The greek referendum was about whether to accept an offer that no longer existed.
And it is not binding as shown with the greek government agreeing to conditions that were voted down in the referendum.

And for ignoring the will of the people: Delinquent borrowers now get to decide what happens to their debt????????






Greece has lied to the EU at least since the year 2000 when they submitted their falsified data to apply for Eurozone-membership. FOR MORE THAN 10 FUCKING YEARS GREECE HAS SYSTEMATICALLY AND INTENTIONALLY LIED TO ITS CLOSEST POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ALLIES FOR SELFISH REASONS. So, maybe you can understand now why the EU doesn't accept solutions that depend on Greece keeping its word.

Right now, the word of Greece isn't worth the paper it's printed on and the breath it takes to speak it. And that's the problem:
Whatever the plan to get Greece out of the shits again, IT CANNOT REST ON GREECE KEEPING ITS WORD.

And that's why only ugly solutions are left on the table.




Imagine, your room-mate of 10 years has lied to you ever since you moved in together. Ever since. All the time. Then you find out and it's revealed that he's in trouble. If you would just lend him $10,000, all his problems would be solved. Come on, man. You are friends! Yeah, he lied to you, but the last 10 years were a mistake! This time you can trust him!

The Greeks need to get their house in order if they want to stay in the EU.

Most Americans are under the false impression that the Greeks are being bullied, which is an utter fabrication. The reality is that Greece got itself into this mess, their black markets, corruption and tax evasion is notorious. Is it any wonder that the EU is no longer willing to let them coast and avoid responsibility?

Please check what he has been saying about Greece.

http://www.pappaspost.com/former-labor-secretary-robert-reich-people-seem-to-forget-that-greek-debt-crisis-engineered-by-goldman-sachs/

Sure, put Goldman Sachs near the top of the list of people to blame; but when Enron cooked its books, we didn't blame Arthur Andersen and let the Enron executives say "AA made us do it". We said both were to blame.

Exactly what the Greek Government wanted them to do.

Goldman-Sachs Bears responsibility for cooking the books. They cooked the books in partnership with the Greek
government, at the request of the Greek government, who then used those cooked books to present a fraudulent application to join the EU. The Greek government is at least 75% to blame in that of not more.

Blaming only Goldman-Sachs like hiding all your debt in your spouses name, getting a loan you can't afford in your name, then blaming your spouse because you can't manage the household finances with all that debt and acting like you have no blame.

(with a dollop of vampire squid thrown in). Well done.

a democracy and therefore control over and responsibility for what their oligarchs have done...any more than we do in this country.

But still I say, bravo! for standing up for the equivalent of Wall St.

all they have to do is elect a majority of representatives from Independent Greeks, Golden Dawn or the Communist Party. They all are committed to getting Greece out of the EU and euro.

But then again you and I live in the EU and I suspect are better informed on the situation than others may be. To them it's all about politics through eyes accustomed to American problems...after all, the world revolves around America......they'll pile on me for saying that, the truth sometimes bites.

They think, every time something bad happens in the world, some evil politicians and bankers and oligarchs caused it intentionally.

I call it the "Star Wars"-syndrome. They believe they are some kind of democratic rebels fighting an evil empire. They completely distrust one source of information and unquestioningly trust another source of information because it reports THE TRUTH(TM).

And they LOVE this victim-perpetrator-duality where the world can be easily split into good and evil.

EuroZone Profiteers: Greece

Of Disappearing Debt and Illegal Loans

Where: Greece.

Why: Already heavily in debt from massive public-sector projects (notably for the military) it fiddled its books with the help of Goldman Sachs to join the euro. Then it borrowed even more for public-sector mega-projects like the Olympics.

Outcome: Greece has been forced to borrow €207 billion in potential loans by the Troika (the E.U., the ECB, and the IMF) in exchange for an austerity package. Borrowing costs hit 36.5 percent in February 2012.

