Thoughts on Greece

I am bewildered by the situation in Greece and its effects on the world's economic system - in so much as one exists. What leaves me agog is that in my near endless ignorance the picture I see is one of the Greek people getting an absolutely royal fucking while the financial buzzards hover over the corpse anticipating a fine meal.

I never thought of Greece as a wealthy country and when I looked up the average household income for the country the numbers I found averaged out to something in the mid-$20,000 range - which isn't a hell of a lot. I also found out, once again from conflicting numbers, that tourism plays a very large part in Greece's economy, with a low estimate being 40%. And then of course Greece is a "Socialist" country, which in this case simply means that the public utilities are indeed just that, publicly owned. There are myriad reports of corruption and incompetence in the Government too, but the current crisis it would seem from reports, must come from insufficient taxation to cover expenses. The solution being imposed on the Greek people is to increase taxes, decrease services, and the sale of publicly held assets to the private sector.

So, I'm sitting here thinking to myself, "What the fuck?" We are lead to believe that the Greek people were foolish enough to simply taxed too little and let the bills pile up and now its payback time. But what it looks like to me is that they were foolish in not taxing tourism to the hilt and let that pay for the services the people of that beautiful land get from their Government. But instead the people, and remember these are not rich people, taxed theselves rather than those who come to their country to bask in the luxury and beauty that rightfully belongs to the Greek people. It also looks to me like the forced sellout of state property and industry is just an assault by the vultures of capitalism eating the flesh of a mildly socialist society; they were never going to let this experiment in rational Government ownership of essential services, like the state electric company, succeed.

And that's how I see it. I see the deep money interests of the world slapping down a little socialist experiment and punishing the people who participated in it for the audacity to try.

By your comments on deep money interests, I assume you are advocating that Greece default on its loans (as opposed to paying them back by cutting services and raising taxes).

Just keep in mind that defaulting on these loans doesn't really get to where you want to go. Defaulting means that Greece will be locked out of the world capital markets for years if not more. That by definition results in a cut to social services (or a rise in taxes) of approximately 13% of GDP.

but I did hint that the taxes were not being applied to the right base.

even if they taxed everything that moved that would still not nearly be enough (with the current currency).

They are really between a rock and hard place. They need to make massive cuts and tax increases to get bailed out. But these cuts/tax increases will lower GDP (and therefore tax revenue) further, which means it might not even help. The only solutions that might actually help (in addition to cuts/taxes) are either general Euro inflation, or Greece leaving the Euro and devaluing its currency (making it more competitive in world trade).

And don't report it. The Greek government was trying to get people to ask for receipts so that people would have to report income but it is not something they are used to.

'movers and shakers'.

Thanks for the info, by the way.

It's merely the zombie banks and bailed out corporations attacking Greece.

"Now comes concrete proof of this conspiracy in the form of a Feb. 8 "idea dinner," held at the Manhattan townhouse of Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co, a boutique investment bank. Among those present were SAC Capital Advisors, David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital (a veteran of the fatal assault on Lehman Brothers in the late summer of 2008), Donald Morgan of Brigade Capital, and, most tellingly, Soros Fund Management. The consensus that emerged that night over the filet mignon was that Greek government bonds were the weak flank of the euro, and that once a Greek debt crisis had been detonated, all outcomes would be bad for the euro. The assembled predators agreed that Greece was the first domino in Europe. Donald Morgan was adamant that the Greek contagion could soon infect all sovereign debt in the world, including national, state, municipal and all other forms of government debt. This would mean California, the UK, and the US itself, among many others. The details of this at dinner were revealed in the headline story of the Wall Street Journal on Friday, February 26, 2010. (See article at
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424052748703795004575087741848074392.html"

And here is what Greece should do:

"Greece does not need an austerity program, as the Greek labor movement has eloquently argued in the course of their successful and admirable general strike last week. Greece does not need a bailout from Germany, the sinister International Monetary Fund, or from anyone else. Least of all does Greece need to accept the advice of Austrian school or Chicago schools charlatans who recommend the catharsis of a deflationary crash that would destroy an entire generation through unemployment, poverty, and despair. Greece needs to defend itself with a 1% Tobin tax on all derivatives and other financial transactions. Greece should take the lead in outlawing credit default swaps, which amount to issuing insurance without meeting the capital requirements of being an insurance company. Greece needs to enforce EU and national antitrust laws."

US citizens were discouraged from going to the Athens Olympics because of the threat of terrorism, played up by the Bushies. There was a LOT in the papers about how unsafe Greece supposedly was. Even though there were no terror attacks there at the time and the crime rate in Greece remains far lower than that of the US.

Greece is no longer a "cheap" place to visit, now that the US dollar is so much weaker.

And on top of that, people are just not traveling so much because of the economic crisis.

It has little to do with Greece as a country, the banks are weak with the toxic assets from their first fuck-up, soverign debt crisis would kill them.

For all the talk of ending Too big to fail, the President has just intervened with Merkel to save their asses a third time.

At the end of the day, the banks conspired with corrupt Greek politicians to create this problem and now are unwilling to eat their lunch in the form of reduced principle payments for creating a disaster in this country.

They will try to force as much pain on the Greek populace as possible, I hope the Greek populace roast them on spits, both the politicans and the bankers.

That is what I have read.

away with paying little or no taxes while the poor working classes shoulder the burden both in taxes and in the cutting down of needed social programs. Since the elites run those governments, corruption and the lining of their pockets is how they govern with little regard to the ordinary citizen. Greece, like California, has plenty of opportunities to tax where the money is, but they don't have the will because of their corrupt politicians just like in our state of California, which is still a very important economy in the world but can't seem to solve it's budget problems although the money is there.