Posted on 07/12/2015 8:41:53 PM PDT by tcrlaf
As European Union leaders push Greece for more austerity reforms, Athens enters political crisis and social media erupts in response.
A two-day emergency meeting on Greece’s economic future ended Sunday with strict conditions from the European Union, including contentious austerity reforms, if it wants a new bailout and keep the euro.
To meet the conditions for fresh aid packages and a third bailout that Greece needs to avoid bankruptcy, European finance ministers want Greece to pass a series of austerity measures--including tax and pension reforms-- through Parliament and put them into law by Wednesday.
Greece will also have to lose fiscal sovereignty as part of the austerity measures, implying that the troika- the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank- would be in charge of all legislation relevant to austerity. This also includes changes to legislation already passed by the Syriza government since it took power this year.
To their credit. They have been reducing their obligations at a higher rate than we have. They have reduced pensions, cut .gov, raised taxes and other such issues. They are certainly trapped in corrupt institutions, but are putting a effort into such reductions.
I doubt the US would have the patience and 'decorum'[kinda lol] they have showed under such conditions. The US simply does not have such a backbone anymore.
“The gimmedats have spoken.
Anyone know how to translate “we want our free stuff” to Greek?”
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The European diktat to the Greeks can be boiled down to “go to work, live within your means, get folks off the dole (including all the unnecessary governmental and quasi-governmental pretend work “jobs”) and quickly stop living on newly borrowed money.
“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”How can such people have any moral authority to tell a sovereign nation what is “wrong” with their national government?
— Jean-Claude Juncker, who is now president of the European Commission
You’re leaving out “raise your taxes in order to pay us at a timetable we dictate, even though it’ll bankrupt you faster than you can really recover”. That’s a socialistic outlook.
Sorry, the MANY Greeks have been enjoying the high life and early/generous retirements for many, many years. The non-Greek folks who have been financing this high life for many decades have grown tired of it. The party’s over for the Greeks, it just may be a while before they accept that reality.
The Greeks should have made adjustments many years ago when they would be smaller than those now required. The deeper one gets into a whole, the more difficult it is to climb out of.
By the way, your understanding of socialism needs some work.
That’s all beside the point. Greece has too many government employees receiving too much pay and too much dependence on tourism. And if Greece were really doing enough production to support itself, leaving the euro would be no problem.
The same applies to the U.S.A., and I look forward to the housecleaning and resumption of a real, productive American economy. It’s nearly time to take out the trash.
Default, repudiations of debt and the rebuilding of honest productivity with a strong private sector are on the way, no matter what the various big-spending socialist factions with temporary influence try to do to avoid those consequences.
It’s coming. There’s no way out of it. Big government cannot continue to be big without big, real revenues of real value. No amount of foreign noise will stop that or the ongoing efforts of real Americans to prepare to work again without the regulations and other hindrances of robbers in the way.
Well, color me surprised. Tcrlaf siding with the communists and singing the left wing songs again.
When a sovereign nation cannot balance a bank book, draw the line on excessive expenditures, continuously borrows money to operate, cannot fire a single government employee, and builds a two-star military on a four-star budget....they are no longer a sovereign country.
Ask the Greeks about the ‘leaning’ submarine that they bought and never needed. Ask the Greeks about the two budget officers of one town who shot and killed the mayor and still got paid as employees. Ask the Greeks about the law that was on the books for almost a decade that required each Greek federal employee to get six extra days of leave a year if they operated a computer at work. Ask the Greeks what happened when they did try to fire and terminate the national federally-run TV channel, and four months later....that gov’t fell, and the new gov’t hired back the whole state-run network apparatus.
Over and over, they’ve proven themselves to be incompetent. Go to Greece, and the people out in the country will laugh and tell you dozens of such stories. They are not proud of their govenrnment, and every so-many months....they fire that gov’t to bring in a fresh government to fix things. Then six to twelve months later....they realize that vote was a failure. They will admit to your face....they are screwed and have been for decades. By coming to the EU....I think it’s time for a spanking occasion and some tough changes. If you didn’t want to face such issues....you should have fixed the issues decades ago.
Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ivory coast , Congo, Chad, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Indonesia, Philippines
Partial list of countries that got behind on their IMF payments and had the treatment Greece is now being forced to accept
The EU now OWNS Greece. It can dictate Greek laws, even Constitutional amendments.
Other EU governments (Britain?), who will eventually have their own financial problems, need to wake up & see where this is heading. For if the EU can dictate Greek financial policy, they can effectively direct social policy, too.
Game, set, & match goes to un-elected EU bureaucrats.
Yes, Greece has been grossly irresponsible. She is being further irresponsible by ceding her sovereignty. Better to go it alone than be dictated to by foreign powers whose agenda is more about themselves than the rescue of Greece.
Greece will never repay what she owes. & everybody involved knows it. So, the EU decided to buy the country. Not only is the misery not ended, it is just beginning. The little socialists have be replaced by the big socialists.
So you’re justifying the EU’s socialism and imperialism. It was the EU that wanted them in the eurozone in the first place.
What are you talking about?