In 2006 Yiannis Kazakos, the former mayor of Zografou, a suburb of Athens, arranged for his city council to borrow €25 million from Kommunalkredit International, the Austrian subsidiary of Dexia, to buy land in the middle of the council to build a shopping mall.[184]

Then came potentially deal-killing problems: First, construction on the land was not permitted; and second, the loan was illegal, city officials said, because the state's court of auditors had not approved it.[185]

For five years, city officials refused to repay the loans. Then in 2011, the IMF insisted that the government of Greece take on and repay the Zografou debt plus accrued interest—a total of €45 million—if it wanted to continue getting bailout money.[186]

<snip>

Zografou was not the only council to ask Dexia for money for shaky municipal schemes. In 2006 Melisia and Volos Councils each borrowed €4.5 million from Kommunalkredit to buy up property for developing municipal squares.[187] Spyros Striftos, the mayor of Acharnon council, borrowed €20 million from Goldman Sachs, which in turn sold the debt to Dexia Credit Local.[188] Similar deals were conducted by the councils of Metamorfosis council, Nea Ionia, and Serres.[189]

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15890

The deal with Greece was "extremely profitable" for Goldman. Christoforos Sardelis, former head of Greece’s Public Debt Management Agency, said that the country did not understand what it was buying. He also said he learned that "other EU countries such as Italy" had made similar deals.[52] This led to speculation as to which other countries had made similar deals.[53][54][55]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis

I can answer that question

Goldman Sachs Sued for Selling Libya Billions in "Worthless" Options

Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, is being sued in London for selling Libya “worthless” derivatives trades in 2008 that the country’s financial managers did not understand. Libya says it lost approximately $1.2 billion on the deals, while Goldman made $350 million.

At the time, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), which invests profits from the country’s oil and gas exports, had assets worth $60 billion under former dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Goldman Sachs convinced LIA to buy long-term call options on six companies: Allianz, a German insurance and investment company; Banco Santander, a Spanish bank; Citbank, a U.S. bank; Électricité de France, a French state utility; ENI, an Italian oil company; and UniCredit, an Italian bank.

What the Libyans did not understand was that if the stocks in these six companies did not rise, their investments would become worthless. Instead the LIA executives were taken in by a trip to Morocco as well as "small gifts, such as aftershaves and chocolates” and an offer of an internship for Mustafa Mohamed Zarti, the brother of the Libyan fund's deputy executive director, in Dubai and London.

“The unique circumstances allowed Goldman Sachs to take advantage of the LIA’s extremely limited financial and legal experience to deliberately exploit its position of influence and to take advantage in a way that generated colossal losses for the LIA but substantial profits for Goldman Sachs,” said LIA Chairman AbdulMagid Breish in a statement.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15922

I don't see good vs evil but am often reminded of the socipath-apath-empath triangle but rather see for profit but corrupt politicians and multinationals don't say what there intentions are and have an awful lot of influence with the media.

From the CIA themselves -- I can't copy and paste it is on page 29 the "global village" part where they say "targeting particularly audiences more difficult."
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/info_ops_roadmap.pdf

I've got half a mind to jump in my F150 and drive over there to plant a big ol' flag in your front yard!

you said "Whatever the plan to get Greece out of the shits again..."

There is no plan to "get Greece out of the shits". The IMF has admitted that. Greece's debt is too large for a country the size of Greece to pay off, and their debt grows everyday waiting for the insufficient bailout to begin. At some point the debt will have to be written down, or forgiven. The plan right now appears to be to save the Greek oligarchs, privatize the Greek governments assets and punish the Greek people before they write off any part of that debt. Which will leave the Greeks "in the shits" for decades to come.

We need a plan that punishes banksters, oligarchs, tax-evaders and all the corrupt politicians who accumulated this debt while saving the ordinary tax-evading greek people and the savings they have in bank-accounts. And of course, the plan contains safeguards to prevent similar out-of-control borrow&spend in the future.

