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Software Devs Leaving Greece For Good, Finance Minister Resigns
New submitter TheHawke writes with this story from ZDNet about the exodus of software developers from Greece. "In the last three years, almost 80 percent of my friends, mostly developers, left Greece," software developer Panagiotis Kefalidis told ZDNet. "When I left for North America, my mother was not happy, but... it is what it is." It's not just the software developers quitting either. The Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis also resigned. A portion of his resignation announcement reads: "Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today."
Fuck those guys.
Welcome to America, here's your W-2, here's your 1040.
Umm, I lived in Vancouver Canada for 10 years as a software developer and me and most of my software developer friends ALSO moved to the US (I currently work for Apple, most work for Google or other local companies). Greek developers may have an extra incentive to move, but they are hardly unique.
A developer working in Greece will pay taxes in Greece and spend most of his/her income in Greece.
A developer leaving Greece will not pay income tax in Greece and IF he/she sends back any money it is nothing compared to what he/she would earn in Greece. Furthermore Greece paid the developers education in the expectation it would be a wise investment in the future (education == long term investment).
Note, in case this developer is doing work for a foreign company, this adds to Greece export and the differences are even larger.
Sorry, the helping out relatives story is not in the interest of Greece.
that you just mashed together in order to have a "technology" aspect of this story and justify the publication on Slashot.
Anyway, the devs must leave because the tax they face on their revenue and insurance payments are very high compared to the US or other countries. Another reason why austerity has failed in Greece has put the economy in a death spiral.
If was living in Greece now, and had marketable skills, I would be leaving too.
If you can't even keep your banking sector from collapsing, what confidence should I have that you can run the rest of your economy.
And Greece isn't exactly known for being a software development powerhouse anyway. I'm not sure I'd leave for the USA tho, I'd probably head to germany or france, or maybe join an Israeli startup (depending on how much risk I was willing to take).
I think it's pretty clear Varoufakis was turfed by Tsipras because the only hope in hell Greece now has of negotiating a deal with the Troika and remaining in the Eurozone and even in the EU is not having that man by his side. The price of even talking about a new deal and further bailouts is Varoufakis's head, which has been delivered to Merkel on a silver platter. This referendum was completely about Tsipras's political survival, and having achieved that, Greek voters will now witness just how utterly irrelevant the referendum was.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
the percentages point to him.
"A developer working in Greece will pay taxes in Greece"
No he won't. That's why they're in this mess.
Unemployment is high in Greece. How about encouraging unemployed Greeks to move to Germany or France. Then they will have to pay the welfare, not the Greek government.
Sorry, the helping out relatives story is not in the interest of Greece.
Unless, of course, your wife loves the money you send back and doesn't want you to come home.
I had roommate's brother who came from the Philippines to do electronic assembly work in Silicon Valley. He hated the job but his wife didn't want him to come home. After a few years, he quit, returned home and got divorced. His wife spent every dime he ever made in the U.S.
"Adios, suckers!" the Finance Minister screamed as he hit his secret eject button.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
What are these denbts of which you speak? I have never heard of this word.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
be rich, or have a bitch. pick one.
This is the first time that I can think of that a population directly voted in the affirmative to collapse their economy.
I hope that's just me being cynical, but I think that's what's on the way.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The Greek financial disaster came from refusal to pay taxes and constant reduction in tax enforcement. This is the end result of modern "fiscal conservatism" and why a socialist government so easily swept into power there. The people bailing are people who suspect Greece is about to come knocking and demanding what was due a long time ago but they refused to pay.
If you can't beat visa and "offshore" workers, become one.
Table-ized A.I.
Thought the fact that they passed laws banning all ownership of firearms would get rid of the gun crime there? It worked in Australia.
Probably because most people don't really like that much change in their lives. They have friends and family, they are familiar with the setting, and they may have real property or other financial commitment that would be very costly to leave behind or abandon. It can be hard on people moving between cities within a region, let along picking up everything they can hold on to and changing whole countries where law, language, and acceptance will be entirely different.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you need more programmers, make it easier for US citizens to move and get work there. I'd gladly move there and work the same work I do now. Yeah it would mean more taxes and less of an "American" standard of living, but if I could swim in the the Mediterranean everyday, I'd go for it.
Umm. A developer working in Greece didn't pay taxes in Greece - same as everyone else everyone else in that failed state. NO-ONE Paid taxes and everyone enjoyed state handouts paid by national debt.
And no-one did anything for years despite it being obvious.
Greece is fucked. So is the Euro. With luck it will end the lunatic Euro-dream too.
Or you know, have the balls to not send the money?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's easier to be a lazy bum in the Philippines than put up with the U.S. relatives who look down on him for being a lazy bum and expect him to get a job.
This 'no' vote self-imposes the spending cut that Greece hates to see but the 'yes' vote also imposes the spending cut. There is no way to avoid a spending cut for Greece.
Austerity is a strange word, it sounds sterile, it has strange connotations. The correct term is spending cuts.
You cut spending if you cannot afford what you are spending on and when you cannot borrow to spend either and in case of chronic offenders the sooner the creditors realize what they are dealing with the healthier for everybody. It's healthier for the spender, who has to come to terms of the impossible situation he is in and it is healthier for the creditor, who will avoid losing even more money. It is healthier for the overall economy not to have welfare State system in the first place, to have people consume based on what they produce and not based on what can be taken from somebody else without any form of repayment.
Real money does not come into being by magic, it is not printed into existence, it is not magically created on a computer. Real money is the result of productive activity, where the word 'productive' really means that something is being produced that others are voluntarily willing to trade for in a way that is sustainable for both, the producer and the consumer.
The world has been playing with fire for the last 100 years with everybody being on fiat, it's been playing with a gigantic fire since the USD became uncontrollably inflationary due to it not being backed by any production (USA has been running half a Trillion USD trade deficit for over a decade now) nor by any money reserves (USD is not backed by gold, Nixon defaulted on the dollar back in 1971, and that's how these problems of inflationary policies and welfare state accelerated).
USA has its own version of what is Greece experiencing right now, that's what 'debt ceiling' is. Many believe that USA can simply print bonds and sell them and get out of jail free, however this only works as long as somebody buys those bonds and the bond market is the biggest bubble of all. USA will have its own currency crisis and bonds are currency promised into the future, so that will also collapse.
As Germany now refuses to just pour money into this bottomless pit called Greece, people will refuse to just pour money into the bottomless pit called USA and that will be even more interesting to observe.
Everybody who tells you 'austerity does not work' are full of it. Austerity means you are not spending money you didn't earn and especially where it concerns consumption rather than investment, and ALL things that people want government to spend on are consumption and not investment, so the important distinction is this: government must be austere, only government austerity can reallocate the scarce resources to people, who will rebuild the economy.
In the long run Greece is better off because of this spending cut, it will learn to live within its means and maybe to produce more and it will have a healthy economy. But like any alcoholic or drug addict apparently it will have to hit the rock bottom before it will reform.
You can't handle the truth.
be rich, or have a bitch. pick one.
Try not marrying someone whose goal in life is to be a housewife or otherwise taken care of. Marry someone that is accustomed to taking care of themselves. Trouble is, that trait is generally not initially obvious or especially sexy in of itself, and most people don't think with their brains when it comes to objectively evaluating those that they are sexually attracted to. I had plenty of girlfriends that ultimately weren't suitable to marriage before I found the right woman that knew how to manage her own life and its costs.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Not being an economist, is it feasible in an way to loan the money to the people of Greece and let the greek banks die?
Is Greece showing any real signs of wanting to address the problems of their economy and tax dodging?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
With luck it will end the lunatic Euro-dream too.
World War II called and wants its lunatic Euro-dream back.
Seriously! Have you made any attempt to understand this problem?
Former Greek governments borrowed the money, not bankers. Most of the money wasn't lent by bankers. The troika comprises the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank - mostly politicians, not bankers.
The current problem facing Greece is that no-one will lend them any more money. Even if 100% of their past debts were written off, current tax receipts are insufficient to meet current expenditure. Without more money from the people you mistakenly call bankers, austerity in Greece will become much worse.
Put the blame where it really lies. Not with bankers, but with dishonest politicians and a delusional electorate who always believed someone else would pay their bills.
Yes Socialism...
The banks are not the cause of the problem here, but the symptom of the sickness that's killing Greece (and countries in similar situations). Greek banks WILL fail. They don't have stacks of euros to stuff into the ATM's and the people of Greece are desperately trying to empty their accounts because everybody knows that if you leave your cash in the bank, you won't get it out. Everybody wants to be in hard currency, euros. The banks have run out.
Ask yourself, how did Greece get to this point? Basically it's because they failed to make the most recent payment on their national debt. There isn't enough euros in the government coffers to make the payment, they defaulted and now they cannot borrow because nobody wants to lend them anything. Why is the government in Greece at this point? Because they SPENT money they didn't have and cannot raise. Normally countries just print more currency to pay loans, but you cannot do that when it's euros you need to print.
So what did Greece spend all this money on? Early retirement for everybody and social programs. Socialism in leaning, if not actual practice is what has Greece into crushing debt.
Greece is being crushed between the Eurozone and their debt, the debt that funded their social programs. The sad part though is that the people who will really pay for this are the poor, the people who didn't have the ability to move their assets OUT of Greece.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Greek people don't need the capital. They have all the taxes they didn't pay.
