Merkel misled Germans

[Svanhild]

I am quoting this post that comes from a discussion on the BBC website about the Greek crisis.

It is extremely objective and accurate. And since they come from a non-Greek, those words are bound to be sincere (or at least, unbiased).

So for those of you who imagine the average Greeks as lazy welfare niggas lying around in the sun all day and eating with silver spoons, please read this and try to get a better understanding of reality.

I'm sorry for the problems of your country and please don't take offence in my words, but I'm against spending even one single cent to your country. It's a bottomless pit in its current situation and there's a self-imposed factor among others. Ridiculous boycott calls of Greeks against Germany and German products are only decreasing the public concern for the fate of your country further and further. Almost 80% of Germans are against financial helps for Greece but our politicians don't give a damn. There have to be consequences.

Don't tell me the NPD is pro-bailout.

Rightwing parties aren't in our national parliament.

[RoyBatty]

Perhaps it would have been better if instead of forcing Germany (and other EU countries ) to stump up money for bailing out Greece that instead the loans to the banks and lenders were defaulted. They then go out of business or get nationalised. The bosses lose their cushy jobs. The shareholders (particularly the major ones who had influence over the banks' dealings) lose their ill-gotten gains.

This situation with Greece was engineered through an intricate system of cheap credit, bogus financial products and deliberate fraud by Western (particularly US) financial institutions and Greek Administrations to mislead the Eurozone about Greece's economic position.

Screw the banks. Screw paying back the loans. The Goldman Sachs boss recently said that "investors came looking for risk and they got risk". Well, banks and lenders who lent indiscriminately to Greece also came looking for and got risk.

[Absinthe]

I'm sorry for the problems of your country and please don't take offence in my words, but I'm against spending even one single cent to your country. It's a bottomless pit in its current situation and there's a self-imposed factor among others. Ridiculous boycott calls of Greeks against Germany and German products are only decreasing the public concern for the fate of your country further and further. Almost 80% of Germans are against financial helps for Greece but our politicians don't give a damn. There have to be consequences.

Wait a minute, it seems you got me wrong here

My previous posts were not intended to show that Germany ought to give money to Greece. My only goal was to shatter this stereotype of Greeks (as a whole) being a lazy nation who likes going on vacations with other people's money and eat with silver spoons.

Yes, a percentage of them is like that. Mostly the public servants as well as certain economic mafias.

But you see in order for a society to function, if a percentage of the work force is crippled then the rest have to work twice as much in order to compensate. And ironically, those are the ones that get paid the least. And ironically, those are also the ones that pay their taxes.

I know that in the end of the day it doesn't matter because that's not your problem. If money comes out of your own pocket you couldn't care less if it goes to the lazy bastard or the hard working Greek - what matters is that it's coming out of your pocket and going to someone you don't know while you had nothing to do with that in the first place.

I'd be equally pissed off if I were you, and I do agree with you that Greece is a bottomless pit. The debt is abyssmal and I seriously doubt that any of that money is going to the right places.

And that's just your side of the story.

How about ours? For us it means, first and foremost, humiliation (probably the greatest one experienced in recent History), and most importantly, slavery.

You do understand how it is to feel that your whole nation has been enslaved by monetary unions, bankers, stoke brokers.
From now on, no matter how harder Greeks might work or how many sacrifices they make, and how much the country may develop by doing so, the money is never again going into our own pockets but straight to the banks and unions.

The only way to describe how I feel:

I feel like my own father sold me to a Russian mafioso/pimp because he couldn't repay the debts he made for his own entertainment.

So now I have to work in a brothel (and quite literally speaking at that!!! ) and as if this wasn't bad enough, I don't get to see a penny as it all goes to the Russian mafia.
(This is not to equate Germans with the mafia, it's just an example )

Loans, stocks, bonds, spreads, all that is totally Greek to the average Greek citizen who works all day in a crappy job and earns 700 euros/month.

