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Greece Rejects EU Terms
New submitter Thammuz writes: With almost all ballots counted, Greeks voted overwhelmingly "No" on Sunday in a bailout referendum, defying warnings from the EU that rejecting new austerity terms would set their country on a path out of the euro. Figures published by the interior ministry showed nearly 62% of those whose ballots had been counted voting "No", against 38% voting "Yes". "Today we celebrate the victory of democracy, but tomorrow all together we continue and complete a national effort for exiting this crisis," Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a televised address.
One size doesn't fit all, so it should come as no surprise that a currency made for industrial nations doesn't work so well for a tourist economy.
Umm... that wasn't what this referendum was about. The Greeks will never accept an exit from the Euro. Even though they thoroughly deserve to be booted out.
Translation: My government and my country's banks exhibited an utter lack of fiduciary responsibility. Please help me continue to deny their responsibility.
You're right in general, but regarding the remark about gettings things for "free"; can we switch the generic "Greeks" to "Greek politicians"? Because us Greeks in general have gotten jack shit for free, if anything, we've been paying for everything twice.
Free health care: passing doctors money under the table to get them to work on you.
Free education: Having to spend tons of money and time for private tutoring.
(In both cases, with a crumbling infrastructure.)
Democracy: Pretty much the same stacked 2 party system as any other nation, with extra corruption sprinkled on. I'm talking about major parties, not nutty ones with inconsiderable amounts of supporters. The currently governing party did shake things up though, broke the 2 previous major parties' taking turns, not sure if that is for better or worse, we'll found out in a few days.
And it's not like we've had it easy on taxes either, middle class families having their income taxed in half and paying out of pocket for all the things those taxes should have bee going to in the first place.
Thanks for the translation, it was all Greek to me!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Finally you can stop robbing the eurozone with "loans" that you never planned to repay. (And let's stop this "The loans are impossible to repay" nonsense - Greece's loans are less than the total value of its state assets. Now obviously nobody in Greece wants to sell off their assets - just to pick one category, a military without any hardware isn't much of a military. But the concept that Greece can't pay back its loans is a lie.)
Now, Greece "can't" without selling off extensive assets that nobody would realistically expect them to ever consent to selling... but the only reason for that is because Greece's worker productivity is so terrible and tax collection so pathetically low. Mind you, it's not the fault of Greek workers that productivity levels are low - you work more hours per week than most of Europe (including Germany). But you make a lot less with those hours. You have a highly inefficient economy, and the extensive tax fraud just makes it worse - businesses have disincentive to grow (and thus gain better economies of scale) because it makes it harder to avoid paying taxes. And your military is a financial black hole. Even if everyone just wrote off 100% your debt tomorrow, if you kept trying to live like the rest of Europe (let alone better, like you try to do in a number of respects), you'd be back in the hole in short order.
Anyway, enjoy having your money (both in the banks, and your salaries) devalued to a small fraction of its former value while the cost of all of your imports shoots up, without a corresponding export boost because you hardly export anything compared to the size of your economy - also, a non-Eurozone economy in chaos isn't exactly a good recipe for a healthy European tourism sector, so don't expect the tourism boost from a devalued currency that you may be envisioning. Just don't think that people are sad to see you go - they're just mad for having dumped so much money into your economy when it was obvious that you planned to weasel your way out of ever paying it back.
(Note: the Troika isn't faultless either. In exchange for loans, rather than focusing on trying to improve the raw numbers with austerity, they should have been focused 100% on trying to force you to fix your structural problems so you can be competitive enough to stay in Europe. They tried to tackle the root problem in a totally counterproductive way and ended up earning a lot of hate for that.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Oh cry me a river. Our country was completely ravaged in both those wars (ever heard of the fields of Flanders or the battle of the Bulge?) and we're not crying about war reparations. Why? Because it is over. I was not alive then, you were not alive then, probably your parents weren't even alive then. World War II's impact on your economy is astonishingly small compared to all that has happened since.
You have countries in Eastern Europe with lower standards of living than you loaning you money out of solidarity. That you refuse to pay us back, and try to wave your moral obligations away by trying to appropriate the suffering of people long dead is disgusting.
just to pick one category, a military without any hardware isn't much of a military. But the concept that Greece can't pay back its loans is a lie.)