What they need is a solid currency. I suggest bitcoin.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No, it was socialism yet again proving that you cannot overspend and tax your way to prosperity. It's happened time after time and people like you still insist that it's a matter of not overspending / taxing enough.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
You are partly true, since it's a national sport to avoid taxes.
I read that in one of the greek islands, a lot of taxi drivers were "officially" blind.
The real problem is that Greece has to spend 13% of its GDP to pay for its retirees.
It almost twice as much as other european countries, and it will gets worse because the population is older than most other countries, with a lot of unemployment for young ones (probably whose who are leaving the country).
Since everybody wants to profit from the current system, I very much doubt that the problem will solve without cries.
The IMF lost 1.6 billions of euros, so I also doubt that Europe will continue subsidizing the current system.
Not all of them returned, heck not even most of them returned. But risk-tolerance, ambition etc are not distributed uniformly, it follows the power law. So the 20% who returned took with them 80% of the risk-tolerance, ambition, entrepreneurship with them back to India.
So let Greece give up euro for drachma, let drachma fall as low as INR. It will thrive on tourism, and the Greeks coming back to start companies a few years down the road.
Germany has benefitted a lot by the economic union. Had Deutschmark stayed out of euro, its exports would have become so expensive no one could import them. 80% of Germany's exports are to rest of Europe. Capital would have naturally flowed to less expensive countries, and they would have the companies and employment restoring the balance. Greece leaving euro is going to be a bigger blow to Germany than to Greece.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The poor really don't have assets. The people who will really pay is the people who aren't rich but not poor either. Those who have money they put away for their later years and other needs will lose it. I feel sorry for them but there is little hope and it's going to get worse. The US will be in the same place in a decade or so. I have a retirement I'll probably never see.
Hard to commit gun crime with a rock. Murder is less efficient but with a few whacks it's doable.
I never understood the contempt and hatred for the Euro. A loose economic union to facilitate trade and further diplomatic relationships with member states to ensure that another WW doesn't occur in Europe seems like a laudable goal. These goals seemed to be designed around the causes of WW1 and WW2. It may not have been perfectly implemented but what is perfect version 1.0? The USA had to rewrite the Articles of Confederation for similar issues (having the federal government assume the war debts of the Revolutionary War was a contentious topic that was addressed with the Constitution, not AoC iirc).
Could someone explain, why is the Euro seen as a bad thing? Perhaps, I am showing my age by asking this.
Even if 100% of their past debts were written off, current tax receipts are insufficient to meet current expenditure.
That situation is exactly the same in the US (except the gap is about $500 billion right now, more than the entire Greek debt). The only reason that the US keeps going is that they control the lender (the Federal Reserve). At least they think they do.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Sorry, but you are incorrect. Greece reported a nearly 2 billion euro surplus in 2014, without taking interest payments into account. http://www.wsj.com/articles/greece-misses-target-on-budget-surplus-1421244654
If their debt were wiped out today they would keep that money and need no further bailouts. Better yet they could go back to the Drachma and manage their currency with a combination of monetary and fiscal policy, just like every other sovereign nation in the developed world.
You can't oversimplify the Greek situation as "socialism". There are plenty of examples of countries that are doing fine economically with policies that embrace social spending. The Greek situation is far more complex and involves politics and the Euro as much as anything else.
"A developer working in Greece will pay taxes in Greece"
No he won't. That's why they're in this mess.
He won't, but it's not the flight of labor out of Greece that's the cause of this problem. It's a symptom of the deep rooted issue that has doomed Greece to be crushed between their national debt and the Eurozone.
The MESS is caused by the baby boom and Greece's liberal government funded pensions (we call it Social Security in the USA). The boomers are getting older, consuming more and more resources but having long sense retired produce nothing. That leaves fewer and fewer workers to collect taxes from in Greece, which forced more borrowing, higher taxes and dropping benefits. Of course, being in the Eurozone doesn't help, because if you want to leave Greece, it's easy to jump ship, especially if you are a young person who doesn't own property or have a family. But the problem that doomed Greece was demographics and simple math. You cannot promise to give out such generous benefits where there is no possible way to pay for them.
The really scary part here is that Greece is but the tip of the iceberg, both in the Eurozone and in the world. Spain and Italy are both tittering on the edge and the disruption that is Greece's exit from the euro is likely enough to push them over too. With that many people in abject poverty, I suspect that violence will be nearly unavoidable.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Sorry, but you're out of date. The Greek government's primary surplus disappeared shortly after the election of the Syriza government.
It highlights your agenda, that's about it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The Greek financial disaster came from refusal to live within their means and not run chronic deficits for decades on end. This is the end result of modern "borrow and spend" liberalism taken so far as to ruin the finances of Greece and exhaust the patience of the rest of Europe. The people bailing are the "children" spoken of when conservatives are heard to say we must not saddle our children with debt.
The thing that is not said is that the reason we must not do this is not merely because it is morally reprehensible, which it is, but that the children simply won't pay it. Unless you are ready to erect gulags to enslave people you can't make them live their lives to fund your unlimited socialist dreams.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I agree with you to some extent. The individuals must make the group stronger though. People who can contribute but refuse to are getting to be a serious problem. Dead weight will kill any group. Paying taxes is important for everyone. Having a third of the population that pays no taxes will cause resentment as well as economic problems.
> Furthermore Greece paid the developers education in the expectation it would be a wise investment in the future (education == long term investment).
So what is your point with this? You want to bring back modern slavery? If you get an education paid by the state, you are not allowed to leave the state? Like in Soviet times?
Or to localize it, how many people on Slashdot have had their employers pay for them to attend training, courses, even further their educations? Does that mean that those employees should be forced to pay back that education if they move to another company, or worse should they be prevented from leaving for X number of years to get the company their ROI? If the answer is no, then why even mention it about the Greek dev?
The problem in the U.S. is not people who don't have skills. People have skills. The problem is that skills aren't valued. If you have skills, you will get paid shit. If you manipulate money, you will get paid a lot. This is why there's been such a geek brain drain into the financial industry. The U.S. does not value working for a living. We value gambling for a living.
Note not just socialism, but socialism *AND* cutting taxes low. They tried to have their cake and eat it too.
Of course before the Euro, they might have been able to stumble over this while massively devaluing their currency, and it wouldn't have been as disruptively bad. EU members might just have too much sovereignty to share a currency.
The Federal Reserve doesn't work like that. The USA can maintain its government deficit because enough people are willing to buy US government bonds. If, one day, people no longer trust it to repay its debts, there will be a financial meltdown the like of which the world has never yet seen.
Banking in the EU is pretty much borderless for the wealthy. Just open an account in a German or whatever bank. You might need to establish 'residence'. But that's not difficult to satisfy the requirements of regulations. For the middle class on down, its another matter. If the neighborhood banks and ATMs shut down, what are you going to do? Hopping on a plane or train for a weekly cash run is no problem for the rich. Not so much for everyone else.
Any bank opening a branch (or ATM) inside Greece will expose themselves to local regulations and the economy. So there's not much chance of that happening. Not impossible, but not likely.
The problem is: Who is going to loan money to the Greeks? Too much of the population is unemployed or dependant on govenment pensions or jobs. So there's no hope of getting paid back. The few who have good paying jobs (or wealth in-country) are going to be targeted for revenue to redistribute to those living off the public coffers.
Have gnu, will travel.
Women wanting to be housewives aren't the problem. The problem is a socieconomic setup that makes it difficult to support a family on one income unless you're relatively well qualified or otherwise independently wealthy. Very few of the acceptable latter day social philosophies have a reproductive strategy outside of mass private or public childcare facilities, which most responsible parents quite rightly find repugnant.
For one thing, you'll have to learn a whole new language (and not a programming language!) if you move to France or Germany. And both of these languages are almost, but not entirely completely different from Greek. And there are other issues as well - from climate to different licensing requirements.
Educated young oeople were flooding out of Greece long before the current government took over. The present government's rise is a reaction to the death of the Greek economy, not the cause of it.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Tell me about it! My fractions of Bitcoins are up nearly 25 cents!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The Federal Reserve doesn't work like that. The USA can maintain its government deficit because enough people are willing to buy US government bonds. If, one day, people no longer trust it to repay its debts, there will be a financial meltdown the like of which the world has never yet seen.
The largest purchaser of US bonds today is ... wait for it ... the Federal Reserve.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Not just a US problem. Edinburgh has a massive call centre outsourcer. Now we all know that call centres pay peanuts, because they don't really need skilled workers, but this one does, because it's a multilingual call centre. All of their staff are fluent in two, three or even four or more languages. They get about £500 more than the usual unskilled phone jockey per year, despite the huge efficiency savings made by not having to have individual call handlers on hand for each language even at slow times. And people say this is OK because of supply and demand.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
So what is your point with this?
I never stated this should not be allowed. The OP presented moving abroad as a positive thing, I made this statement to show that it is not in the interest of Greece. Every comapny expects/hopes for a return on their investment, there is no difference for countries/governments.
Does that mean that those employees should be forced to pay back that education if they move to another company
That is not uncommon in Europe when such training is extensive and expensive. It is often provided with a clause that if the employee is leaving the company within a x number of years, an equivalent share shall be reimbursed. Often this is happily paid by the new company the person will work for.
But a developer not working in Greece won't make money for anyone, hence why they're all migrating to countries where there are jobs.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
So if I lend you money, then you use the money to buy something from me, your debt shouldn't count?
