Greeks Face 'Humiliating' Demands As Twitter Says #ThisIsACoup (EU Demands "Banker Dictatorship"?)

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.

If every Greek business, industry and private citizen dropped the tax avoidance behavior....they’d have more than enough revenue generated in the country to cover the bulk of their government services/funding. None of this EU involvement or additional loan business would be necessary. Most business and financial analysts tend to agree on that topic. They wouldn’t need new laws, new enforcement, or new ‘force’ to cover the situation.

Go look at Greek trade in the region and how they’ve accomplished a good bit of success over the past couple of decades. Tourism, up until this recent mess, was on booming trend....with Europeans spending cash left and right. The Greek airline industry...while small....was generating profit.

If people just played the legit tax rules they already have on the books...this saga would come to a closure and no EU involvement would be necessary.

Go ask a dozen Greeks who smoke....where they got their pack of smokes. A couple of folks will admit the gas station or grocery, but the bulk will tell you via a non-taxable source, at roughly a Euro per pack....thus avoiding the three or four Euro Greek state tax on each pack of smokes. Booze is the same way, with non-taxed booze easily working itself into Greek pubs and bars.

As for Angelos? He’s authentic Greek-American...speaks the language....and can easily talk to businessmen, bureaucrats, street peddlers, and retired guys at a street cafe. That’s something that you don’t see with the reporters of the London Times or the various German news media sources. There are way too many news reports which are centering strictly on the personalities of the head political party, which doesn’t really lay out the survival problems of the Greek people.

I noticed over the weekend....some business reporters had gone out finally to the upper-class neighborhood of Athens. Things were pretty normal. The BMW dealer was still fairly active and had customers showing up. Obviously, there are two Greek epic stories here....the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. Naturally, this all leads back to tax avoidance.

None of the EU loans were necessary anyway. See post 57 as to the shenanigans that the EU has been up to.

And are you conflating “tax evasion” and “tax avoidance”, the latter of which is legitimate and not criminal? Unless there is a justifiable tax regimen to speak of, then all such talk is straight out of the Communist Manifesto anyhow, whose second plank calls for “(a) heavy progressive or graduated income tax” in all cases.

The EU bureaucrats have always insisted that their “union” (empire) was not “à la carte” as they put it, and every member state would have to end up joining the euro.

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