Greece can't pay back its loans and basically remain Greece. You never give an order which you know will not be followed. And you should know ahead of time whether your orders will or will not be followed.
(Note: the Troika isn't faultless either. In exchange for loans, rather than focusing on trying to improve the raw numbers with austerity, they should have been focused 100% on trying to force you to fix your structural problems so you can be competitive enough to stay in Europe. They tried to tackle the root problem in a totally counterproductive way and ended up earning a lot of hate for that.
Notably, austerity tends to shut down the economy, which will only lead to further financial insolvency.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Explain why a structural reform of the economy cannot be performed in parallel with austerity. Greece owe 300 billion euros to other european countries and there was 390 billion euros on the table to sustain Greece until 2020. That's the deal they refused. Explain us how Greece will now find someone willing to lend them more money at better conditions than the dead deal? How this referendum result has given Greek govt a better position to negociate with its partners?
Achille Talon
Hop!
Democracy is not a failure, don't be silly. There are lots of democratic countries that have managed to get a grip on public spending. Most obviously, Germany. Less obviously, the UK just went through an election where the party promising more austerity won a clear victory. California went through a massive crisis where they took their state to the brink due to referendums allowing the creation of unfunded mandates, but last I heard they had learned their lesson and got that problem under control. And so on, and so on.
What's more, it's not like dictatorships are all paragons of budgetary discipline. Far from it.
So whilst undoubtably there will be many further spending crises in advanced nations, democracy is not the problem - it just means a society has to learn to control their borrowing impulses as a group.
"Drop the hammer on them."
That's the easy part. The hard part is dealing with what happens after the hammer has been dropped.
Someone once said that the definition of a bad policy is one that leads to a place where you have nothing but bad options. I believe everyone (not just the Greeks) thought back in 2000 it woudl be good policy to bring Greece into the Eurozone. But now we've now reached the point where otherwise rational people are talking about "dropping the hammer", as if having an incipient failed state in Europe is a small price to pay for 600 euro in your pocket. The frustration is understandable, but the the satisfaction of dropping the hammer on Greece would be short-lived -- possibly on the order of weeks depending on the scale of financial disruption.
The unhappy truth is that bad policy choices fifteen years ago means all the options available today lead to long-lived, complicated, and expensive consequences.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But it was all good-and-well when Greece, amongst 20 other nations, forgave Germany a massive swathe of her crushing debts following World War 2 [news.com.au]
The alternative was to set up the exact same conditions in Germany that lead to the rise of the Nazis. The German people are an industrial people. Much like the Americans, the harder you try to keep them down, the stronger they become. Had the Allies not saddled Germany with crushing debts post WWI (a war which Germany did not start mind you), there could have been no rise to power of the Nazi party, and would probably not have been a second world war.
Germany’s debts were unjustly forced upon them as a result of loosing a war for which they had only marginally more responsibility than any other nation. Greeces debts are the result of internal mismanagement. In spite of that, the other nations of Europe including Germany had made concerted attempts to help Greece. Like a concerned parent however, a condition of the assistance was / is demonstrating fiscal responsibility by not wasting the money. This was especially important given Greece's well earned reputation for corruption. The European nations had absolutely no desire to line the pockets of the corrupt in an attempt to help the Greek people. Greece promised a lot of things, but failed to deliver, and is being petulant about it to boot. Time for some tough love. Cut them off, and post signs at the borders: Let that be a lesson to you.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
It doesn't help that Greece was forced into an austerity plan in their last bailout. Essentially that kicked off a death spiral. Austerity has already been well discredited (see here, here, and here. Original paper here) yet it keeps being foisted off on citizens everywhere.
I'm not suggesting that Greece should spend money like a drunken sailor on leave, but following a faith based economic theory even after it has been disproven (even to the satisfaction of the writers of the original paper) is not the answer.
The population of Germany was about 10 times that of Greece. The typical German got about 40% of the typical Greek.
And we Americans financed the whole thing. You're welcome.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Central banks are not funded by taxpayers. The IMF for example was funded by the US in a budget-neutral manner, as an exchange of assets. Translation: the IMF's money is created out of thin air. That the IMF won't give Greece any of their created money is shameful, sociopathic, criminal, and utterly unnecessary.