Yes, the middle class will pay with money, but the poor will pay with their lives and suffering. As Greece collapses, those who have nothing and are dependent on the government will pay first. Starvation, violence and sickness will kill them. The middle class will just become poor...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
GDP fell and unemployment is at 25%. A lot of people left the country. So tax receipts fell and the pensions system can no longer be sustained. So was this a problem with the pensions or a problem with a failed economy thanks to the measures of the troika?
Meanwhile: I have to pay for my own hospital plan because in case I get sick I have to notify the public insurance carrier 15 days in advance of emergency surgery (no kidding!) or 3-4 months before booking an appointment with a doctor. I have to get an additional, expensive pension plan on top of the 350 Euros per month I am currently paying as mandatory social security because there will be no money when I'm 67 years old or have worked 40+ years to get the minimum pension of 700 Euros (nominal; actual payment after taxes and mandatory social security is around 480 Euros). I also need to set aside money to get the kids I'm planning on having to a private school because there are no teachers (not even substitutes) half of the time in the public schools.
If you are wondering why people tax evade you have to first ask the questions: 1. how much does the state take in taxes and 2. what does the state offer for the money it takes from its citizens? If the answers are "most of your money" and "not that much at all" respectively it doesn't take a genius to see why you get an endemic tax evasion for free.
Anyway. After three years of battling the system I gave up and moved away. My last tax filing in Greece was 2014 for my income in 2013. I am owed a 13,000 Euro tax return since August 10th, 2014. Of course it's NOT credited. And we're talking about money I have paid as a tax downpayment to the state since August 2013. They hold my money hostage for 2 years and they won't give it to me. Also, don't make the mistake of asking whether there's an interest rate for those two years. Don't be silly. There's not! Adding insult to injury I'm still a Greek tax citizen which means I get to pay taxes for the dividends I'm paid from my company abroad. Don't be ridiculous, of course they are NOT offset by the money the Greek state owes me! I have so far paid another 40+ thousand Euro taxes in these two years where the Greek state owes me the 13,000 Euro tax return.
I understand all this sounds alien to you. Why so much taxation, why no services in return, why the state isn't punctual in paying back. Beats me, brothers and sisters. I have concluded that one must be outright insane to try and do business if they're born in Greece.
No man. The people left the country because investment dropped off a cliff and unemployment climbed up at the same time taxes increased to counter receipt loss from what I just said before. Greece has been in a recessive death spiral since 2008.
If you do it by creating money out of thin air - yes, it shouldn't count as much. And that's what Germany and France were essentially doing all along.
And yes, I do have actual data to prove it: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s...
If you check the numbers in details, it turns out that almost half of the German economic growth during the 2002-2008 period is solely because of this debt export to the periphery.
I'm not sure how someone could call the citizen's refusal to pay taxes, and the government's refusal to collect them, "fiscal conservatism". This reads like an unholy mating of "1984" Newspeak and MSNBC talking heads. It's lawlessness. Fiscal conservatism would be low taxes and low spending-- "small government". That's just what it is; you don't have to agree with it, that's what it's called. But what they have is big (spending) government, yet an unwillingness to demand compliance from the citizens. Even the basement-dwelling internet Marxist understands that a welfare state must be funded.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The problem is that it wasn't loose enough. Previous Greek governments were borrowing off the back of the Euro as though it were a national currency and using it to shore up the public finances rather than cracking down on tax dodges (and given that the ministers were all dodging taxes themselves, what else could you expect? In principle, I'm all for the Euro, but it was established without the appropriate checks and balances, and Greece is a result of that.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
From the article:
Companies, however, are experiencing a shortage of developers. "SEPE has undertaken recently an initiative to train 3,000 people, to fill this digital gap in Greece, and at the same time to certify another 3,000 Greek ICT professionals," the Federation's spokesperson told ZDNet.
IT jobs are the sixth hardest ones to fill in Greece, according to ManpowerGroup's 2015 Talent Shortage Survey, with senior developers' gross monthly salary varying between €2,600 and €3,200.
Please, do at least read the article before repeating popular misinformation.
And yet the creditors want to lend them more money which they can't afford to pay back which continues their spiral into debt. Funny how that works.
You donâ(TM)t actually know what you are talking about do you.
Most of the loans in question here were in fact loaned by German and French bankers to the Greeks prior to the 2008, Deutsche bank was one of the biggest. They could get somewhat higher returns loaning to Greece and they had some security because Greece was in the Eurozone. That security unravelled with the 2008 crash.
The ECB, EU, IMF gave massive loans to Greece in 2010, and most of it immediately went to extricate the German and French banks from their bad greek loans. If the Greeks has defaulted on the original loans then there would have been a massive banking crisis in Germany and France. The 2010 EU bailout was to save their banks more than it was to help the Greeks.
The Greeks just got more debt piled on top of too much debt and its totally destroyed their economy. Recently released IMF studies confirm the Greeks canâ(TM)t sustain their current debt load and it has to be restructed or they have to default. If they stay the current course with austerity and more and more bailout loans they are doomed.
If the Greeks had been smart they would have exited the EU and defaulted on the debt in 2009 and the people who made the bad loans, the German and French bankers, would have paid the price. Instead they got off scot free.
Iceland immediately defaulted in a similar situation, they had some short term pain but they rebounded, while the Greece has gotten nothing but worse and worse under the yoke of a corrupt European and global banking system.
For banking and loans to work there is a simple rule, if you are foolish enough to make a bad loan to someone who probably wonâ(TM)t pay it back, then you pay the price when they default. Instead the people who make the bad loans (i.e. bankers) get to keep their bonuses profits and everyone else gets to pay for their stupidity, greed and corruption.
@de_machina
If you lend me money so I can build an airport by paying to your company and then, when I cannot pay the debt back, you ask me to sell the same airport to you for a fraction of the cost at the same time you ask me to pay back the money you initially loaned me...
What does that make you?
So what hurt Ireland during the economic collapse was all that social spending...oh wait it was taking on the debt of the banks....
Greece spends 13% of its tax receipts to pay for retirees and 50% of its tax receipts to pay interest on debt.
So which is the problem here?
Not quite - it's more complex than that. To be sure having creditors lend more money instead of debt restructure did not help. Funny how in the U.S. we restructure the debt of wall street banks but we force everyone else to pay their debts at face value.
That's usually what happens when you fire everyone, liquidate what's left and then proceed to have no further source of income: A large inflow of cash, followed by nothing.
The problem is not the Euro its the way it was constructed.
The current leadership is not interested in any fix since they profit from the current situation and allows them to boss other people around.
It works in North Korea. OK, that's hyperbole, but someone has to counteract the usual "you mean like Somalia" bullshit every time someone says something remotely libertarian.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
take the trash to the bin. we dont need you leaving it here.
"Unless you are ready to erect gulags to enslave people you can't make them live their lives to fund your unlimited socialist dreams."
That's what robots are for!
Yeah, look at how awful countries like Norway and Sweden are with all their "nanny-state policies".... they only have the highest standards of living in the world.
Something for nothing? Heck no, the EU creditors were not giving loans from the goodness of their hearts.
Yes, the Greek Government is mostly at fault for this.. but so are the Greek people who keep voting in people making false promises. You know, the guys who claim that you can have all of these Government programs for "free".
I really have no idea why you tried the ole cold war propaganda routine, but it does not make any sense here at all.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
No. He has DOLLARS stashed somewhere from when he worked for Valve in Texas.
He's too smart to stash his money in Euros.
Umm, then why do they need to borrow more money?
Or are you talking "current accounts are balanced"? Which is to say, except for paying interest on your bonds/T-bills/whatever, your budget is balanced.
Note that if you're making enough money to pay the bills, EXCEPT for the interest on your credit cards and mortgage, you're not really living with a "balanced" budget.
And if you really have a balanced budget, you really shouldn't be needing to borrow money, nor should you have a hard time paying back your existing loans....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
That's socialism?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The only difference between Greece and the US is that the US can print more money, don't you remember every couple of years the US has a crisis where it is running out of money, their solution print more money (problem solve right?).
I actually think that Greece should go bankrupt, sure it may be tough for a while but better that the whole country servicing debt indefinitely, which it cannot hope to repay.
Actually it probably will not be that bad, they probably have industries that produce essentials. I don't even think trade will stop, sure they won't be able trade Dramas for goods and services but they will be able to trade those for Euros, or US dollars and then trade those Euros for other services. Markets are wonderful like that, they adapt.
I think what the lenders are really worried about is what happens if Greece doesn't collapse, it will suddenly allow all those other poor countries that owe lots of money to contemplate doing the same thing.
It may also teach people to stop lending to entities that cannot repay, when you lend money to people to take on the risk that they may not pay you back.
Just like with an individual going bankrupt is not a desirable outcome, but is a better solution than living the rest of your life as a slave to your debt.
Let me repeat it: THE BUDGET OF GREECE IS BALANCED. The problem is that creditors want MOAR BLOOD from Greece
So you don't know the difference between "deficit" and "debt"?
Most of the money wasn't lent by bankers.
Yes, it actually was. The EU/IMF/ECB then bailed those banks out, for some inexplicable reason, by taking the debt off their hands. Neither group, bankers or EU, did risk analysis. If they did, Greece never would have been lent the money in the first place.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
So, hosts files will lead to Greece paying their Denbts?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
> That is not uncommon in Europe when such training is extensive and expensive. It is often provided with a clause that if the employee is leaving the company within a x number of years, an equivalent share shall be reimbursed.
