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Greece Is Running Out of Money, Cannot Make June IMF Repayment
jones_supa writes: Greece, the country which has been in extreme financial trouble and high debt for years, cannot make debt repayments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) next month, unless it achieves a deal with creditors. 'The four installments for the IMF in June are €1.6 billion ($1.8 billion). This money will not be given and is not there to be given,' Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis told Greek Mega TV's weekend show. Shut out of bond markets and with bailout aid locked, cash-strapped Athens has been scraping state coffers to meet debt obligations and to pay wages and pensions. With its future as a member of the 19-nation eurozone potentially at stake, a second government minister accused its international lenders of subjecting it to slow and calculated torture.
Here's the link to the "Cabal" story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05...
Remember, it's the shareholders that pay these fines. And no one in the bank corporation is held accountable.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You seem to know a lot about Greece. Have you been there or is it all just internet lore?
I have to live there and I can tell you we are neither lazy nor entitled. Those of us that can actually find a job end up working for scraps. Wages for people with degrees and postgrad studies are often less than what you find for unskilled labour in other "developed" parts of Europe.
Employment is always precarious so people do not dare even claim overtime hours often in fear of losing their jobs.
Even the public sector, which has always been considered the domain of the "privileged" among greek salaried employees has for years been shrunk to sensible size.
And retirement? I don't expect to be able to retire before 70 the way things are going, and even then, it will be for pocket money, a fraction of what I will have paid in welfare taxes. Not to mention taxes for (a practically inexistent by now) health service.
Yes, for years things have been different. That was in the 80's and 90's mostly. You could say we "deserve" our fate but you wouldn't be so quick to say it if it were you picking up the bill for stuff that was certainly not your fault.
Personally I wish they would let us out of the euro. I have no illusions and understand it will be a long and hard period (perhaps even 10 years) of adaptation, during which living standards will drop even further, but what is going on right now is just pointless. In the long run, we just cannot go on like this
You don't know anything. Germany has benefited tremendously from the Euro. Having the same currency as Greece has allowed German exports to remain disproportionately cheap, and Greece's exports disproportionately expensive. Greece has actually had a major account surplus for the last few years, but it's all bring drained into paying off impossible debts. They cut into their programs to pay off debt, which leads to more unemployment, which lowers government revenue, which forces more cuts, and on and on.
The debt grew under Reagan. It was 907B in 1980 and 2600B in 1988. Even as a percent of GDP, that's an increase
Source: https://www.treasurydirect.gov...
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Maybe if the Greeks paid their taxes this would not have happened. Greece has a 32% rate of self-employed residents, the highest in the EU, and it is mostly these people that refuse to pay for the society in which they benefit. The current government is not helping matters, their extreme left ideology refuses to accept reality. Germany cannot keep on bailing them out. The nation is on a collision course and there is nothing any country can do if they are not willing to accept their own responsibility.
My grandparents were fallout of WW I - They left the Ukrainian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and came to the USA. I never met them, since they died young, working in shitty jobs like rubber factories (cancer) in Detroit.
Fast-forward... since I never met the "folks from the old country" and only knew my mom and a step father who raised me as American, with no particular culture, other than American, I don't have any animosity towards past aggressors, I am happy with my lot in life.
My take-away, as trite as it may seem, is "what you don't know can't hurt you", and if you forget your (possibly shitty) past and just go forward you will be fine.
If you think you are owed something from those who went before you, you are in for a big disappointment, since those people are dead, and those who are here today only want to know "what have you done for me lately".
Do something and stop whining.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I dislike current populist Greek government (and live in Germany), but there is some injustice in what was done to Greece in my opinion.
Greece f*cked up big time by spending more than earning, there is no question about that.
The problem is, what happened afterwards.
And that was new loans AT INSANE RATES.
Last time I've checked check dept per citizen numbers, Greek was roughly on the level of Germany.
But interest rates they are paying (and that mostly to German banks), oh my goodness:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
So there IS a combination of incompetent reckless government and unfair interest rates. (yeah, if you don't want the money, don't take it, yadayada, I know)
Also see (Charges of hypcrisy (Germany))
You cannot make generalizations based on a number. Self-employment currently in Greece means women making hand-made jewellery instead of a job on what they studied, people working without insurance at random jobs ad hoc and doing any work that can find, meaning living with 200 euros per month and free lancers trying constantly to pay their taxes to the point they give up their current jobs. The society in which they benefit provides poor public health with even basic medicine supplies missing, people loosing their homes to banks, public sector stripped down to essentials and a state that lies every minute. Clearly you have no idea about greek people, just reciting something you read and making shallow deductions from it usually lead you to false stereotype-infested opinions
If someone tells you he knows the whole truth with certainty, the only certainty is that he is a liar
Please distinguish between membership of the EU and of the Eurozone. Membership of the EU grants access to the internal market ("common market" of old) and is very valuable for all European nations. Membership of the Eurozone is problematic for all the reasons you cite. States in the EU and outside the Eurozone, like the UK, do well from it. Unfortunately, Greece leaving the Eurozone might get them slung out of the EU as well.
Lol. How the hell do you equate anti-austerity with communism? Unless all leftist(?) ideologies are communism for you.
Plus, we don't consider the elected government communistic nor did we turn to communistic ideas.
Also where did you see that austerity started to work? Only one thing was clear with current austerity measures: It leads to even more austerirty measures and economic decline. We don't see anything beneficial from it for the last ~4 years.
Come live with 400 euros per month and then tell me if you have voted for the old regime that governed the country since ~1980 and put us in this shitstorm. At least the current government is fresh and doesn't have ties(I hope) with the old oligarchy. This is our last hope to ever reform properly. The old regime, 2 parties interchanged in power for more than 40 years, clearly cannot be trusted to fight their buddies(domestic oligarchy).
I won't write more since this will be buried anyway and no one will read it.
PS: When the citizens feel desperate they either vote for parties like Syriza(current goverment) which is leftist but not too much, or go and vote fascits/neonazis like "Xrysi Aygi"(these fuckers rose to 10+% the last 4 years). Thank god my fellow citizens were smart enough to not turn to the braindead idiots of Xrysi Aygi.