That is just plain asinine. Money doesn't come from nothing. Even wall street isn't that far out of touch with reality. If there is value there, it came from something. Consequently it is funded by something. Even if the money was printed and then given to the IMF, the moment the money was printed, the value it has came from devaluing all of the other money in circulation. In the case of the IMF, it is funded by the countries that are its members
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Solidarity. Yes. I love and up your comment. I live in Poland which by Greek standards is kind of poor. I see poor people everyday, I also face hard working people daily. The ones which build up the economy on which Greece can now bargain for details - please also think about us who lend you the money. We are a community.
Dude, you just don't get it do you? You don't get to appropriate the glory or suffering of your (supposed, claimed) ancestors and assign blame to the (supposed) descendants of another group of people that wronged your (supposed, claimed) ancestors. That world view has a name: nationalism. It is completely and utterly discredited (largely by the Nazis in the second war) as an effective paradigm within which to govern the world. It is furthermore pretty well discredited by anthropologists, historians and geneticists.
If you insist on taking a nationalistic world view that prizes historic myths over reality, please feel free to pay the Anatolians eleventy gazillion gold coins in reparations for the sack of Troy. Since there are a bunch of Turks living in Germany today, you can send their share directly to the German government. I am sure that in the name of bureaucratic efficiency, the Germans would be happy to accept payment in the form of you never talking about the WW2 thing again. Meanwhile I am Belgian and don't really care about your beef with the Germans.
Now, we are back where we began. I am Belgian and I loaned you money out of solidarity. You are not going to pay it back even though you could if you chose to. That is disgusting and I hope my government does everything it can to make a pariah out of you.
If you lie to get a mortgage [join the Euro-zone], it's your own fault when things go wrong. What if the bank knows that you are lying? It was common knowledge that the figures Greece used to justify joining the Euro-zone were not realistic. Those bureaucrats must have known. Who is at fault now?
The real problem here is not Greece, but the precedent that it sets. There are much larger economies in the Euro-zone that may need a bail-out in the future.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The fundamental problem here is that Greek pay (in Euros) is disproportionately high compared to their productivity vs other Eurozone nations'. "Austerity" is simply reducing wages to bring that wages-to-productivity ratio back in line with the EU norm. The reforms the EU was asking for addressed the other half of this ratio - increasing average Greek productivity. The growing Greek debt is created by this imbalance - people were being paid more Euros than they were producing via their labor. Greece was covering up this imbalance by borrowing, which is totally the wrong reason to borrow money. You borrow it to purchase things which will help increase your productivity so that you will no longer be running a deficit. You don't borrow it to continue to operate in arrears.
By rejecting austerity and failing to implement reforms, you don't leave many choices. The simplest is to boot Greece off the Euro. Then they can do whatever the hell they want with their economy, pensions, and pay, and it will automatically balance itself out via the Drachma falling in value vs. the Euro. You can either take a 30% pay cut in Euros, or you can switch to the Drachma and the Drachma declines in value 30% vs. the Euro. The end result is the same - "austerity". (Ideally Greece would increase their average productivity by 30% - then wages wouldn't have to drop. But they seem hell bent on refusing to do anything the EU suggests that could improve productivity.)
I'm not from Macedonia, although I know people there. Both of your sides need to read up on your history. Macedon was located between the traditional Greek city-states and the Thracian tribes (and others like the Illyrians), and had a culture and language closer to that of the Greeks but with strong Thracian and Illyrian influence (for example, they used both Greek, Thracian, and Illyrian names). The ancient Macedonians sought recognition as "Greek" from their southern neighbors, as Greece was the heart of wealth and culture; by contrast, the ancient Greeks debated heavily among themselves whether Macedonians were actually Greeks or not and many were not willing to accept them. The issue was only settled they were conquered by Philip (obviously not wanting to say that they had been conquered by barbarians ;) ) The Macedonian leaders' habits of adopting the cultures of the countries that they conquered made it a relatively moot point anyway. Macedon was near present day Thessalonica. The country of Macedonia's claim to the history of Philip and Alexander is pretty weak; they did not extend their empire particularly far up the Vardar / Axios (at the time, Illyria), and where they did they stayed near the river. However, future rulers of Macedonia did. By the time of the Roman conquest, what was Macedonia had become modern Macedonia plus modern Albania and the northern half of Greece. This become the Roman province of Macedonia, which existed for hundreds of years. Classical Greece remained its own separate entity under Roman control, Achaia.