To a North American that's a pretty alien concept. What happens if someone is terminated instead of choosing to leave? Seems like there could be some abuse there if there isn't a provision for only paying from voluntary departure.
Actually, this and parent skirt a real issue of employment, education, and welfare in the U.S.
- We are permitting the illegal immigration of unskilled, under educated Central, South, and Latin American immigrants, along with Mexican immigrants, to come to American and compete for the worst jobs.
- Despite lower employment, we continue to do this.
- Even if we take up the challenge and offer education to these immigrants, they will only compete further up the social ladder. And more under educated will come, since we lack the will to control the influx.
- English is not their preferred language. This not only costs in providing bilingual resources, but it causes resentment and risks discrimination.
Some skills in America are valued, and intelligent people seek those skills, or they accept less value for the skills they do choose. Since manufacturing has largely left the US, those work skills (work as in physical labor) are not so much in demand. Information technology is taking up that slack, but those skills are too often found in legal immigrants under programs such as the H1B visa program, and Americans lose out again.
The labor force participation rate is a telling statistic, dropping from 66+% in 2008 to 62.5% today. Those workers no longer in the workforce didn't just disappear. They are still eating, living somewhere, and are doing so at the expense of someone else. So long as we permit illegal immigration to continue largely uncontrolled, we keep adding workers to a marketplace that has too many already.
Higher employment might make a number of other solutions to other problems possible, but in the current economic situation we are doomed to continue deficit spending and a further plunge into debt. No way out without the economy improving.
And even then, the will to say 'no' to the hands out looking for a paycheck for nothing is critical. And unlikely to happen given the current political situation, either.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If you can't service your debt in addition to paying your normal operating bills your budget isn't balanced.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Because it takes guts to refuse a bad offer and most of European politicians are spineless amoebas. Including the previous Greek PM.
Those provisions in contracts are normally not valid when your contract is terminated my the employer.
In a previous position, I was not allowed to take any position at a direct competitor or at any of our suppliers (within a 1 year time-frame). When I was made redundant, I received a letter from my former company addressed to any potential new employer that there were no legal issues in case they wanted to offer me a job.
The letter itself was not required by law (the content was), but it made my life much easier.
Greece can even service the current debts if they are allowed to borrow at lower rates. That's essentially what the 'bailout' was - the ability to borrow at lower costs to re-finance the debts. Even simply extending the bailout program without imposing new austerity would have been enough to let Greece recover.
And if we continue an analogy with a household, right now Greece has a steady job with enough income to cover the expenses for a fairly well-off lifestyle. However, it has also a crippling underwater mortgage. For a household the simplest way out of this would be a bankruptcy and a new start.
But OK, suppose that we put the interests of the Holy German Empire on the front. The problem is, austerity actually HURTS the creditors by undermining Greek economy. There's really no reasons for austerity except for sadism of Merkel.
There is one little problem with that idea. There is no mechanism to "exit" the EU, just as there is no mechanism to kick a member out. Government tends to be like that (ask the Confederacy).
Greece spends 13% of its tax receipts to pay for retirees and 50% of its tax receipts to pay interest on debt.
So which is the problem here?
When they borrowed the money what they are now paying interest on ... what did they spend that on? Maybe paying interest on the loans they wasted on booze and hookers doesn't deserve sympathy.
And both of these languages are almost, but not entirely completely different from Greek.
You mean languages that you don't know aren't *greek* to you ;^)
When 51% are on the tit, democracy is over and done. Stick a fork in it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Social program such as an oversized pointless military? Yes that is a one of their problems.
Much smarter then you sucker!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The "problem" is the attitude that borrowing has no limits and that voting to keep the government doling out benefits it has no means to pay for is a good idea. The GDP fall and unemployment are unfortunate events, but they where impacted by the same policies that had the government borrowing. The Greek people voted for this (not just once, but many times), in large part, and thus are responsible for what's coming.
However, this is not to discount the fact that being in the Euro has also been a problem, that Greece has paid for the mismanagement of the Eurozone too.
IMHO, Greece (et all) are going to be squeezed between excessive debt and the Eurozone. Had Greece not gone on the Euro, or had they gone to austerity long before their creditors demanded it of them, we would all be talking about something else.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Read some history. Gulags it is. It's a leftest tradition.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Such stupid sarcasm...
Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
A strong national defense is VITAL to the security of both the USA and the world. The last 200+ years of history show this to be true, and the graves of the dead are reminders of what happens when you forget your history.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Never had company sponsored training? Absent some details what the GP describes is common in America.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I really can't parse this. Liberalism in Europe is right wing and yes Greece has suffered the idiocy of lowering taxes and expecting money to pop out of nowhere like the right wing liberals in the us does too. You call them libertarians though, but that is just pseudo french for liberal.
You do live in a democracy right? Why do you elect governments that perpetuate this nonsense?
When a majority of citizens are receiving benefits from the state, why would they vote to curtail those payments the government can't really afford? It's much easier to instead tax the *producers* of society.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Insightful? Really? Just repeating something you saw on Fox news, that is.
German and French banks were going to default because Greek banks were bankrupt. Here comes savior bce to lend the Greek government to bailout Greek banks. Private debt turned into public debt, with a shitload of military spending in the middle that went... Guess it, Germany and France.
Greece problems comes from chronic corruption that fed a network of privileged closed to the governments, and troikas bailouts didn't put any stop to that, which demonstrates that they just want to keep pumping money out of Greece. Tsipras offered to cut military spending, and other cuts that were utterly dissmissed by the troika. They just wanted to cut social spending, to push their agenda, not to make Greece an economically viable state in the long term.
It's problems with debt pre-date 2008. The S&L crisis just induced a world wide recession that Greece could ill afford because even then it was tittering on the edge. The recession was the thing that pushed them over the cliff. But the seeds of this problem where sown decades ago, even before they entered the Eurozone.
All we've done since then is to delay the problem... Well, we are out of road to kick the can down, and the Greek people just voted themselves over the cliff. This won't be pretty.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The Greek people doubt pay tax.
All former governments were lying about the economy.
instead of being in surplus or at most 3% deficit, the Greek economy had been running a 14% deficit.
They have been lying from before they were ever let into the eu, they started lying because they wanted the euro so badly to lower the cost of borrowing.
Why was the cost of borrowing so high? Greek people were really bad at paying their debts.
The problem is the eu should never have let them in without a proper audit. They are only now getting what they deserve.
Good luck keeping it while going bankrupt. The point anyway was that Greece has wasted money left AND right.
They may have to follow Ireland's example, that turned out very well, but they have to very big problems.
- âoegrexitâ is necessary
- they have to make people pay taxes they are not used to.
You do live in a democracy right?
Athens is credited as the birthplace of democracy even though only racially privileged landowners even had a vote. Guess what.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"fookin"?!? Is that supposed to be a Scottish accent? You're a couple of hundred miles out, mate. Ignorance and bigotry are such common bedfellows...
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Norway has massive natural resource exports accounting for nearly 33% of GPD, imports half of what it exports and only 3 million people in the labor force. Sweden's GPD is also nearly 33% exports, slight trade imbalance in favor of exports and 5 million people in the labor force.
Greece has 12% GPD from exports, imports twice as much as it exports and has only 5 million in the workforce.
For perspective, the USA makes only 9% of GPD from exports (that includes the recent massive increase in gas and oil exports), imports 50% more than it exports and has 156 million people in the workforce.
Norway and Sweden's success has nothing to do with political models and entirely to do with geography. If the Aegean had oil fields, Greece would be a socialist paradise too.
You're quite right that the first two bailouts primarily rescued Greece's creditors, but Greece already owed that money to someone. The losers in those transactions weren't the Greeks - the big losers European taxpayers who adopted the Greek government's debts.
But you're very mistaken if you think that the biggest buyers of government debt are the banks. Pension funds, investment funds and insurance companies have far more cash to splash.
You're also pretty ignorant if you claim that institutions perform no credit assessment of their investments. For traded bonds like government IOUs, that assessment is essentially outsourced to three credit reference agencies, Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch. Those agencies are supposedly licenced and regulated but utterly failed to identify the risk with Greek debt ahead of the downturn. If you're looking for a scapegoat on the creditor side, they're a much better scapegoat than the banks.
Blaming the banks is a lazy knee-jerk reaction that's not really grounded in fact. P.S. I'm not a banker.
Comedies generally sell better.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Please, do at least read the article before repeating popular misinformation.
Welcome to Slashdot. I can see from your number you've been here for some time, but when you immigrate, you should always try to integrate into the host society. RTFA? You are insulting my culture.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Iâ(TM)m not blaming âoebankersâ exactly, Iâ(TM)m blaming people who loan money to people who are may or may not pay it back and when they dont get paid back they go running to their central banks or governments and demand they get made whole at the expense of everyone else. Same thing happened in the U.S. in 2009 with the TARP and assorted other bail outs.
Yea the rating agencies really sucked especially leading up to the crash in 2008, but it doesnâ(TM)t relieve lenders of ultimate responsibility for their actions. If the credit ratings are wrong its the responsibility of the lender to figure this out, no one else.
Lenders collect interest on their loans partially to cover the potential risk they wont get paid back, the higher that risk the higher the interest they collect. If they collect high interest rates on risky mortgages and then when someone defaults on them central banks and governments make them whole it creates massive moral hazard.