My bank account currently holds the measly amount of 500 euros and that is all the "security" I have in the world until I get my next paycheck which will barely cover basic expenses.
So not me, or most of Greeks for that matter, got into this game willingly.

Most of us have never even seen that money as it went straight from the EU and into the pockets of a few criminals.
So the average citizen has never enjoyed a "better life" because of foreign aid. And we sure ain't gonna enjoy it now. But hey, that's Capitalism!

For what it's worth it I would much prefer it if Greece was allowed to declare bankruptcy.
Surely that would be a big blow but then we would also have to rebuild our country and this time knowing we are on our own so we have to do our best.

That would be much preferred than the perpetual financial slavery we've gotten ourselves into. When will this end? Like you said, it's a bottomless pit.
Surely we deserved what was coming because we were so stupid as to believe that our politicians were doing their best for the country.
But in the end of the day, noone (and I mean, of the regular people) deserves that fate.

[SwordoftheVistula]

But hey, that's Capitalism!

No, that's socialism. The money got sucked up by public sector unions, heavily regulated industries (I saw in a recent article that it costs more to ship a load of potatoes from northern Greece to Athens than from Athens to London), and people with political connections. Same article, this guy's friend spent 10 years trying to open a hotel, and would have had to spend another 10 or pay a hefty bribe if he was not politically connected, due to all the regulatory hurdles. You can't have much economic growth in such a place, and they needed money from somewhere to pay off all the government employees (able to retire around age 50 with full pension, including some extra months of pay per year). Solution? Falsify records in order to obtain loans, same as a street criminal who gets a credit card using false info and then tries to get out of paying.

[Austin]

Yes I do believe the fault of the massively unproductive public sector in Greece is being largely ignored in this thread. A country which relies on its public sector for most its jobs is doomed without a healthy private sector.

[Turkophagos]

Euro states to share profits from Greek loans, officials say

Brussels - Euro area states are expected to share the profits they will make from lending money to Greece, with mechanisms in place to make sure that none of them ends up losing money in the process, European Commission officials said Monday.

The eurogroup, the panel of eurozone finance ministers, agreed Sunday to let Greece tap into an 110-billion-euro (146 billion dollars) rescue package over the next three years, to help it avoid default on its skyrocketing debt.

Euro area states are expected to offer around 80 billion euros at an interest rate of around 5 per cent, with the rest coming from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at a slightly lower interest rate.

The money, expected to be dished out in 12 instalments, would be raised individually by each euro government, but then 'pooled into a single fixed rate loan' by the commission, officials explained.

Activation of the aid mechanism is still dependent on parliamentary approval in several euro countries, but the first portion is expected to be disbursed before May 19, in order to allow Greece to pay back 8.5 billion euros of debt maturing on that day.

The arrangement is favourable to Greece, where risk premiums on 2- year government bonds have jumped to over 10 per cent, as well as for financially solid countries such as Germany, which can raise capital in the markets at around 3 per cent and loan it to Athens at a higher price.

But the system may be risky for other eurozone countries whose debt restructuring costs are also on the rise due to precarious fiscal positions.

Yields on 10-year government bonds from Portugal and Ireland, for example, have jumped over the 5-per-cent bar, raising the prospect that both countries would have to borrow money at rates higher than they would lend to Greece.

But a commission official said any euro country facing such a loss 'would be paid back in full' by other eurozone partners still in the black, which would take home as a result 'a slightly lower profit as a result.'

The same source said loans would mature after three years, so that Greece 'would begin repaying them in 2013 and finish in mid 2016.'

He also stressed that the 110-billion-euro figure, which some analysts say may not be sufficient, is not intended to cover all of Greece's refinancing needs over the next three years.

The commission expects that, as the austerity measures recommended by the EU and IMF are implemented, Greece will regain the markets' confidence and again start raising capital privately at a rate lower than the 5 per cent offered by the eurozone.