Let's repeat: Modern Macedonia was the center of the Roman province of Macedonia for hundreds of years. Yes, they have a right to the name.
During the Byzantine times, a series of waves of Slavic invaders (the most powerful being a later wave, the Bulgars) moved into the area, overrunning not just today's Macedonia, but the entire interior of Greece. Their control of these areas lasted hundreds of years and they interbred with the local populations. Greek speakers retained control of the coasts, and eventually re-expanded back into the interior; the populations there were subsequently re-Helenized.
The area that is modern day Macedonia was subsequently traded off between one empire and the next all the way up to the modern period. Greece, after gaining its independence from the Ottomans (again, initially only in the southern portion of of what is modern Greece - the part that was traditional, pre-Macedonian-era Greece), progressively took over Ottoman lands to the north and northeast in the 1800s, expanding into the area formerly occupied by the city-state of Macedon, and even the areas once occupied by the Thracians. These areas were steadily Helenized, especially in the 1920s with the influx of large numbers of Anatolian Greek refugees - 270 thousand in Thessaloniki alone.
The basic summary of it is: there are no ancient Macedonians anymore, and nobody has a "pure" claim on the name. But both sides have ancient Macedonian "breeding". Neither speak the ancient Macedonian language (even the ancient Macedonians stopped speaking their language by the 3th century BC), although Greek is certainly closer. Both Greek Macedonia and the Republic of Macedonia are located in the heart of areas called Macedonia for centuries - Greek Macedonia being the heart of the original Macedonian empire, and the Republic of Macedonia being the heart of the later kingdom and the Roman province of Macedonia. So yes, you have every right to criticize the Republic of Macedonia's cooption of Alexander and Philip. But you're in the wrong when you try to act like they have no claim to the name.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Germany will return to the DM, which all the sensible people in Europe will shift their savings and investments to, at which point the "new drachma", as the euro will be called then, won't be worth the paper it's printed on.
The vast majority of German exports are to Europe, and the majority of those to the Eurozone.
If Germany had a separate currency, it would appreciate relative to the rest of Europe. That would result in German exports being effectively becoming much more expensive. Similarly, with a drop in the value of the currencies (or joint currency) of the PIIGS countries, their own exports would suddenly become much more competitive and their wages much lower (without the pain of internal deflation).
That is the whole freakin' point of floating currencies. It allows effective inflation/deflation without internal real inflation/deflation, allowing the system to respond much more fluidly and rapidly. For example, German sovereign debts would have appreciated in cost (relative to other currencies), while Greek sovereign debts would depreciated sharply (relative to other currencies).
Switching to the Euro froze that, pushing all revaluations back internally, but the Eurozone failed to implement the internal corrective mechanisms that nations use (Federalised revenue and payment systems to compensate for regional downturns.)
Essentially, Germany has been gaining a huge advantage from the Euro. It prevents them pricing themselves out of the European markets via currency appreciation, while simultaneously not having to pay for failed regions within Europe. All the advantages of Euro-Federalisation with none of the costs to Germany that true Federalised economies like the US have.
Even better, Germans can play this bullshit "holier than thou" game when the system finally collapses in on itself.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
All EU citizens should demand a referendum asking if the taxpayers should pay this 'debt' created by derivatives and fraudulent market trading, or tell the bankers to write it off, suck it up, and never again be allowed to put depositor funds at risk on this commodities shell game ever again. And I have no trouble using some form of asset forfeiture against them to recover some of the stolen funds.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No one forced Greece to accept the IMF and EU bailout. Greece could have restructured its debt before its bailout, but decided against it. Somehow I am missing how the IMF was cruel for offering loans to Greece and then expecting to eventually get the money paid back.
that's what the greek people expected to happen. just printing more money.