If the Greeks were a bad risk prior to 2008, which they probably were, the interest rates they had to pay should have been higher and they would have been dissuaded from borrowing or lenders would have been dissuaded from lending to them. Instead the EU created a perverse system where risky borrowers (all of the PIIGS) got relatively cheap money and a lot of it and were incentivized to take as much of it as they could. The EU and the lenders are 100% to blame for this situation for throwing the money at them.
The PIIGS shouldâ(TM)ve never entered an economic union with Germany in the first place, they had no chance of competing with Germany locked in to the same currency. It was a win win for Germany on all fronts.
@de_machina
I thought he was a frequent contributor who writes stories that are as far from short as it's possible to be?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The reason the U.S. can keep going is that the Fed can print money and lend it to the government. The Federal Reserve is not part of the government and makes money on the money it lends. The tax money you pay doesn't really go where you think it goes. Why do you think our money says "Federal Reserve Note" on the bills?
And they don't answer to anybody. Politicians who try to control the Fed don't last very long.
According to our Constitution the government is supposed to be the ones printing the money, not some non-governmental central bank. Central banks are evil and we never should allowed one to take control
One of these days there will be a day of reckoning and it won't be pretty. I hope I'm dead before that happens.
A few additional interesting facts:
1) The original cause of the Greek debt was due to the fact that greek labor costs were significantly higher than other EU nations. When they joined the EU, this caused a large trade deficit...leading to lower GDP and higher debt.
2) Greece has always been somewhat left-leaning and rather than curtail spending during low income years, they actually increased spending by incurring more debt
3) The government (with the help of some banks) "hid" their massive deficit spending through the use of credit default swaps. This made Greece appear to be a better investment than they actually were when other banks provided loans.
4) Greece also historically has one of the highest rates of tax evasion
All of the above contributed to the present crisis, not just "bad greek loans".
Citations mostly from wikipedia, but plenty of similar info on the web.
Socioeconomic times that allowed women to not generate income are the exception, not the norm. Before the Industrial Revolution both genders worked mostly out of the home or on the farm, and often their kids were also roped into work. Once the Industrial Revolution hit, many women continued to work from home while their husbands went to work in factories, if they themselves didn't also transition to factory life. Only the wealthy could afford for one spouse to not work. It is not reasonable to expect one unskilled or only moderately skilled worker to supply the economic resources for multiple people on average.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Sounds like it's time to get people working the land again. I would hate to take a job that I wasn't happy with, but sometimes I suppose it is better than starving?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Being unemployed in Greece, then either they would be unemployed in Germany/France which doesn't require knowing the language. Or they'll get a get a job which doesn't require knowing the language.
Or, get this, they already know German or French. Some people speak foreign languages you know.
actual interest payments are somewhere around 2.6% to 4.3% of GDP (depending on your calculation method)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e55...
greek tax revenue as a proportion of gdp is about 30%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
so greek interest payments are approx 10% of tax receipts
http://data.worldbank.org/indi...
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
On the other hand living for a while in a foreign country can be a fantastic experience. I had a 2 of the best years of my life when I did it.
We just don't have the will to really go after companies for hiring illegal immigrants. Neither party does and just lets it happen. Do that and demand for labor will go up significantly. Wages will go up for certain professions and people will take those jobs. It'll work itself out naturally if we actually cared about enforcing immigration laws.
Isn't it pretty much how student loans work?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What, both of them?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I could take a cash advance on a credit card at 28%, put it in a deposit account at 1%, and generate a surplus without taking interest payments into account.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why didn't you slip the tax inspectors a grand to certify you as earning 9,999.99 EUR (you don't pay any tax until you earn 10k) like everyone else did?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The MESS is caused by the baby boom and Greece's liberal government funded pensions
I'd argue that this MESS is caused by the high level of labor and business regulation in Greece.
Ireland got into a big debt crisis as well, but because it has a high level of economic freedom, it was able to exit its rescue program due to economic growth (despite "austerity").
Spain has just begun to reform its labor and business regulations, and it is finally showing some return to economic growth
Germany had the Hartz labor Reforms before the economic crisis, so it never needed a rescue.
Greece remains last in the Eurozone in economic freedom rankings and highest in the Eurozone for corruption rankings.
And lots of people have left Greece. But there are limits to that even in the US which doesn't have language barriers.
They wont let the poor starve. Starving people are dangerous beyond belief. The Czars learned this too late to prevent their extinction. Basic subsistence really doesn't cost all that much. It's not really living, just an existence.
No, not alien at all. That's very much the direction that the US is heading, primarily courtesy of progressives and Democrats.
That was what European integration was supposed to enable, and labor mobility is essential for a functioning integrated market.
But labor mobility is pretty limited in Europe by vast cultural differences and differences in job requirements. Even if you manage to get a job in Germany as a Greek, you will always be treated as a second class citizen.
... how afraid my poor countrymen are of Varoufakis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That's a good description, but everyone is still missing the actual cause. Firstly, the European Union is founded on an ideology that doesn't allow for an economic crisis. Second, when the crisis hit in 2008, the Greek *private* sector *reduced* their bank borrowing. Their money supply shrank, velocity shrank too, jobs were lost, tax receipts went down. Their government debt ratio went up, not because they were borrowing more, but because GDP fell. But the Euro doesn't allow Greece to run a large deficit, nor to increase their debt level, so they can't stimulate their economy to prevent further job losses.
The Greek government weren't in good shape before, but the combination of a crisis and the rules imposed by the Union have wiped them out.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Sounds like it's a basketcase all around.
This is unfortunately very true.
Everybody who has money in Greek banks will in all likelihood get robed with the stroke of a pen.
How to get that economy rolling again after it grinds to a halt. I'm thinking put everything for the next couple of years into farming and becoming self-sufficient, and start printing a crypto-drachma. This will look exactly like a regular drachma, except it will have the word "Crypto" in front of it. People with money eat that shit up. The Crypto-drachma will be backed with the full standing and reputation of the Greek government... and... um... did I mention it has the word "Crypto" in front of it? Say that enough and it will quickly become the pre-eminent currency of the world. Admittedly I know absolutely nothing about economics, but apparently neither did the people who got Greece into this.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
just krautchan leaking, move along...
They are not exiting the EU, just the Eurozone. Countries can be in the EU without being on the Euro.
Yet every time someone want to rein in the spending in the US, we hear "we have a paying bills problem, not a spending problem."
It's hard to correct course when you have a mindset that all spending is now set in stone (not counting the automatic increases each year.)
And yes, the war in Iraq caused a lot of that but the idea that we can use this to justify every increase in debt is silly.
Social program such as an oversized pointless military? Yes that is a one of their problems.
Do people really think that socialist countries will not have over-sized pointless militaries? The whole issue is that most things government run becomes oversized and useless.
Out of 100K income paying 86K tax is 86% taxation. The highest income bracket is ~40% taxation. You are either mixing up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Something certainly does not add up.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/...
Wrong. No one pays taxes in Greece.
And of course the money going back will be sent in cash or to a foreign account, because no one in their right minds is going to trust a Greek bank.
But not any better in spelling.
I've had lots of company sponsored training, one company even paid for some university courses in my field that I requested. At no point in time were there any obligations or conditions put on receiving the education/training, save that the university courses I had to have a passing mark in or I'd need to reimburse the company for the cost of the courses. That was definitely not an issue.
Who said anything about labour? No requirements to be unemployed.
That is a silly argument like the finance minister of Greece saying "we can't go back to the drachma because we sold the presses". The EU would just create a law for the Greek exit on the spot and that's it.
The reason there is no mechanism in place is a "political statement" that means we are in this together and we are serious about it, but in practice it is at best a technical details. The problem obviously is that that contradict the original political statement and that's the open door for countries to bail out and angry citizen requiring "bad member of the EU/EURO" to be let go.
That is the risk - letting the Greek go probably means the end of the EURO - the fact that there is no mechanism is smoke and mirrors.
Sorry, but you're out of date. The Greek government's primary surplus disappeared shortly after the election of the Syriza government.
Sorry, but you're... inaccurate. The Greek government's primary surplus for Q1 2015 was €1.74 billion against a target of €119 million. This was achieved by collecting €1 billion more in tax in the month of March than had been expected. http://www.thetoc.gr/eng/econo...
2) Greece has always been somewhat left-leaning and rather than curtail spending during low income years, they actually increased spending by incurring more debt
Wow. That's an impressive ideological bias you're carrying there. True, Greek governments have increased spending in low-income years, and in high-income years, but Greece, like many countries, has alternated between left-leaning and right-leaning governments since the end of its dictatorship in 1974. It's a problem caused by a clientelistic state that got in the habit of purchasing votes, not by "lefties". It's worth noting that the current government, the one everyone rushes to label as "radical left", is the first and only to promise to tackle the clientelism and corruption, to commit to a balanced budget, and to deeply reform the way the economy works, taking advice from the OECD. But everyone's too busy talking about how "left" they are to notice.
3) The government (with the help of some banks) "hid" their massive deficit spending through the use of credit default swaps. This made Greece appear to be a better investment than they actually were when other banks provided loans.
So if I'm unemployed, but borrow a suit and tie and comb my hair before going to the bank to ask for money, it makes me a better investment? Do you think the banks and the Eurozone were unaware of Greece's financial trickery? Do you think maybe they should have looked into it a little deeper before lending billions? I really don't think there can be talk of reckless borrowing without a corresponding conversation about reckless lending.
All of the above contributed to the present crisis, not just "bad greek loans".
