Greek Government Abruptly Shuts Down State Broadcaster

An anonymous reader writes "The Greek government shut down broadcasting of all TV and radio channels operated by the state-owned broadcaster ERT at midnight local time, with police ejecting journalists and other employees occupying the building. The above link is a prominent Greek economics professor's (and Valve's in-house economist) analysis of the political motivations for the move."

Comments

How silly.

[centipedes.in.my.vag]

Even with his last words on the subject Yanis Varoufakis' blog worships the statist centralism of ERT that was exploited, used as a propaganda machine, and silenced critics. What would it take to break his delusions and help him realize that the entire infrastructure was beyond saving? Way to hop on the Murdoch-hate bandwagon, Yanis.

Call be cynical, but maybe a little capitalism would have been good in Greece. You know, for the ol' economy.

Re:How silly.

[centipedes.in.my.vag]

Disagreeing with a mod is trolling. Ha.

Re: How silly.

[Eunuchswear]

You mean, covering shortages by printing money can possibly have a positive effect? That's news to me.

John Maynard Keynes? Heard of him?

The EU works hard to help Greece here, and to stop the politicos' attempts to give handouts right during a collapse (like your average CEO, all they think about is short-term gains).

In the long run we're all dead.

If you're facing an incoming bankruptcy, the solution is not to go on another spending spree.

This is why the reductions spending have produced such a massive improvement in the Greek economy.

Even the fucking IMF have admitted they were wrong!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jun/05/imf-underestimated-damage-austerity-would-do-to-greece

We find that, in advanced economies, stronger planned fiscal consolidation has been associated with lower growth than expected, with the relation being particularly strong, both statistically and economically, early in the crisis. A natural interpretation is that fiscal multipliers were substantially higher than implicitly assumed by forecasters.

It turns out that cutting 1 euro of government spending shrinks the economy by 1.7 euros, not the 0,5 euros they thought.

Re:Full story at, err, 11?

[ScentCone]

Yes, because when you shrink your economy, everybody pays less taxes.

No, a lot of the people already paying little or no income tax (like roughly half of the people in the US) will continue to pay little or no income taxes, while the minority of the people who pay essentially all of the taxes are told to pay even more, and hated for being the people who do so.

Re:Whisky Tango Foxtrot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?!

I can't stand luddites like you who hate on things and don't explain why.

Perhaps if you spoke up you might realise that alot of what they do is give people what they want to see, if they don't know what you want, who's falut is that?

For me the BBC is worth it purely for it's Nature programs (which other freely broadcast channel does this?) alone, not to mention it's efforts in regards to protecting and informing the consumer as to their rights... or hosting neutral political debate... DR WHO! (get off /. now if you don't get that)... childrens programing that isn't based around selling the latest toys... the proms... wimbledon... international footbal... news, weather... ALL FOR SMEGGING FREE AND AVAILABLE ONLINE AT NO EXTRA COST*! (which reminds me, Red Dwarf)

Is there a lot of dross too, yep, but you can look away you know.

*yes it is free. the licence fee is applicable for purely owning a TV, that money goes to government and then they assign it to the BBC, that is the limit of the state involvement and you would need a license if you watch the BBC or not. Is that a hack, maybe, but that's the way it is.

Re:who cares?

[Grishnakh]

You must live in the USA, like me. 10 years ago, conservatives and liberals were definitely two different things. But now with Obama duplicating all of Bush's policies and all the liberals supporting him, "liberal" and "conservative" are basically the same thing.

Now watch a bunch of liberals come out of the woodwork to call me names or act as Obama apologists.