'We expect them to be able to do that by mid-2011,' the EU official said, mentioning Hungary's precedent of not needing to draw on the last instalment of the 20-billion-euro extended to it by the EU and IMF because of its improved market standing.

Officials also insisted that disbursement of the money would depend on Greece following a strict road map for reforms, with quarterly progress reviews planned.

On that basis, eurozone finance ministers would decide regularly whether to grant the next portion of the aid.

'We have not given them a blank cheque for three years,' commission officials stressed.


http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking...ry_522155.html




None is spending money for Greeks, european governments are making money out of greek misery. It's called loan, with an interest 500% more than inflation, not aid. You're not "saving" anyone here, you're sharing the profits, deal with it!

[SwordoftheVistula]

I doubt that money will ever get paid back, at least not most of it. How can they, when they are still expected to have a budget deficit even after the 'austerity measures'?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...er_crisis.html

When Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou discusses the $145 billion bailout plan that was adopted Sunday, he describes his nation's chaotic finances in language that should make sense even to grumpy German taxpayers who will be putting up the largest share of the rescue money.

Greece's problem, Papandreou says, was that it developed a financial culture in which pervasive corruption and tax evasion were tolerated. Its leaders made promises they couldn't keep; they expanded public-sector employment so much that nobody even knew, for sure, the number of government employees.

Now it's time to pay the euro-piper, with one of the most severe austerity programs, on paper at least, ever proposed for a developed country. The package will cut public-sector wages and pensions for three years and slash the Greek budget deficit from 13.6 percent of gross domestic product to less than 3 percent by the end of 2014. For every five government workers who leave their jobs, only one will be hired.

"This will create a different Greece," Papandreou said in an interview Sunday. "Our basic bet is that we are cutting down on disorder, cutting down on graft and tax evasion." He explained that under the old culture, "there was a sense that people who had the power and means could go around and do what they wanted. They asked, 'Why should I pay my taxes when others don't?' "

That financial never-land was Greece in the old days. According to Papandreou, those days ended Sunday. He managed to persuade European Union finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund to extend the rescue package this weekend, in exchange for the Greek concessions. We'll see this week whether the financial markets believe that Papandreou can deliver on these promises.

"Austerity" and "Greece" don't go easily in the same sentence. That's my chief reason for skepticism about the bailout-austerity package. It goes against the freewheeling, boisterous national spirit that makes Greece such a delightful place to visit -- and such a nightmare for finance ministers from the more uptight, less spendthrift countries of northern Europe. But it's precisely those cultural issues that Papandreou indicated he is ready to tackle.

Papandreou spoke by telephone from his home in Athens late Sunday evening. Negotiations with the E.U. finance ministers, which have dragged on for days, had ended; the angry Greek demonstrators who had been in the streets this weekend, protesting what one trade union official called "savage" cuts, had gone home for the night.

The prime minister was trying his best to put a positive spin on events. He argued that the demise of the old culture of corruption created a new "opportunity for Greece and for investors" to build the economy on a more solid foundation. He said he plans to conduct a census to count the public-sector work force -- yes, it's really that bad -- and replace a haphazard system in which some public pay records are computerized and others are kept by hand.

Corruption's drain on the Greek economy is huge, Papandreou said. He cited a Brookings Institution study that estimated the total cost at $20 billion, and a Greek study that pegged the cost at $30 billion. Graft accounts for 8 to 12 percent of Greek GDP, Papandreou said.

What comes next for Europe, now that the Greek rescue package has been negotiated? The first question the eurozone will face Monday is whether the other weak, debt-laden economies -- Portugal, Ireland and Spain -- will also need bailouts to avoid default. Financial bailouts tend to be like falling dominoes: Once one goes down, the others tend to follow.

But the larger challenge is to fix the European fiscal system -- or, to be more accurate, the lack of one -- that created the crisis in the first place. This eurozone has been a weird amalgam of one currency, 16 finance ministers and no final accountability. That must change.