Yes and no. All of the above contributed to what would have been a Greek crisis. It had a rotten state and economy for 35 years when the global financial crisis happened, and when the bubble burst the problems were completely exposed. The piling of the largest loan in history onto the shoulders of an insolvent nation, accompanied by one of the harshest fiscal adjustments ever made, is what turned it from a Greek crisis into a European crisis. The willful denial of this by the Eurozone and other European leaders is what has contributed to making it a never-ending crisis.
Now look at that, we have found the one Greek who actually has paid his taxes. I think the reason why the state isn't punctual in paying back is that they are still stunned by the fact that somebody actually has paid his due.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Note not just socialism, but socialism *AND* cutting taxes low.
Honestly, where do people get this from? Greece is not "socialist". It alternated centre-left and centre-right governments for 40 years before the current "socialist" government, which is 100% opposed to the clientelistic practices of its predecessors.
Cutting taxes low? Try these on for size: 23% sales tax. 26% corporate tax, which the current government wants to raise to 29%. High income tax, with the self-employed being taxed from the first euro of earnings. Massive employee and employer contributions for health and pension plans. An emergency "solidarity" tax introduced to raise money during the crisis. An emergency property tax levied on electricity bills, with the result that those who couldn't pay the tax had their electricity cut off. Greece is a heavily taxed nation, and with the burden of those taxes falling most heavily on the economically weakest, it is far from socialist.
Might be that things are different now, but when I lived in Germany at the turn of the millennium, an EU citizen could be a "prospective employer" (that is, unemployed and looking for work) in another EU country for three months, after which one has to follow some local rules. At the time in Germany that meant getting a health insurance. Which, actually, was not that cheap. (Which also incidentally was the reason I got married - suddenly my health insurance, as I was working, covered my girlfriend as well, and my taxes dropped like 10%. Why not? So I guess you can say I got married for money. Once we left Germany the incentive to remain married didn't exist anymore.)
s/employer/employee
That is the most wrong I heard this week. It's demographics 101: when you no longer present a burden to your home country's social services, health care, transportation, etc, and yet you still contribute to the economy by regularly sending disposable income home, it IS VERY GOOD for your home. Salary's are normally used in their own country of origin (where the money "sprouts" from), but in this case it is not, thus being much higher than the disposable income you would have at home, and it still pays full VAT for anything it is used for. Not to mention this money is like an injection that inflates the country's economy: it comes from absolutely no trade of goods. Money comes in, and only you got out temporarily.
A developer working abroad will also eventually come back and spend his abroad-collected fortune on buying houses, cars, funding companies, etc etc. Together with the disposable income he regularly uses on home travels, family helping, and this post-emigration phase, this all translates in the total cost Greece put on his education providing EXPONENTIALLY HIGHER RETURN, than he would by just contributing in usual fashion to the GDP (i.e. working locally).
In case you didn't notice, most countries restrict immigration (ppl in) for a reason, while most country governments incentivize or even preach in speeches emigration (ppl out). To their own citizens, really. The former is usually a bad practice because most governments are supposed to solve problems that create conditions for emigration (this wins them votes), but that doesn't prevent comfortable governments (fresh out of ellection) from speaking their mind, like portuguese Prime Minister Passos Coelho did, telling fresh out of college people to "leave their comfort zone".
And don't forget one thing: your parent's payed for your education with their taxes. A good state system should be efficient enough that, with 1-3 children, 2 adults working an entire 40y of work life can provide enough tax revenue for children education, their retirement, and other social developments in their community. If it doesn't, something's wrong with the country, and the better thing to do is, once again, leave. For different reasons, yet valid ones too.
You really believe that surplus don't you. Here is a little trick I learned early in life. If someone lies all the time about something, like claiming they have money they don't, you shouldn't believe them because they are *lying* again.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
If the Aegean had oil fields, Greece would be a socialist paradise too.
More likely there would be far more war with turkey.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
It's the exact opposite in case of Greece, though religious zealots following the "all regulation is bad" religious movement will obviously try to present it to be otherwise even when lack of regulation is the key problem.
You see, Greece's key issue is corruption. This corruption is cause by lack of regulation, which is caused by extremely wealthy, largely unregulated private industries such as shipping and tourism buying government people out wholesale to remove regulation even further.
This in turn caused absurd situation where they not only don't pay any tax, but collect money from the state in various subsidies. They are effectively parasites of the state, riding free on combination of lack of regulation which would prevent such activity and corruption which they can use portion of this money siphoned from the people to encourage. Which they once again use to reduce regulation.
The "overbearing regulation" often discussed in Greece is typically largely irrelevant regulation, such as certain state industries that wouldn't really survive otherwise anyway, like rail. Industries where the actual money is in Greece, such as shipping, are almost completely unregulated. That is why a significant part of the Eurogroup package is massive increase of regulation of said industries. Deregulation demands, which are often advertised in very specific parts of Western mass media mainly concerns those few industries that are essentially loss leaders and deregulating them would simply cause a massive infrastructural loss without any substantial benefits to the society in many cases.
Other examples where regulation is considered to be needed to be increased rather than decreased are labour market. Eurogroup went all the way to clearly state that they want ILO to look at the Greek market, because it's so deregulated that it's impossible to police and tax.
Libertarian communities are nothing but group think echo chambers led by the least educated members of the american population.
You'd have to be mentally deficient to think the libertarian policy of "spend, but have no taxes" would work outside of imagination land.
"A Jubilee study has shown that since 2010, the IMF, European governments and the European Central Bank has lent €252 billion to Greece. Over the same period, €232.9 billion has been spent on debt payments, bailing out Greek banks and paying ‘sweeteners’ to speculators to get them to accept the 2012 debt restructuring. This means less than 10% of the money has been used for anything else.
Back in 2010, nearly all government debt was owed to private entities such as banks. Today 78 per cent is owed to the public sector, primarily people in other Eurozone countries, but also throughout the world through the IMF’s loans"
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
If almost all government debt was held by private entities in 2010, but only 22% today, that says to me that the money was originally lent by bankers, who were then bailed out by public institutions, with very little going to Greece itself.
If you ever read any "Marxist" writings, or the actual books on communism, you'd see that in them the removal of the state government is a stated end result. That's true communism though, something you Alex Jones loving loons never will understand. "Big government" was a conservative institution until Reagan convinced conservatives they should GIVE the government setup institutions to the people who already had the most. Not even charge for it, but have the government build it on the back of the people and hand it over to the people who already were at the top to run it privately. Conservatism is welfare for the rich at the expense of the whole nation. Conservatism is theft.
"fiat currency" "Gold standard"
Yep, you're a crazy person. Here's a hint, all currency is "fiat". Even gold. Gold only has a value that we assign to it, no more no less, as does every other currency standard ever conceived.
Norway and Sweden's success has nothing to do with political models and entirely to do with geography. If the Aegean had oil fields, Greece would be a socialist paradise too.
Not even close. Sweden doesn't have one drop of oil, we have industry. And adding to that, the social programmes of Sweden are more expansive than our Norwegian brethren, who have oil. You see the Norwegians fund almost all their oil income into the world's largest and most well managed oil fund that is set up to last "indefinitely". They're most certainly not burning it. (The money. The majority of the oil most certainly burns).
Also, the oil is a recent thing, barely thirty years old. (I am old enough to remember when Norway was "poor" and we used to go shopping for cheaper staples there), and guess what, Sweden's social programmes were even further ahead than the rest of Europe in particular, and the world in general.
Stefan Axelsson
I've heard of judging those in history by modern standards before, but this is stupid fucking slashdot commenter lunacy.
And yet you replied anonymously, like the abject coward you are, because you knew what you were saying was stupid.
Athens is the birthplace of democracy because it's the birthplace of democracy.
They didn't have democracy. They had oligarchy. That's precisely what we have here in the USA now. I presume it's also what they have in greece, since it's what they've always had.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So the US just got a little more breathing room since the famous 47% is now only 43%?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
And Ayn Rand's dead ears just perked up. Atlas Shrugged, anyone?
Liberals: "1984" and "Atlas Shrugged" where warnings, NOT instruction manuals.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
No, that doesn't work. In the EU, you claim your unemployment benefits in the country you last worked.
It isn't clear whether countries like Germany are obligated to pay welfare under EU law, so obtaining benefits is likely to be difficult for out of work EU citizens coming to Germany. If a significant number of Greeks were doing this, it would simply mean that the laws would get changed and/or that Greece would get booted out of the EU entirely. Neither France nor Germany would be willing to pay welfare for people who didn't pay into their systems.
Sorry, I hadn't realized how stupid your suggestion was and how ignorant you were of European rules.
I replied anonymously because I don't have an account, you idiot.
Accounts are free, and you think I'm the idiot?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would imagine the fact that Tsipras has had numerous face to face and phone meetings with Putin in both Greece and Russia in the last 6 months alone:
So has Barack Obama, so has Angelina Merkel, John Kerry, David Cameron, etc, etc, etc... That is what heads of National Departments and Nations do because it's in their job description. Your reasoning is completely irrational.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Smart and good spelling are completely unrelated.
Anybody who can only think of one way to spell a word, has no imagination.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Implicit assumption in your thinking is that government is efficient in spending it's money. It is not.
A large part of the benefit of government spending goes to government employees and contractors, who don't work for shit and are typically overpaid. (Don't even bother pulling out 20 year old studies done by government workers. We all know they are pure BS.)