It was the EU that wanted Greece in the eurozone in the first place. And when the crisis hit (greatly caused by the European Central Bank), Greece actually did not want to be “bailed out” with those loans; but the government that refused the loans was made to fall and get replaced with a government that would take the loans, even though the EU knew that they could not pay them back with the terms they insisted on, including the progressive taxation. This is about economic conquest.
There is no cause to justify the EU’s socialism and imperialism. And there is even less cause to repeat their propaganda as if the EU were about the free market.
I guess you align more with the “takers” and less with the producers. I’m sorry to inform you (and you certainly won’t believe me) but, for the takers, the party is almost over. It will take awhile to get all the guests to leave of course.
No. My alignment is with the free market. Justifying a larger socialist entity’s imperialism over a smaller one is not part of being aligned with the free market. The EU is the biggest “taker” in this scenario, never mind the biggest liar.
It’s humiliating to be told your foodstamp card is empty.
Sorry, but I’m finding it pointless to engage with you...you have absolutely ZERO understanding of the situation. If you’re Greek or have Greek friends I’m sure you’re disappointed that the highly subsidized (using “other people’s money) party is ending. At least the Greeks will have some fond memories as they begin to undertake actual real productive work.
Following the European Union’s adoption of the euro, the ECB (European Central Bank) kept its interest rates at 2 percent to help reunified Germany. Money poured into Britain and America, distorting money markets.And lest anyone thought it was not deliberate, take note.
After December 2005, the ECB inched up interest rates seven times.
In January 2007, Germany raised VAT by 3 percent and the German unions asked for increased wages in compensation. German Bundesbank President Axel Weber sought and secured another ECB interest rate rise to curb German wage inflation. Higher interest rates then caused funds to sweep back to Europe, and soon the US and UK financial systems began to crack.
After a further ECB interest rate rise in July 2008, stock markets (a)round the world collapsed. …
The European Commission’s top economists warned the politicians in the 1990s that the euro might not survive a crisis, at least in its current form. There is no EU treasury or debt union to back it up. The one-size-fits-all regime of interest rates caters badly to the different needs of Club Med and the German bloc.And that is exactly the pattern they pursued after 2008. Justifiable? or nefarious? Legitimate reason to induce the governments of five sovereign nations to fall in order to get them to elect governments that would not refuse the ECB/IMF “bailout” loans? (The prior governments did not intend to be “takers”, remember, especially of these loans.)
The euro fathers did not dispute this. But they saw EMU as an instrument to force the pace of political union. They welcomed the idea of a “beneficial crisis”. As ex-Commission chief Romano Prodi remarked, it would allow Brussels to break taboos and accelerate the move to a full-fledged EU economic government. …
Please read post 57. I think I understand the situation, and I’m not justifying either Greece or its EU socialist “creditors”. IOW, I am not justifying socialist imperialism.
And FTR, Germany’s populace never wanted to give up the Deutsche mark any more than Greeks wanted to give up the drachma.
Anyone can participate in the EU, and NOT be part of the Euro. Look around....several European countries have simply said no thanks, for their own reasons (Denmark is a good example).
Countries that desire the Euro badly....typically have bankers, businessmen, and industry leaders who see common currency as an advantage. Greece felt that way twenty years ago as this idea finally started take off, and so did many of the European countries.
As for ‘imperialism’? No military force is being utilized. The Greek government had five years after the last loan deal to revitalize their revenue spending and put some ‘bite’ into tax collection. Accomplishments over five years could be written on a 3x5 inch card....that really tells the whole bulk of this story of why Greece political figures aren’t respected anymore, and why governments are completely changed out every year or two.
You could go and launch into some episode to force Germany to pay back the 1940 bank-loan (11-billion Euro, without interest), and even grant half of the 340-billion Euro loan as a gift and not payable back to the EU. Within ten to fifteen years....they’d be back at the EU table and asking for more assistance because they’ve rebuilt the whole debt thing from scratch again.
Go pick up James Angelos new book, The Full Catastrophe. It centers on the trail of Greece’s problems....is fairly up to date....and lays out the Nazi issues of 1940 quiet well. He lays out a number of conversations with regular Greeks who readily admit the Greek people are ‘screwed’, and every election brings a new fresh prospective to being screwed. They are more than capable of firing politicians....it’s just the problem that the replacement crowd aren’t marginally any better.
Sadly, I’ve been there several times over the past twenty years and think it’s a place with lots of character and historic charm. The Greek are among the nicest people you’d ever want to associate with. Yet you turn a corner, note some tax avoidance behavior and just start to noticing how corruption layers itself into their culture. In France, you’d eventually get dragged into tax court and shoved into some jail. In Greece, folks admire you and note your tax avoidance accomplishments. Few ever get sent to jail. All of this just makes you grin and ask how stupid was the EU when the discussion started up originally (the Greeks have been doing type of thing for well over 2,000 years).
Imperialism does not always necessitate military force. Even former Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso called the an “empire” in 2007. From its beginnings, the EU construed all of its machinations in the spirit of “the charter of the United Nations”, which is a clone of the 1936 USSR “Stalin constitution”.
And James Angelos, from the WSJ? The “there shall be open borders” crowd?
I can’t believe you’re justifying increasing taxation of any kind, especially at draconian levels. There is no corresponding private-sector investment being encouraged in Greece of any kind whatsoever; it seems that the EU is shutting that out.
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