pensioners crying in Greece, uk residents should help them out

[marrqkashg]

Really breaks my heart to see pensioners in Greece crying over their pension being HALVED! There seems to be a lack of outrage about this in the uk. I really do think our foreign aid should go to these pensioners as they are much closer than other countries we donate to.

[AyeAmarok]

I agree that it is sad on an individual basis, but this has been coming for a while with Greece. They just thought they would already have Daddy to bail them out and wouldn't ever have to live within their means.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost, they need to understand the consequences of their actions, then they won't do it again.

You always learn your lesson best when you learn it the hard way.

[DoctorTwo]

According to the IMF, even if they suffered indefinite austerity they'd never pay off all the debt. Their economy will just continue to shrink as more and more is sucked into the hands of the multi-nationals.
What's happening now is a deliberate neoliberal ploy to get Syriza out, replacing them with a bunch of technocrats who'll do what the Troika want. The Troika don't care that people are starving and homeless, they are merely interested in keeping the French and German banks (who were encouraged by their respective governments to act more like the British and American banks) from going boom. That won't work though, because, to quote Mitch Feierstein, you can't taper a Ponzi scheme, so the ECB will have to do something the Germans will hate, namely print massive amounts of money just to save Deutsche Bank with their $100Trn unhedged derivates book.

"Indefinite austerity" is not melodramatic at all, after all Japan has been under austerity measures since 1991 and unless their system is completely overhauled they always will be.

[sanfairyanne]

i feel really really sorry for them. it is awful what is happening to some people there. blaming individuals because of the actions of their governments is a bit harsh. i don feel responsible personally for the rise of isis, just because a series of my countrys governments have fucked up the middle east, for example.

[annielouise]

Another lacking much sympathy. Thought Worktolive's analogy was spot on. They need a strong government to sort out the tax evasion and start bringing in some money to pay for the vulnerable themselves, but that won't be popular obviously either. There's reports that that alone would bring in EUR 10-20bn a year. It's come back to bite them on the arse frankly. A whole new mindset is needed.

Same with Italy. I read somewhere that money the mafia makes equals 7% of the country's GDP. Of course none of it is taxed. I expect corruption is rife.

[CoteDAzur]

"they are merely interested in keeping the French and German banks from going boom"

If that were the case, France & Germany would just give the aid money to their banks, without passing through Greece at all.

A large chunk of the money Greece owes is already written off, and huge sums of money has been flowing out of EU coffers and into Greece for the past couple of years. If the only goal were to save EU banks, it would have been much easier to forget about Greece and just save the banks.

[CoteDAzur]

"blaming individuals because of the actions of their governments is a bit harsh."

It's not as if those individuals have voted in those governments, right?

Oh wait.

[annielouise]

I agree Cote. They vote them in as it's in their interests short term as pension age low, money free flowing, tax evasion easy etc but long term it's unsustainable. So you end up with the situation as it is now. But it's so hard to change. Average man in the street won't want to pay his full whack of tax when barely anyone else is but long term that tax money is needed for social security, pensions, hospitals, infrastructure, education and to maintain that so each generation has access to the same. So it ends up every man for himself. There's less chance of them collectively seeing what's needed, more and more now they'll want everything paying in cash and will be looking for tax loopholes so they can look after themselves as the shit has hit the fan. Of course their government should look after them but they voted in the ones with the wrong policies because that's what they wanted. Short termism. It's a vicious circle into perpetuity. Very hard to change it from here. Very hard for individuals to change it. The people have been failed massively but they've been failed by governments they voted in.

[sanfairyanne]

i get one vote once every five years

i get a fucking tory government this time, and a pseudo tory government the last few times

i get the invasion of iraq
the invasion of afghanistan
soon the bombing of syria

like i voted for any of that shit

a million people marched against the war in iraq. we still got it though.

its a very very very big stretch from one vote every five years to 'everything the govt does is your fault cos you went to the ballot box'

all politics is corrupt, some governments more than others. to be held responsible for the corrupt actions of mps is a bit much!

[RoboticSealpup]

Goodnessgracious, I am not saying that they should not pay anything back, (and neither are they, if you care to listen). But lending isn't some selfless, generous act. It comes with interest, because it comes with risks to the lender. It's similar to the Wonga situation in the UK, except it's a whole country that's been held to ransom by irresponsible lenders who are saying "actually, you have to go back and stay with your parents, get two jobs and halve your food budget in order to pay back over your whole lifetime". Screw your children and the fact that they are now condemned to a lifetime in poverty.

I agree with you that German tax payers are not winners in this situation either. No regular people are. The whole Euro project serves the interests of elites with transnational, tax-free capital - not regular Europeans, whose private financial situation hasn't kept up with any economic 'green shoots' for years.

[HeartsTrumpDiamonds]

Maybe some of those 51-year-old pensioners should, you know, go back to work and get a job. I don't expect to retire until I'm at least 70. No sympathy here. Cushy jobs, cushy retirement, no taxes - and now it's caught up with them.

[RoboticSealpup]

goodnessgracious

It is morally repugnant to compare the people lending Greece money to "terrorists" just a few days after over 30 people lost their lives in a sea of blood in an act of ACTUAL terrorism.

30 British people, you mean? Presumably, you don't give a shit about the remaining 8 because they were from somewhere else.

You can call Varoufakis a scumbag if you will, but at least the Greeks have a government who give an actual fuck about the fact that their people are having their lives and futures destroyed, to the point where the suicide rate has gone up by record levels and is higher than anywhere else in Europe. It's a shame the same cannot be said for the scumbag government of the UK, who push their own people into impossible situations and then refuse to talk about it when they kill themselves. (Yes, I'm talking about IDS.)

