not elected) PM in November of last year was most interesting. The prior PM, the socialist Papandreou, got forced out. Papandreou was an interesting character, but an indication of what is to come.
His father was an economist. His grandfather was in Greek politics and was PM of Greece a couple/three times. His handling of the debt fiasco in Greece was an abject failure, starting with his witless “discovery” upon taking office in 2009 that the deficit was four times what the Greek government had been reporting to the EU. By November, 2011, he was forced out of the government. But the central point was that Papandreou wasn’t Greek by birth, only by heritage.
Yes, that’s right — the former Greek PM, George Papandreou, was born in Minnesota. Educated at Amherst (undergrad) and then the LSE in economics.
Papademos was also educated in the US. Undergrad in physics, MSEE, then PhD in Economics from MIT. That’s a very strange combination. If you have a physics/EE background in the era when he graduated, you could write your ticket to fame and fortune. Instead, he decided to become a PhD in economics...
Papademos was a senior economist at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank in the early 80’s as I recall.
Economists are fools in the real world. They’re very used to being in academic or banking situations, where their actions have little consequence other than “Oops, we missed projections.” All those press releases that say “XYZ indicator moved unexpectedly up/down last month?” Yea, the people doing the expecting were economists.
The brutal truth is that they’re just idiots when it comes to trying to apply their crackpot theories to the real world. The only thing worse than having a nation led by a philosophy major would be a nation led by an economist - and Greece now has the misfortune of being led by two economists in a row. That’s a large part of what dooms them. Papademos is doubling down on the failed ideas of his economic predecessor.
I may have to make that my tagline...:)
It wouldn't happen Texas.
yitbos
My Grandfather/Popou was instrumental in putting Greece back together after WW2. He was their economic finance minister. He used to meet with US Presidents and other high ups back then. He used to speak 7 languages and wrote a few books.
My Dad told me that he was a huge socialist.
He probably started this mess.lol
Oh well.
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