Greece part II

[Hullygully]

I would be very grateful if we could keep this about Greece, and those (two) who want to dance up and down jibing at Claig and calling her a fool and a kremlinbot and an anti-semite, start their own thread for that purpose.

Cheers

sanfairyanne, article by Charles Moore, former Daily Telgraph editor.

"Does the EU want the Greeks to vote for Golden Dawn?

If Greece does vote Yes, and Mr Tsipras has to go, who is left to run the country? The voters have tried all the main parties, only to find them broken by the demands of the eurozone. The only category left is the extreme right, so there would be a sort of desperate logic in electing the repulsive Golden Dawn party. Otherwise, there really doesn’t seem any point in having any more votes at all. Greek citizens — or rather subjects — might as well invite the satraps of the troika formally to take up the reins of power, sit back, and see how they manage. If they do not like what happens next, they can reserve the right to riot. It will be like being under the Ottomans all over again."

blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/07/does-the-eu-want-the-greeks-to-vote-for-golden-dawn/

Crazy EU elite policy, but they are so despearate to teach Syriza a lesson in order to prevent the Spartacus rebellion spreading to Podemos in Spain and elsewhere.

Channel 4 News said that there is supposed to be 50 billion earmarked for privatisation, but there has only been 7 billion ever earmarked for privatisation and the IMF said last month that they envisage only 0.5 billion per year.

It's all smoke and mirrors, spin for the European public, but the debt restructuring will be real.

sadly no time as en route to Ellada, but wanted to say: claig, well done, you were spot on.

I'll report back from the land of bafflement and crushed hope...

Have a good holiday there, Hullygully, you deserve it.

Got to go and spend a lot of euros. Pay back those german bankers, innit.

Hope you've got a lot of Euros. Those bankers are greedy so-and-sos.

Bloody hell, Jeremy Corbyn is good. He is on Channel 4 News shouting and getting angry at Krishnan. He is real, never seen anything like it. Better than I thought. If he carries on like this, he could end up as Labour leader. The bankers must be panicking at the propsect.

we are just stunned when we see anyone 'real' in politics these days. farage, altho i am no ukip fan (and fear for a future ukip under different leadership), also speaks his mind in an authentic way imo.

Have a good holiday Hully. I expect all this Greek stuff will still be here when you get back.

thanks vivieene, ill get it all sorted...

Is Greece getting an unfair deal? Why is it that the media are saying Germany are treating them harshly?

I would say yes, but it all depends how you see the world.

Are you with the oppressed vs the oppressor, the debtor vs the creditor, the people vs the elite or vice versa?

What is happening is that an entire people - cleaners, nurses, teachers, children - are being made to suffer biting austerity because their corrupt elite rulers got them into debt to a corrupt set of elite politicians and bankers and now they are being made to pay even though they had no say in the matter.

As the BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme on populism riightly stated, populists see the world as one divided between the people and the elites, the moral and the immoral. If you are a real socialist or a real populist then you will probably see the creditor in this case (the EU led by Germany, although France is as much too blame) as immoral and as treating the Greeks harshly - depriving them of their democratic rights, overruling their sovereignty and autocratically dictating austerity.

Alternatively, you will see the Greeks as getting what they deserve and as being immoral and feckless and irresponsible and lazy and tax-avoiding and as justly owing the moral creditor.

In most cases of bankruptcy, corporate or private, your debts are written off or written down and you are declared bankrupt and you can reemerge to fight another day. What we are seeing here with the EU is perpetaul debt slavery, with no escape and no means to pay. It is unjust and that is why real socialists (like Jeremy Corbyn) and real populists (like Nigel Farage) and real conservatives (like Norman Lamont, Nigel Lawson, Peter Hitchens and Charles Moore) are all against what we are witnessing - the contempt for democracy and the contempt for justice.

Oh wow. I didn't realise that. Thanks for explaining it.

The reason it has ignited such interest all over Europe is because everybody has now seen the real face of the EU and who is behind it and who runs it and we all now know that today it is the Greeks, but tomorrow it could be us.

Jeremy Corbyn is in solidarity with Syriza and so are right wing populists and real conservatives. The only people with the EU, Germany and France are the metropolitan elites. Even the USA is with us, the people on this one.

Based on who Jeremy Corbyn is in solidarity with, Marxist economic screw ups Syriza are the LEAST controversial, and I doubt if anyone is panicking that he becomes Labour leader, more than most of the current Labour MP's. lol

"Labour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn loses his cool over 'friendship' with Hamas"
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11737466/Labour-leadership-hopeful-Jeremy-Corbyn-loses-his-cool-over-friendship-with-Hamas.html

"The Labour leadership candidate struggles to explain why he described the Islamist militant organisations Hamas and Hezbollah as 'friends'

"In most cases of bankruptcy, corporate or private, your debts are written off or written down and you are declared bankrupt and you can reemerge to fight another day."