NOW essentially what the goverment can do is to tax all money that is being held in greek accounts, almost the same as just printing new money.
they can't just print more money since they're in the euro, but the people still expect (and syriza promised to !) to pay money as usual. they expect that the government pays out more money than it has because that's "democratic".
also a confusing ballot is democratic according to syriza.. with an unlawlully short campaign time to boot. not that it matters, the cash is going to run out anyways. it's like the prime minister and finance minister either deliberately try to run the country into a crisis or they don't have even cursory knowledge of how things work.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
A big one is just that the US controls both its currency and its monetary policy (meaning taxing and spending). That manes that it can take the steps it feels necessary to deal with loan repayments, such as increased inflation and/or a weaker currency. It doesn't have to convince other countries of it, it runs the currency.
An even bigger one at this point is that the dollar is the world's reserve currency. Things are settled in dollars on the international stage, meaning that the US can't have a current account crisis. It makes the dollars, things are paid for in dollars, so it can make more dollars to pay for things. It is unique in that situation. While it could change, that is how it stands.
In fact, that is part of the reason the US is able to borrow so much, and in some ways needs to. People and nations want to put their money in what they see as a safe reserve, and the dollar is one they seek. To make that possible, the US has to issue debt instruments. They have to be able to buy US dollars.
Yet another difference is that the US has high tax compliance. Most people in the US pay their taxes. There are those that cheat or outright evade, but they are the minority. That, combined with a generally quite low tax burden (compared to most first world nations the US has very low taxes), means that raising taxes in the US is a very valid strategy. People won't be happy, but they'll pay. Greece has real issues with tax avoidance which makes tax increases problematic.
Still another difference is in what the economy produces. Despite what you may have heard on whiny online sites, the US makes a lot of stuff. It is the #2 producer of durable goods after China, and only slightly. It builds lots of things that others in the world want. A good example would be microprocessors. Both Intel and AMD are US companies, and Intel fabs most of their newest CPUs in the US. The chips that run most computers in the world come from the US. Makes the economic situation rather different than a place that relies heavily on tourism.
Finally there's the issue of who owns the debt. Most of the US's debt, about 65%, is owned by the US itself. Of that a large part is intragovernmental holdings, and then debt held by the federal reserve. Of the nations that do hold US foreign debt the two largest, Japan and China, do so for strategic reasons to keep their currency cheap compared to the dollar and thus have a strategic interest in keeping that debt. Greece on the other hand, owes most of its debt to other countries.
It is far to simplistic to look and say "Oh this is all the same!" Public debt is actually a pretty complex issue.
Let's continue whoever57's analogy.
Your family have lived in a house for generations. A few years ago the house needed a bunch of work adding rooms and generally upgrading it to fit your new status as members of the respectable middle class. You didn't have the cash but you had the status and rates were cheap, so you took out a bank loan to cover it. As that loan came due, your husband lost his high paying job and had to take a cut.
So you begged with the banks and eventually they agreed to lend you more money, but at a higher interest rate. Paying more interest on less money is tough, the house continues to need work to keep it in good repair and you continued to not quite make ends meet. You go to the banks and beg for more money so you can keep paying the interest and repairs but the banks say no, they say you need to live within your means.
You promise to do that, and you quickly 'adjust' your finances to show how it's all going to work out. The bank sees through the farce immediately but he's a greedy fellow and with you agreeing to add 200 more basis points onto the rate, it's gotta be good for him. If you default, your cousin will probably cover it anyway so it isn't much risk.
You keep struggling, and you have to beg the banks for money every month. This starts to annoy and worry the banker, so he starts taking an increasing interest in your life. Don't do a good repair here, just leave the window broken... Don't send your kids off to uni, educate them at the local community college. These things save a little cash, but they also lead to you having to spend a whole lot more time looking after the house instead of making money. Even worse, your kids having a lower level of education means they can't get such a high paying job to help out which is a real problem since your grandparents have now retired and are moving back in.
You get desperate and crawl to the bank begging for more and more. They look over the situation and say, well, maybe, but you have to cancel all expenditure. House repairs, who needs them? Further education, completely abolished!