Politics isn't a game of chess, you know. It affects real people like you and me.

[HeartsTrumpDiamonds]

And as for Taxpayers don't fund bailouts. Central banks create money FFS take an economics course. You sound ridiculous in your ignorance. Nice conspiracy theory too "this is what you are meant to think".

[goodnessgraciousgouda]

If the situation is genuinely as unfair as people are making out, then the current Greece government would not want to stay in the euro. They would want to cut ties completely, declare default, and move back to their own national currency, which other government's would have no control over (barring paying back previous loans).

But no-one in Greece wants to leave the euro. Because they know that their economy is nowhere near strong enough - and never has been - to give their national currency the same value as the euro. One of the reasons that is the case is because of long standing national policies which don't exist in other countries.

They can't have it both ways. It's a shitty situation, but they need to decide.

[AgentCooper]

I don't know what the solution is, but I do feel awful for Greece. I work with a Greek lady and what she has told me about the situation back home is heartbreaking. Everyone is frightened. The rate of increase in suicides is shocking. I've mentioned this before, but she has a friend who is a psychologist who practices 5 days a week and works 3 nights in a bar as well to make ends meet. It is very, very sad.

[Timetodrive]

I do think the eurozone belief that it had to work no matter what has done the damage, if they had admitted defeat on the workings of the euro then Greece would of been in a different position.

[RoboticSealpup]

Apologies, goodness I misread your comment as "30 people" rather than "more than 30 people". But it's still pretty poignant that you should use this as an example, when people die in terror attacks every day all over the world. The fact these people were British clearly makes this incident much more abhorrent in your eyes, just like the situation in Greece makes me feel sick because I have family there and I have seen with my own eyes how hopeless life looks for people I know. This is solidarity, the opposite of the 'othering' that allows people to view each other as mere expensive inconveniences.

[EllieFAntspoo]

sanfairyanne So you deduce that all governments are corrupt. Yet you continue to support the status quo? Why?

[EllieFAntspoo]

Cote No. They were bribed incentivised into joining the EU with promises of many billions of Euros, and because they were financially already a bankrupt nation, but it was politically expedient for them to brought into the fold, their books were cooked very expertly by Goldman Sachs to ease their passage into the EU. It is all a matter of public record, and it is not like anyone in the EU can pretend this did not happen, that they did not know that they were taking on Greece's economy, and that they thought Greece would all of a sudden become an economic powerhouse miracle, after a century and a half of civil war, military dictatorship and squalor.

Separate what you are being told by the television and the newspapers from fact, because the two are quite different things.

Goodness The comparison is uncalled for, yes. Even deplorable. But 'economic terrorism' is centuries old. it is very effective, can clearly be demonstrated to both exist, and be present in the current Greek situation, and will continue to be rolled out in conflicts forever.

[Viviennemary]

The point is you can't have a generous welfare system if you don't have big taxes. It's getting a balance between the two. They can't pay no tax and expect to retire and 50 on big pensions and keep armies of civil servants going. Whose paying for all this. Seems like the rest of the Eurozone. Not on.

[EllieFAntspoo]

Cote If that were the case, France & Germany would just give the aid money to their banks, without passing through Greece at all.

Firstly, it's illegal under EU law. Secondly, every nation already has bail-in legislation in statute to fund collapsing banks (UK passed it into law in 2012), and thirdly, a colapse of any bank would trigger astronomical derivative and credit default swap obligations that could never be met by any financial instiution on the planet.

The only viable way out of a systemic bank failure this time around is to remove as much wealth from a nation's citizens as possible, and write off the debt without legally calling it a 'default',thus preventing the triggering of derivitives obligations.

The only way out of a catastrophic failure continent wide, is to wipe the slate clean, call a debt jubilee, reset the currency, and start over. A nice world war would be a good distraction to blame this on, if we can ever manage to get the thing started.

We do not read history, and so we repeat it.

[EllieFAntspoo]

I know... Let's bomb Syria and make out that they are to blame for Tunisia.
Shucks, someone already thought of that.

[EllieFAntspoo]

Vivienne Why should people not work and save their own money, and then retire when they choose? Why should anyone expect other people to work to fund their lifestyle? Yes, they paid into the system, but the system is flawed and they now suffer the consequences of not having saved,or not having protected their savings wisely. They have known for decades that this is happening, yet they chose to bury their heads in the beach.

[CoteDAzur]

"They were bribed incentivised into joining the EU"

Really now. EU couldn't have beaten Greece away with a stick. What else was Greece going to do but cozy up to EU? They were so desperate to join the EU that they lied about their accounts.

"their books were cooked very expertly by Goldman Sachs to ease their passage into the EU"

Goldman Sachs arranged some credit swaps. The will to do this came from the Greek government, who systematically lied about "miscalculated" the country's economic measures.

"it is not like anyone in the EU can pretend this did not happen, that they did not know that they were taking on Greece's economy"

Hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it? Sadly, most of us aren't prescient and can't "know" now what will only be revealed years in the future.

[Orangeisthenewbanana]

It's the same old story as on an individual basis time after time. Greedy banks/creditors lend more money than they probably should to perhaps not the most robust of debtors, expecting to make a profit on the interest. People get greedy and borrow more money than they can really afford, to fund the lifestyle that they want, except it's on credit. The cycle continues for a few rounds until the debtor is in way over their head, the lender panics and tries to use bullying tactics to get their repayments. And each of them blame the other for the whole mess