You have a plan that could do that?

- boosting economic growth
- ensure that this never happens again


Let's say we pump money into Greece... It would go down drains of corruption and bad laws. Greece needs reforms first, money second.

Let's say we forgive Greece its debt... And the greek politicians, bankers and oligarchs will learn the lesson that the EU will always bail them out. It's the same lesson the rest of the world will learn. No matter how badly you fuck up at Wall Street, the EU will bail you out because Greece is too big to fail.

Let's say, we give the money directly to the greek people... Would they spend it or would the save it because they won't believe that the dire times are over? They would buy food, but food doesn't kickstart the economy.

...to deal with the corruption, tax cheating, and pension fraud. And like the deal with Iran, those reforms need 'inspection' and verification.

(Some of the reforms the EU is forcing seem counter productive in my opinion and need to be abandoned, i.e., the sales tax, laws against progressive taxation, selling off the country's assets that are actually producing income.)

Then they need an infusion of cash to stimulate the economy, (and that needs to be monitored). And along with that some form of relief from the staggering debt they've run up. I don't think that all their debt should be forgiven, but I don't see that it benefits anybody for Greece to have more debt on the books than can ever be paid back.

We, and the EU need to abandon the austerity crusade. Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal all need some economic stimulus. The longer these countries are held on the brink of collapse with youth unemployment over 50% the greater the chance we'll lose democracy there.

I'm not an economist nor am I in finance. These are just the thoughts of an average guy who pays attention to what's going on in the world. The EU can punish the Greeks, scare the rest of the PIIGS into behaving themselves, but nobody is going to get healthy this way and in the long run all of Europe will pay the piper.

Should we give it to the government?
Should we give it to banks?
Should we give it to companies?
Should we give it to consumers?


Giving the money to the consumers was the republican approach in the US and economists trash-talked it because it would be unguided and rely on luck.
Giving money to banks and companies was the democratic approach and it was finally implemented.

not all DU EU members speak for savaging a member country.

If the EU wants to succeed it's going to have to re-structure its economy closer to the US system whereby weaker states like MS, AL, AR are simply factored into the economic union.

This annihilation of Greece is absolute destruction. Unnecessarily

they wanted terms that would actually allow their economy to grow, instead of austerity measures that haven't and will never work. They were sternly punished for it and the newly elected government was forced to eat crow. The EU would rather deal with the old corrupt guard. What does that tell you?

"You cannot change your mind every time there is an election. We have 19 members in the Eurozone, we have elections all the time. That's no way to run things."



You desperately want to see evil intentions at work because then you can pick a side and feel good about yourself. But that's not how the real world works.
Greece is not the innocent victim here. The whole population of Greece willingly and knowingly voted for, aided and abetted systematic tax-evasion, corruption and cheating, because it was so cozy and so profitable.
The greed of bankers, politicians and oligarchs wasn't the only reason. It was their greed that kept ordinary people voting for these politicians FOR DECADES!!!

I don't see how a population can possibly be held personally responsible for corrupt politicians hiring corrupt bankers to cook the books and fuck over the country at their expense. The whole idea that this can be summed up by those tax avoiding greeks smells of bullshit. like blaming the housing crisis on giving poor black people loans. the average person is not gaming the system for personal benefit, it's the complete opposite.

Are you trying to tell me that the shop-owners who evade the sales-tax or the people who cash pension-checks of deceased family-members aren't partially responsible for the mess?
Or what about those who create office-jobs without work-load for cronies and family-members?

They knew what they were doing. They knew it was illegal, they knew it was morally wrong and they did it anyway because money.

The magnitudes vary but I guess few people in Greece are truly innocent. (Yes, evading €10 in taxes that one time is already a crime and makes you a tax-evader. That's how laws work.)

And about the corrupt politicians: Are you trying to tell me that Greece kept reelecting these guys since the 1970s and NOBODY EVER found out that the economic policy is bullshit and unsustainable?




