From the European angle (I live over here so I caught tons of coverage)....it was a five-star shocker to all non Greek political folks (particularly in Germany) when they said they’d have to have a quick up-and-down vote. This was announced like on a Tuesday, to have the vote nationally on Sunday. You can imagine some state or some US federal election gimmick where they say you’ve got five days to grasp a complicated mess and just show up to vote “yes” or “no”.
Total number of votes either way....roughly 6.1 million. Roughly 65-percent of the public who are registered to vote.
The German public looked over media coverage and came down pretty negative about this whole deal. No one believes the Greeks are capable of paying past loans, or future loans. No one believes they can even change their pension system or social retirement deal.
The curious thing that an American in Europe observes from this....no Greek really stood there and asked what happens on the next ten days after the election? The banks are mostly closed....ATM machines will allow you around 100 Euro (120 dollars) a week. If you had over 8,000 Euro in your bank account....they seized the overage to cover bank operations. You can imagine how peeved folks are, but here’s the odd thing....it was expected for months and the bulk of all businessmen and wealthy folks already emptied their accounts and hid their money.
I watched an interview yesterday with a Greek business guy. He says EVERYTHING has stopped. You can’t buy meat or fruit without cash. You can’t arrange for the import of vital drugs or medical equipment without cash. You can’t arrange for a ferry to pick up your cargo, without cash. No cash? No operations. As he said....the bulk of businessmen are sitting there and drinking coffee, Ouzo, and wine. No one is doing anything. At best, he thinks they’ve got about two weeks before people go ‘nuts’.
My perception is that all of this was figured out by the Greek political folks six months ago and this is just a strategy to punish the EU and the EURO as much as possible. They did the same type strategy to force the Americans to leave the Greek bases and told the public it was a good thing....later, when nothing was used to replace the Americans who left....the question came up as to why create a fake agenda, and no one could answer that. I think it’s the same way here. Punish the EU, the Germans and the EURO....with a fake agenda.
They might even be able to convince enough members of the EU to just allow them to keep the EURO for months and months, dragging it down as much as possible. As for regular Greek people.....they really don’t have any hope left with this mess.
Interesting. Thanks.
Maybe. Or maybe it was the Greek people saying, “if this system is going to really fail, we want to be at the controls instead of the EU.” Even in failure, there is something about being master of your own ship.
The Americans had no choice but to leave when the host country asked them to. But the Americans had no control of the Greek economy like the EU does. They hold all the cards and Greece must do as they are told. When over 50% of Greeks are employed by the government, in some way or another, their tax base is essentially zero. Government workers, of all stripes, do not add to the treasury, they only deplete it........
A banker of my acquaintance pointed out that the entire economy of Greece is about the same size as the economy of Louisiana.
Texas: I love that! I think you're right.