If government work wasn't unduly profitable, why would so many people/unions/companies fight so hard for 'their share' of it?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They wont let the poor starve.
I don't know who you think "they" are but it's not the government of Greece. The government has NO MONEY and has no way to raise any money. It cannot even print money. After the vote this weekend, they will have nearly zero economic activity to tax and have no income. So where they'd surely love to keep paying out on social programs, they simply will not be able to. The poor and retired will stop getting their benefits, many will die for lack of food, medication and basic medical care.
Now if you are talking about humanitarian aid from OUTSIDE Greece, you might be right on that score. But the bulk of this assistance will NOT come from the government of Greece.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The US prints dollars, the debt is in dollars. Think about your assertion and tell us how it could ever come to pass.
Cheap storage VM.
My keyboard doesn't have characters for Scottish sounds.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Sorry, but "The Turner Diaries" is just a wet dream, it has no basis in reality.
Cheap storage VM.
The disparity in currency value allowed alot of people to make alot of money when Greece entered the EU.
Cheap storage VM.
Who has that power over bitcoin?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You can't let people starve. I reiterate, starving people are dangerous. If the government of Greece can't feed it's people that government will be swept away in an ocean of blood. Basic subsistence food is cheap. There is no reason for people anywhere to starve. Choices have to be made and I'm sure there are things that can be eliminated to free up funds. Obviously Greece will have to come off the Euro and print it's own money.
You know, I actually believed in this too, until recently, when a friend smelled bullshit and called me out on it. We actually went to look at some numbers, and Iceland's GDP is still nowhere near where it was in 2007. It grew 30% in 5 years, which is great, but it would still need to grow almost 30% again to reach 2007 levels. So they did, and are still paying for their default. I'll refrain from comparing the situation to that of Greece.
Not just skilled labor, labor in general. Capital has run amok.
Cheap storage VM.
Lets see. Join a failed currency and an failing political union, or retain national autonomy and self-determination?
Have you seen the total shit coming out of Juncker and his cronies over the Greek situation? Apparently "protecting the people of Greece" is a 'betrayal' by the Greek PM.
Forgive me for being a retard by preferring to betray the European superstate dream by opting the fuck out.
Ok.. Austerity AND violence are coming to Greece. Printing their own currency doesn't help this, at least in the short term. Nobody wants Greek money so they won't sell them anything for it and won't loan them anything else because they don't pay you back.
Feeding people subsistence amounts of food will cost more than Greece can pay.
Further, the ONLY real industry that Greece has that brings in foreign currency (tourism) is about to be totally decimated by riots and violence.
Greece is about to be left in tatters and remanded to third world status, unless they reverse their minds and elect to accept austerity. All this brinkmanship going on is only doing grave damage to Greece.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Do what counties used to do when short on funds, sell real estate!
Russia sold Alaska, Napoloeon sold Louisiana, remember the Gadsen purchase?
Aren't there some islands Russia are willing to buy for some southern Naval Bases? China would do it too, just to rub our noses in it. And they have cash!
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Excerpt:
Too much of what has been reported in the U.S. media in these last, fraught weeks has echoed fulminations of the creditors that distort reality. Syriza has been painted as a party of the extreme left, with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government depicted as irresponsible and irreverent. This scorn comes from troika functionaries committed to enforcing utterly ruinous policies and whose behavior towards a democratically elected government has been insulting in the extreme.
--- end excerpt ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
mark "libertarianoids - you're entitled to your opinions, you are *not* entitled to your facts"
The big problem is that it prevents national economies from doing what they need to do in order to survive. If Germany was on marks, and Greece was on drachmas, we'd have seen the mark become worth more and more drachmas, and this would have allowed the economies to balance. Greece would attract German tourists, since their marks would go farther, and export more and import less. This would mean that Greece would go through a period of poverty, but it wouldn't distort the Greek economy. That would work.
By mandating the same currency, without having more of a financial union, Greece lost an invaluable tool in managing its problems.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In 2012 I had 100,000 Euros income paid 86,000 Euros spent on taxes
In 2007 I sold my business to a major government contractor, that is pretty much all they do - government contracts from food service to defense, for an eight-figure sum. My taxes were nowhere near your taxation rate and now they are even less, I pay less in capital gains taxes than I paid before. (I can afford an accountant and a lawyer now.) The only taxes that I pay "dearly" on are property taxes and I do get raped there. I really can not complain - I still pay less than I probably should.
For those who would say that I should pay more... I pay exactly what is due and avoid any taxes possible. I donate as much as is reasonable instead. I consider it my same social spending only I get to spend it on feeding hungry people instead of bombing brown people.
But, come on now... You spent an absurd amount on taxes, overall taxes, and that is not cool. Now if you were making a huge some of money, say 10,000,000 per year as some jackass CEO, then sure - the amount is still absurd but the overall amount that you'd keep is still acceptable. In your case? I do not blame you for being unhappy. That is simply unacceptable. The obvious result is that you, and others like you, will go elsewhere and the business will move elsewhere when and where it can unless they provide some very compelling reasons to stay. At those rates? I am going to need a daily supply of hookers and blow (and blackjack) on the government dime. Otherwise? I am taking my ball and I am going home. Fuck you and fuck your society (no, not you personally but the society you left) because I do not like my neighbor that much. Oh, I love my neighbor, so to speak, I just do not love him that much.
You kept 14% of your income... I am shocked that you stayed as long as you did. You probably would have been better off being on welfare. It probably pays better. Note: I have no idea how Greece's welfare system works. I have been to Greece twice (I once stayed for six months while I did some work there) and never asked about the welfare system but I did deal with their government and, if that is any indication, you may well have been better off on welfare. (The myriad government agents that I consulted with were almost always different people, almost always had no idea what was going on, and were really difficult to contact.)
Seriously... How did you manage to put up with that for as long as you did? Is it the only job you could get? Was there a compelling reason to do so such as a significant other? I'd need hookers, blow, and blackjack and I am not going to let them skimp on any of them.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Saved along with the attribution. Consider it stolen (though attributed) in some future conversation. It is almost shameful that nobody noticed your post and the value of it. So very true and so very overlooked. A gem in the rough, so to speak.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I found the one guy who was paying Grecian taxes. He is up-thread and paid pretty much all of his income in taxes (86% total taxation rate). He left. Assuming he was telling the truth, and I generally do make that assumption, he was the last tax payer and now Greece is truly screwed. I almost want to send Greece a check for like $50 to "help them out." Also, I think it would be cool to have the canceled check. Maybe we need to start a Kickstarter for Greece? Anyone who pays gets a copy of the cashed check. The three highest payers get to kick a Grecian politician in the nuts/vagina - their choice. If the amount paid is high enough they might just go for it.
Maybe we can set it up so that a donation of $100,000 USD would net the payer the chance to kick the prime minister or president (or both) in the nuts while recording it for later playback on YouTube. I say it is far more useful than buying Bidden a car. On top of that, the politicians can show how much they love (or do not love) their country by their willingness to endure pain on behalf of their countrymen. It is bound to alter the elections in one way or another.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Neo-conservative Republicans are ashamed to be associated with the Republican political party. They have co-opted the Libertarian moniker, to the detriment and disgust of the party members who have no way of stopping them and are not organized well enough to compel them to change, and this has been a trend for at least ten years. It started happening during Bush's second campaign and continued to grow until a couple of years into that presidency. Until such a time most of us Libertarians (I am now a registered Independent/Green Party member - they are tied together in this state) actually advocated things like universal health care, taxes on businesses and wealthy, a reasonable tax rate all around, laws keeping our environment clean, etc...
No, we did not advocate those things out of kindness, we advocated those things because they are more financially sound for long-term growth. Healthy people make better workers and an infrastructure to get them to work gets them to buy stuff. However we advocated personal freedoms such as the right to ingest what we choose even with the potential detriment of self-harm. A number of us disagreed with everything and disagreed with how we should do this while still siding on the personal liberties side of things. However, most of us were not maladjusted teens and old people who want to screw anybody over in their personal effort to gain wealth. Most of us were not Ayn Rand fans either.
The reason I say things in the past tense is because that was the past. Today it has changed. The party has been taken over, the platform completely bastardized (not that it was ever that clear), and the vocal (I am not sure if they are a minority any more) bunch have put the party on a different path entirely. Libertarians used to be sane, usually to the left than the Democrats, and did not believe in some pure form of any political ideology because it is well known that no such thing can exist effectively now that we've grown past the tribal stage. We are not, or at least were not, advocates of anarchy (usually, there were some nutjobs), nor did we suggest that capitalism was the solution to everything or even most things. We did advocate state rights, personal liberties, and social responsibilities. We were in favor of things like, you know, a social safety-net. We were in favor of educating those on said nets so that they could become productive persons who could enjoy their liberties because liberties should be what everyone has and not just for the wealthy.
That being said, it is not what the party really is or what the party is about. It is what is currently being thrown about in the party's name however. The Democrats are not defined by Obama nor are the Republicans defined by Bush. The Tea Party is not Libertarian. Greenpeace is not Democrats. I can not say who is in the majority now, I can only say that the nuts were once a vocal minority or even just a minority. Now they seem to be prevalent enough to make it so that I changed my party affiliation to more accurately represent my voting. My beliefs have not changed. I just do not like the platform as it seems to stand now. Of course the whole party is segmented and about as manageable as a herd of cats. It is hard enough to get a clear message out and much worse to actually get meaningful statistics. Most of us got stoned and forgot to fill out the survey. It is hard to remember the importance of voting when you're stoned.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I can not speak for the habits of Greece. I do not know and am unwilling to put out the effort of informing myself as it is not important to me nor does it alter what I am saying. However, avoiding taxes is legal and is the fiscally responsible thing to do. It is the responsibility of businesses and citizens to pay the least amount of taxes that they are legally obligated to pay. Tax avoidance is what you are meant to do and is well within the law in any country where I have earned money.