Take off your blindfolds and accept that fact that the real world doesn't work like the US:
You cannot split the world into two groups. You cannot split the world into good and evil, into black and white. The world is grey.
Your experiences with the Two-Party-system in the US, your experience with the oligarchy-proletariat-duality in the US, cannot be translated to the rest of the planet.
Quit projecting YOUR problems and YOUR conspiracy-theories on the rest of the world.

So it's not OK for debtors to be corrupt and greedy,
but it's OK for debtholders to be even more corrupt and greedy.

I get it now. Color me schooled.

from within Merkel's CDU/CSU alone, who raised objections over the vindictiveness of Mr. Schäuble.

Europe is creaking and tearing at the seams: the neo-liberal pipedream of the Euro is turning into a nightmare and no-one wants to admit it (yet).

Those 65 voices will grow in number: many a nation is searching to regain some of the morals it has shed to join in the economic adventure Europe promised it. At the most extreme, that explains the rise of far-right parties. At its most benign, it means support for moderate but no longer neo-liberal policies.

The old Rhineland model might make a comeback. Or maybe the Skandinavian model will overtake large parts of the continent. In any case, there will be a turning point as soon as France mentions "l' Europe des patries" again.

is the same advice I gave a friend who went to prison for possession of pot: Don't borrow anything! By the end of the week the viggorish on that pack of smokes will be more than you could ever pay. Just like that you're owned, just like Greece will be if they borrow any more money.

They should not take any deals from the Eurozone. What are they going to do? Foreclose on Greece? Seize their country and violate their sovereign borders? What are the consequences if saying, "no"?

That's the consequence. That's what happened already. When Syriza won the Greeks started pulling their money out of the banks. ECB kept dumping money in to compensate. When they stopped, the banks shut down.

The Greeks won't lend money to their own government.

Nobody but the EU is lending money to Greece, and the EU isn't getting paid almost any interest now, plus they are lending more. Why? Because the EU is not such a band of brigands as it is being painted.

Before Syriza won the election in January 2015, the Greek economy was growing. Syriza just destroyed that. That's why the other countries are so irked.

and if they paid their fair share it would right the ship?

If you're right about the banks they already are owned I guess. I wonder if there is missing money and where it might be?

One of the reforms demanded in the meeting was to impose actual criminal penalties for not paying your taxes.

But even that won't work unless the bribery is stopped. No country can have a social welfare system without a tax system.

This is what the Greeks pulled off after they were let in the Euro (their interest rates dropped a LOT, so debt was easy to service). To understand why Greece's problem is structural, one has to look at past history:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=gkgnvyy&d1=19960101&d2=20151231&url2=/greece/government-spending-to-gdp&title=false&h=300&w=600&ref=/greece/gdp-growth-annual

The heavy line on that graph is annual GDP growth. The light line (indexed to the left) is Greek government spending as a percent of GDP.

Notice that after entering the EU, economic growth was high and therefore Greek government spending as a percent of GDP dropped. This always happens in periods of prosperity.

But here's the complete and utter uniqueness of Greece:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=wcsdgrc&d1=19980101&d2=20151231&h=300&w=600&ref=/greece/government-budget%27

That's the Greek budget deficit as a percent of GDP. The deficit got WORSE as economic growth was ripping along and government spending as a percent of GDP was dropping. The only way that could have happened was that taxes were not collected. Apparently LESS taxes are collected in Greece when the economy gets better, percentage-wise. Maybe people have more money to bribe the tax collector?

Until Greece manages to become a state in which tax receipts rise when economic growth rises, the poor people in the rest of Europe are going to be funding the rich people in Greece. Why and how that is an optimal solution for "Democratic" Underground I do not know. On this subject, DU has become Looters Anonymous.