You hold a family conference. What to do? Give in to what the bank wants and destroy your family's future? Or default and have the bank potentially take possession of your family home. Put like that, it isn't such a hard call, you tell the bank to f. off and wait too see what will happen.
Who's at fault? You for living beyond your means? Yep. You for lying to the bank? Yep. The bank for accepting such an obvious lie? Yep. The bank for loaning money to someone that couldn't possibly pay it back? Yep. The bank for insisting on austerity measures that will have a negative long term fiscal impact, yep.
Does that help?
The pensions and benefits thing is just a red herring that certain media loves to repeat. The reality is that Greeks who can't find a job, which is about a quarter of them, are extremely poor and the benefits amount to very little. Even those in work are low wages, part time hours and little hope that things will improve if they continue down the road they are on.
Their position is reasonable. Some of them voted for the irresponsible policies, but many of them, particularly the young, did not. Okay, the problem must be dealt with, but austerity is not the only way. Look at what Obama did in the US, he stimulated the economy with massive spending and is paying it off now things have recovered. Greece wants to fix its economy and get back on the road to recovery before settling its debts, so that ordinary people don't suffer unbearably.
If you want to vote "no" on your credit card bill go ahead, just declare yourself bankrupt. At some point that is a better option than trying to continue servicing your debt. No-one wants that, least of all the creditors, so why push you to that point if they can agree better terms and eventually get their money back?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
As a Greek, I am stunned, and disappointed, by the level of criticism (and hate!) in slashdot. What I clearly see is that fellow Europeans are being told huge LIES about the Greek crisis, and what this referendum means. I'll try to put things in perspective:
1. The money fellow European governments are giving us, are not free; They are loans, that we happily repay, even if the interest rate is a highway robbery compared to what they are paying.
2. Nobody said about "writing off the debt". What we ask is for the due date to go further in the future and the interest rate to be lower.
3. If the rest of the European governments cared at all to be repaid, then they wouldn't insist on "reforms" which have been 100% proven wrong, such as tax increases and pension/wage cuts. These are the stuff we object to. Many of the other important reforms (early pensions, unemployment benefits) are already imposed for quite some time now. I could write a book about how increasing taxes can't increase a country's GDP but guess what, there are even now so many books that prove this.
4. Especially to my Belgian friends: The 2 bailouts of Greece helped repay loans given by private sector banks. In effect, we traded private sector loans with state loans. In other words, you people lended us money so that your banks didn't lose their money. Now we owe you money (instead of your private banks) AND you think that this was a mistake. We do too, so we agree on this.
5. Greece doesn't need more money to "keep spending above its limit". We've had a more or less balanced budget for the last couple of years, apart from the loan interest payments. So we need you to lend us money so we can repay the loans you already gave us. Is this more reasonable than what we're asking? (To postpone the pay off date and decrease interest rate)
6. You are angry because we tricked our selves into the eurozone. You are right. We are angry too that you tricked us into the eurozone. There was nothing good for us there, no reason at all to be part of it, yet our politicians agreed with your politicians that we need to be part of it, no matter what. And they, all together, agreed to put Greece into the Eurozone, what a huge mistake that was and oh how many lies were told so we believed them (you did too). They made a ton of money out of it. Then they made a ton of money from the debt crisis itself. Meanwhile, half the Europe suffers from austerity (with Greece being the most hardly hit country, but Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus got a great feeling of what austerity means) and the other half is being taught that "lazy Greeks are asking to be given for more money).
Friends, stop hating each other, we're passed beyond this. The people is suffering, not only in Greece, but in other nations too. A Polish fried says "you should see my country", and some other said "we're poorer than you". And why is this? Who is benefiting? Does this mean that Poland et.al. have to double their taxes and cut their wages in half and pensions by 60%, destroy their healthcare and educational system, sell out everything that can be sold, just to become "richer"? Would anyone really suggest that? Then why is it a must-have for Greece? How on earth will this help repay the loans? Up until now, it has created a 27% unemployment and 99% misery.
So, please people, don't believe what your media say. You're not giving away money, we're not asking for free money. Greece has paid the price, and was punished hard, for decades of poor planning, bad habits and outrageous corruption. But it's time for other countries to stop hiding behind the propaganda and be realistic, just like we are now.