Tax evasion is illegal and is morally reprehensible even if you do not agree with the manner in which your taxes are spent or feel that you are being taxed more than is proper. Tax evasion should not be tolerated and, if this is what is happening, should be investigated with the judged guilty parties being punished according to the laws of their country.
Tax avoidance is very different than tax evasion. I avoid a lot of taxes by donating to charity. (I donate more than I can deduct actually. I do not donate for tax avoidance purposes, that is just an added benefit.) By structuring my income from capital gains (not illegal structuring) and making use of a limited liability corporation I am able to reduce the amount of taxes owed in a lawful manner which is ethical. That is perfectly legal and is something that one probably should do. Now if I have money in a safe deposit box in the Cayman Islands and I have a currier bring it to me in $9500 increments while also lugging a bunch of pre-paid debit cards in his suitcase then I am evading taxes and that is illegal and immoral.
To clarify my own definitions: Morals do not change (though are not absolutely universal). Ethics are mutable, they can be changed for the situation. Cf. Situational Ethics.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Please, do at least read the article before repeating popular misinformation.
Welcome to Slashdot. I can see from your number you've been here for some time, but when you immigrate, you should always try to integrate into the host society. RTFA? You are insulting my culture.
I am pretty sure that this is the first time I think someone has been accused of being a racist for suggesting that another should RTFA. As a long-time reader of this site (though I did not join for quite a while) it brings a tear to my eye to see such. It is... It is beautiful!
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The US prints dollars, the debt is in dollars. Think about your assertion and tell us how it could ever come to pass.
Your premise is wrong. The US doesn't print dollars - it borrows them from the Federal Reserve.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
No, that doesn't work. In the EU, you claim your unemployment benefits in the country you last worked.
That's absolutely not true. All benefits are paid by the country you are resident in.
It isn't clear whether countries like Germany are obligated to pay welfare under EU law, so obtaining benefits is likely to be difficult for out of work EU citizens coming to Germany.
It's perfectly clear. Germane or France or any other EU country have to pay benefits to any EU resident according to the same rules as they pay to a national resident.
Sorry, I hadn't realized how stupid your suggestion was and how ignorant you were of European rules.
I am European you ignorant American prick.
This is the fundamental principle of the EU. People must be treated the same by a country no matter where in the EU they are from. So if Germany pay unemployment benefits but require healthcare payment from it's own citizens then that exactly what it must offer and require from any other EU citizen that is currently resident in Germany.
I have to ask, have you actually ever lived in an EU country? Sure, there is the bureaucracy to get around, depending on the country. But there is not a single EU country where (despite what the populists will have you believe) one could effectively say "fukkit, I'm going to get provided by the government". If there were, there'd be not such a large Roma population begging in the streets during the summer, or they'd be rather stupid for not getting all that TLC from the government. As it is (this coming from a perspective of a Finn), the Roma remain a fringe. If it would be so easy for them to apply for social security, one would assume they'd do just that. Yet, they continue to beg (and to do various other crime, but I digress). Funny that, given that the EU should provide them no matter where they come from.
Really, do you pull this b.s. out of your ass? A minute with Google will show that you are wrong:
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wir...
Since you are probably too uneducated to read German, let me help you with a translation for the most relevant section:
I.e. the EU has rules in place specifically prohibiting what you recommend Greeks do.
Being from Europe myself, I can indeed attest that both your understanding of politics and your conduct are typically European.
The OECD published 87 concrete recommendations for reducing administrative burdens in Greece, which are an unnecessary 3 billion Euro burden on Greek businesses annually.
Some of the OECD suggestions include things like "simplify annual leave records", "streamline start-up notifications to the Labour Inspectorate for construction sites", "establish a clear VAT registration threshold at EUR 10 000", "remove inactive VAT taxable persons from the VAT register", "simplify the periodic VAT return", "Allow full electronic submission of all notifications to Registry (company changes and annual financial statements)", "simplify financial statements of small and micro companies","Streamline payment process for all GEMH notifications to allow payments without visiting an office", etc.
Of course the OECD was not willing to say the most reasonable thing - Greece should have labor laws like the US. Fire people whenever you want, no crazy contracts, no crazy severance pay or vacations.
We know that the Hartz Reforms on labor regulations is what brought German unemployment rates down from 10% in the early part of the 2000's and is why they survived the financial crisis so well.
I concur that Greece ranks last in the Eurozone in Transparency International's corruption ratings. However I believe that corruption thrives when unclear and burdensome regulations make doing reasonable business impossible without paying someone off.
For banking and loans to work there is a simple rule, if you are foolish enough to make a bad loan to someone who probably won')t pay it back, then you pay the price when they default. Instead the people who make the bad loans (i.e. bankers) get to keep their bonuses profits and everyone else gets to pay for their stupidity, greed and corruption.
This is a perfect example of moral hazard, and the bank executives should either be in jail, have their fortunes confiscated or both
Your the best kind of correct, "technically correct", but your still wrong.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jo...
Cheap storage VM.
The German and French banks are hardly private institutions. State banks etc.
Private investors in Greek bonds already took a 'haircut'. Last time the deadbeats were bailed out.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They can't dodge taxes and have their money in banks. So no. Their money is safe in a mattress, in hard assets or a Swiss bank.
Greeks know their own politicians better than we do. They know BS when they hear it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Nations don't take on the debt of their national banks. They own it from day one.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It was always public greek debt, the only question is who the deadbeats owed money to. Went from German and French state banks to the euro zone central bank.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Just because someone is on the tit doesn't mean they stop what they were doing to pay the bills before the tit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
My point stands, the US cannot default on dollar debts.
Cheap storage VM.
That would be because:
1. US labour policies are abject failures designed to serve the top elites against everyone else. The only exception are equality portions of the law, which were enacted mainly after mass unrest and demonstrations related to those policies.
Between the massive student debt bubble you have going, extreme difficulties people experience in work place and rise of "Walmartization" where so many people are doing jobs either for free or on minimal wage is not success for anyone but employer. And let's be honest here - US was one of the last Western countries in the world to give up institutionalized slavery, and slavery at least forced employers to take care of worker slaves to some degree.
Modern US legislation has no such requirements. US is still to an extent riding on collective wealth it managed to amass in its golden 60s to 80s, but it's running out fast as shown by severe issues facing work force in US, even those employed.
German policy is being largely retracted in many aspects because it managed to cause completely absurd situations such as working people who have to be on social security to survive, working families that cannot afford to have electricity and so on.
Suggesting that it was workplace reforms rather than economic boom at the time that caused the German rise is hilariously absurd, essentially when you consider that reforms only hit the lowest strata of the society - it's still almost impossible to fire a worker in Germany, something that for example Nokia found out when they tried to close the last factory that was still making mobile phones in Germany back in late 2000s. It was a standard CDU-style reform sadly, fuck over the poorest, give money to the richest. Luckily the economic boom of 2001-2008 saved them from showing the worst consequences, which didn't hit until after 2008, such as masses of employed people who have to rely on social security, and Energiewende managing to score a successful double whammy on the same people where they couldn't even have electricity in their houses because of its rising prices.
Suggesting that policy that causes people who are working to not be even able to afford electricity in a modern Western country is successful is... well, just says a lot about the one pronouncing the words. CDU ended up largely rolling back on many of the changes because of it.
2. Greek workplace market in private sector is completely unregulated. That is much less regulation that even US. That is why OECD recommendations didn't make recommendations for workplace regulation in Greece. There aren't any to be made in terms of deregulating further because that would assume having any regulation that works in the first place. Outside the political hirings in public sector, which have nothing to do with labour policy and everything to do with massive corruption, Greek labour market is completely unregulated. It's the key problem because it's impossible to tax unregulated market like this. As a result, everyone just slips tax officials some fakelaki to say that they earn 9999.99EUR a year, incidentally lowest tax bracket which is 0% taxed.
There was a post recently right here in this discussion where person was shocked as to why any of the devs, who are obviously private sector workers didn't just do that, just like everyone else does.
Enacting proper regulation in workplace is one of the main recommendations of Eurogroup, which wants ILO to look at how to create a proper regulatory structure for Greek private sector and enact something that would actually enable government to tax private workers. This is one of the key problems in Greece today.
Suggesting "deregulation" of such a system as a solution demonstrates a complete lack of comprehension of the topic. It's akin to suggesting that ship that doesn't have a hull yet could be made more mobile by stripping parts of its hull to make it lighter.
Let me repeat it: THE BUDGET OF GREECE IS BALANCED.
Not if it doesn't have the money to pay debts. Debt payments are a government expense just as valid as roads, army, health care, pensions, or anything else that the government pays for. It's only when you remove debt payment that the budget becomes balanced.
Saying that removing illegal immigrants will cause poor welfare Americans to start working in fields is like saying keeping the death penalty will stop people from killing each other. It's a conservative fantasy without any evidence (and actually evidence to the contrary).
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Why is that semicolon in your signature?
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.