So I have had it with all those on this site claiming that they really care about people and the rest of Europe doesn't. Europe is socialist, but most of Europe realizes that to have a strong safety net, you must collect a revenue source sufficient to pay for it, over time. You won't when recessions hit, but only a country like Greece can bankrupt itself in prosperity.

One last thing - the homeownership rate in Greece is about 20 percentage points higher than it is in Germany. People ranting about German plutocrats need a sanity check.

Thanks for the graphs and taking the time to explain this to me. I just don't see how borrowing more money is an answer to this type of culturally ingrained loose economic policy. If the Greek people have shown a propensity to blow off their bills, why would anyone loan them more money?

At one time I had to blow off 10 payday loans I was juggling and change my way of living. I had to start actually doing math and my figures did not add up to anything but another trip down homeless lane. I lived off nothing almost for years, just to get to this mid-poverty level I'm on now. Some people cannot take austerity like that.

Are Germans different than Greeks culturally? I believe they are. We could simply look at worker productivity figures from Germany and Greece, which I don't have. But I've been told that Germans are pretty serious about work and there is hardly no litter there. I've also heard that Greeks love their recreation, their food and drink and their social lives.

I'm generalizing and have no data on cultural differences. If I'm right though, Greece may never pay this off.

all the European right from UKIP to the French National Front to Sweden Democrats to Dutch Freedom Party and many others right wing parties in Europe. They all prize national sovereignty over continental cooperation and unity and want the EU confined to the dustbin of history.

They have hated the EU for this reason (and that it forced liberal trade, immigration and social policies on European countries that conservatives in those countries could not prevent) long before its horrendous policy mistake with austerity. Most liberal Europeans, including Syriza, seem to be working to reverse the terrible austerity policy rather than trying to dismantle the EU which would make the far-right very happy.

I also feel bullied and humiliated that those mean Germans won't lend me any no-strings-attached money either.

(and just in case it's necessary)

Drives me nuts that this very difficult and thorny problem is being treated like a morality play with heartless, cruel Germans on one side and lazy and corrupt Greeks on the other.

I think that the problem is that (like our own original government) the EU is at an unworkable amount of centralization. If Europe had a structure with much stronger supranational bodies then money could be diverted from strong economies to weaker ones without this patchwork of private and national banks, AND they could create a more unified tax structure, so you don't have problems like the Greeks shrugging their shoulders at tax avoidance as just "part of their culture. But Europe has a history (probably more so than anywhere else) of ethnic nation states, and no one wants to give up any of their country's sovereignty

Or, if they decentralized a bit and dropped the euro, but kept a lot of the free travel and commerce reforms, that might work out better as well.

A few years ago, Greece was all hot to join the Eurozone, and the Euro nations were all hot to ignore the problems and admit them, figuring a growing economy would provide the solutions. It didn't pan out, obviously, and feelings have changed on both sides. Instead of figuring out how to get through the crisis, both sides are pointing fingers, blaming each other. The EU cannot be blamed for ignoring the basics of Keynsian economics, since we here in the US can't seem to remember the important principle that you do things like big bailouts when times are bad, then store up reserve funds when the good times return.

A lot of Germans, Dutch, Austrians and French were amazed that the fragile Greek economy could show enough strength to enter the euro. The few big companies that would now be able to export their products to a Greece that could afford them (instead of having to pay ever more devalued drachmae to buy the euros, thus reducing the number of Greeks that could afford anything other than olive oil, ouzo and kalamarakia).

Now, of course, the money thrown at the Greeks is gone. The debtors may carry the debt on their books for a few more decades so their balance sheets don't suddenly show a huge minus, but it's a fiction. The debt may not be forgiven officially, but anyone who thinks it will be repaid is in Fantasyland. It's gone, evaporated, vanished in a puff of smoke. It may not be forgiven officially, but it will never be repaid. Not this year, not this decade, not this century, not EVER.

By the way, there still seem to be people who think exiting the Euro is the same as exiting the European Union. Two different things, people.