Papandreou cited the stimulus package that Greece and other E.U. countries adopted in 2008 at the behest of Brussels. The rules were too flexible, he said, and in Greece the stimulus money just "ballooned the debt and deficit."

The Greeks need to change their financial culture in the wake of this crisis, just as Papandreou says. But what's equally necessary is a culture change in Brussels and the eurozone capitals, so that Europe has a union in more than name only.

[Agrippa]

The "plan" in detail is economic and social suicide for Greece. You can't do that to a nation in a recession, it will be completely ruined, its totally asocial and won't work out economically.

Rather than eliminating the holes in the tax system and end corruption to begin with, they take away the purchasing power from the people, ruin the economic programs etc., its just insane.

If these Greek politicians are not totally corrupted, they might sacrifice themselves politically because the only way out of this IMF prison might be a total failure in a short time, uprisings and revolts. Other than that Greece is now in slavery and the banks will put it down in an unbelievable way, especially for a European country.

Considering that Europe will pay for the IMF too, especially Germany, but with much less of an option to decide where it will go, the IMF, the Neoliberal, US-controlle plutocratic force is the worst choice.

If they spread a similar "austerity" to the rest of Europe, thats the end of social and economic structures as we know it in Europe, then there has to be a revolution, or we become poor, helpless and fully dependent slaves in a debt-based slavery system of the Plutocratic Oligarchy.

Really EVERY reasonable economic analysts says that this package will just completely ruin Greece, it won't bring it back on its feets, surely not.

[The Black Prince]

The "plan" in detail is economic and social suicide for Greece. You can't do that to a nation in a recession, it will be completely ruined, its totally asocial and won't work out economically.

Rather than eliminating the holes in the tax system and end corruption to begin with, they take away the purchasing power from the people, ruin the economic programs etc., its just insane.

Considering that Europe will pay for the IMF too, especially Germany, but with much less of an option to decide where it will go, the IMF, the Neoliberal, US-controlle plutocratic force is the worst choice.

Really EVERY reasonable economic analysts says that this package will just completely ruin Greece, it won't bring it back on its feets, surely not.

The truth is that the European countries already had thrown to much money into Greece (and for the record also Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc.). If they would have allowed for Greece to go bankrupt it might have performed a chain reaction throughout the EU, at the least it would seriously damage the other EU countries their economic balances.

However you are right that this money injection is a fatal one for Greece and therefore also a fatal one for the EU. Since Greece will take no severe actions agaisnt its bureaucrats and civil service, It won't be able to pay it back, with a chance that it will be in the same situation again within a couple of years.

The money injection is also a weak sign towards the other economically weak/corrupt Mediterranean countries... Instead of pushing them to conform to the EU rules (to keep up your financial balance) the current actions to "help" Greece will only show them that the EU is a milking cow not able to show its teeth.

[Jarl]

It's a bottomless pit in its current situation and there's a self-imposed factor among others.

This is partly because Greece introduced the euro, and joined the Union (which is a paper union as it turns out - as when shit happens nobody wants to clean it up).

Ridiculous boycott calls of Greeks against Germany and German products are only decreasing the public concern for the fate of your country further and further. Almost 80% of Germans are against financial helps for Greece but our politicians don't give a damn. There have to be consequences.

Rightwing parties aren't in our national parliament.

Your politicians dont give a damn coz EU means means business to the capitalists that make German politics. And as long as EU means cheap markets and business for Germany, they will be ready to sustain it. If they would not earn more than theyd lose, they would not set up the whole EU and EURO-zone in the first place.



You seem to believe that EU is some sort of free a handout that poor Germany delivers to everybody out of her soft benevolent heart. No. EU is not German martyrdom. EU is the greatest vent for German capital ever invented and it is partly thanks to EU that Germany can sustain itself as one of world's leading economies.