Greece launches drive to win over sceptical lenders
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - Greece's new leaders announced a trans-Atlantic road show on Monday to try to persuade sceptical lenders to give them more time to repay the country's massive debt, as hopes faded for any real progress on the issue at this week's European summit.
Unexpected medical problems will prevent Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and incoming Finance Minister Vassilis Rapanos attending the June 28-29 summit in Brussels. The problems also forced the postponement on Monday of the first meeting between the new government and Greece's "troika" of international lenders.
Samaras's government, an unlikely alliance of right and left that emerged from a June 17 election, has promised angry Greeks it will soften the punishing terms of a bailout saving them from bankruptcy in exchange for deep economic pain.
Euro zone paymaster Germany has already rejected major concessions.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/06/25/uk-greece-idUKBRE85O0PT20120625
Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/06/25/uk-greece-idUKBRE85O0PT20120625
maddezmom
(135,060 posts)KansDem
(28,498 posts)http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161651/Starving-Greeks-food-thousands-politicians-finally-form-coalition-government--long-last.html
Starving people lining up for food should warm the cockles of any banker's heart...
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Africa's are not.
I wont post equivalent pictures of famine areas.
potone
(1,701 posts)Yes, there are serious structural problems in Greece, but they are being scapegoated, too. There has been an enormous amount of moralizing about and stereotyping of Greeks in the European--and especially German--press, without any examination of the role of banks in creating the crisis. Also there have been flat out lies: especially in the accusation that they lied their way into the Euro. The complicity of Goldman Sachs and the Greek government in concealing the extent of the deficit occurred AFTER they joined the Euro, contrary to what has been reported in the press. In addition, the government was not allowed to cancel unnecessary military contracts with French and German companies, instead of reducing pension payments.
The real issue here is the neoliberal agenda of international financial institutions to bury countries in debt so that they will be forced to privatize everything and sell off their assets at fire sale prices. This has been documented in two documentaries available on you tube: Debtocracy, and Catastroika. It is a pattern familiar to anyone who has read John Perkins' book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, or the work of Naomi Klein or Greg Palast.
Greece is too small a country to bring down the Euro. The fact that Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland are all in trouble should put paid to the idea that Greece's problems are all their own fault.