And what happened with all the Country defaults (which funny old world, are DIFFERENT to Corporate and Individual bankruptcies) over the past 40-odd years, did the EU fairies pay all those off in Latin America and the far East, or did they have to work through a tough programme too get their own finances in order?

The Greek economy and banking system have got far worse over the past several months THANKS to Syriza/Tsipras and their false promises of making the other 18 democracies foot the bill for the Greek governments incompetence and defaulting payments, mean they politically reap what they sow.

The sooner Greek politicians accept their economic structure is a basket case that would mean all new good money would go the same way as rest and stop making false promises winding up their people, the better it will be.

The citizens of several EU countries needing their own countries money spent on THEM, have democratically spoken to their own politicians.

Claig...as you SAY you admire Thatcher, why don't you GET that the Greeks are paying for their own governments economic incompetence over many years and that the money Greece needs comes from other EU citizens who also have 'austerity'?

Her following quote should cover this issue;

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money [to spend]."

And Syriza's actions over recent months applauded by those who appear to not even know how High Street loans are made, as can go bad if do not pay back on deadlines and/or threaten to default if not loaned more - DID run out of other people's money and they had the option to leave.

A worse deal today than was put to Greece a few weeks ago was a direct consequence of creditors having less faith on repayments due to Syriza's actions, as people who KNOW how country finances work WARNED this board.

Russia has a history of defaults, so it happens to the best of countries.

Here was one that I remember very well.

economics.rabobank.com/publications/2013/september/the-russian-crisis-1998/

Jeremy just keeps getting better and better. Yanis still my favourite though. Swoon

You mean like Argentina's eight defaults? How many times do entire countries have to default before banks sit down and do a little thinking? Or maybe they have thought it all through very well.

From Wikipedia:
"In August 2014, Argentina filed a case at the International Court of Justice, alleging that through its court system's decision, the United States had "violat[ed] its sovereign immunity" and breached "[the] obligation not to use or encourage measures of economic and political action to force the sovereign will of another State" , and was responsible for permitting judicial malpractice and gross incompetence in allowing two small hedge funds to trigger a needless default against most other bondholders. Information was likewise requested from the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning the possibility of securities fraud involving the bonds by plaintiffs in the case. Observers note that the U.S. must consent to the case being heard, which has only happened 22 times in the ICJ's 68 years of existence, and a Latin American and international law specialist at Oxford Analytica observed to media that, "From the point of view of the U.S. government, the New York court system has dealt with a contractual dispute in which the executive [branch] cannot intervene. It's a dispute governed by a contract, not by a treaty or international law"."
Argentina knows full well that this case will get nowhere, but used the opportunity to castigate the US, and rightly.

The Ruble Crisis was a good illustration of the perils the IMF faces when playing politics with a state that has oil and is big enough to have its own food processing and other industries.

mathsanxiety ..... I'm not quite sure how this example that you include "Argentina knows full well that this case will get nowhere, but used the opportunity to castigate the US, and rightly." is relevant to the FACT that countries DO default, the Greek problems are not, as claig would like us to think, as rare as rocking horse pooh.

Re your "How many times do entire countries have to default before banks sit down and do a little thinking?"

I will assume that you are talking about Investment Banks.

How do you think hundreds of millions of people globally were brought out of economic poverty, going to their local post office to raise billions of local currencies or U.S. dollars to kick start growth?

Whether using supranational organisations like the World Bank or Asian Development Bank etc or DIRECTLY, these emerging counties originally rated low investment grade down to junk, were able to tap international investors for far from risk-less money, VIA a key functionality of Investment Banks.

Look I can't be arsed to lecture on how Investment Banks daily make the worlds economy goes around, as most people now realise after September 2007 that when they DON'T function, bad economic things happen.

My point is, whether Argentina, Russia, or even Greece, the Investment banks just raise the money that the elected governments of these countries ASK to be raised, now what the numb-nuts DO with the money once raised, IS DOWN TO THEM.

Greece had a badly structured economy, with corruption and cronyism; it was not the job of Investment Banks to insist that they get their pooh together, THAT was the job of the EU.

If countries raise money to continue their bad practices rather than FIX them, until banks have powers to police and penalise dumb-shit governments (when most on here think banks already influence government too much), elected government HAVE to be responsible for their own policies/actions, - even left wing ones, leftie followers would n-e-v-e-r ever blame for anything...'it wasn't us guvn'r, it was those fecking capitalists'.

It's reported that the Greek civil service has called a strike because they don't like the suggested austerity

That'll help then ...

Who does like austerity! But you can't have it all ways. Glad George Osborne has put his foot down re giving them a donation from the UK from some fund that's meant to be for disasters.