Spain have lent 25 billion euros to Greece and is therefore one of the creditors.
Spain was hit hard in the 2008 economic crisis.
Should they loose that "investment" in Greece?
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/eu/debt_greek/debt_greek.html
The Euro concept stinks!

It's been 16 years since the Euro was introduced.
I have not seen the notes or the coins in real Life:)

It's been 16 years since the Euro was introduced.
I have not seen the notes or the coins in real Life:)

If you ever played Monopoly, yes you have :-)

& as seen in Greece, it's the taxpayers that end up paying it while the fatcats & snivel serpents continue to receive their gold plated renumerations as seen by Schoebbels attitude.

Look, say you have a loan that has 5% interest. Then one day you can get a loan for 4% interest, its only sensible that you take out the loan with 4% interest and use it to pay off the loan with 5% interest. You would save 1% interest. Its sensible financial policy.

And what do you think taxpayers like more? Pay for a loan with 5% interest or pay for a loan with 4% interest? I think that taxpayers would be happy with a government that tries to save them 1% interest no? This has nothing to do with fatcats and snivel serpents, this is just simple and sensible economic policy.

If you are rich this mess comes in handy.

Greek state sell off islands to get money into the treasury. One of the buyers is the American businessman Warren Buffett has bought the uninhabited island of Agios Thomas outside Athens for 15 million euros, according to the German Handelsblatt.
https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.se%2Fekonomi%2Fmiljardaren-warren-buffet-kopare-nar-grekland-saljer-ut-oar%2F&edit-text=
According to Iris Salani Papadopoulou is the interest in the Greek housing market from foreign individuals large, not least among Swedes. And it is definitely time to buy, the prices have gone down about 40 percent in the past five years.

& as seen in Greece, it's the taxpayers that end up paying it while the fatcats & snivel serpents continue to receive their gold plated renumerations as seen by Schoebbels attitude.

Look, say you have a loan that has 5% interest. Then one day you can get a loan for 4% interest, its only sensible that you take out the loan with 4% interest and use it to pay off the loan with 5% interest. You would save 1% interest. Its sensible financial policy.

And what do you think taxpayers like more? Pay for a loan with 5% interest or pay for a loan with 4% interest? I think that taxpayers would be happy with a government that tries to save them 1% interest no? This has nothing to do with fatcats and snivel serpents, this is just simple and sensible economic policy.

But isn't why they are doing, just taking out an additional loan at 4% to pay the interest payment on the loan at 5%?

---

Here's the blah-blah-blah (once more):
"Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 100 countries. He has twice been named among Time Magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders. He was called by the New York Times, “probably the most important economist in the world,” and by Time Magazine “the world’s best known economist.” A recent survey by The Economist Magazine ranked Professor Sachs as among the world’s three most influential living economists of the past decade."

And here's a link:
Germany, Greece, and the Future of Europe

Snippets of article below.

-----

NEW YORK – I have been helping countries to overcome financial crises for 30 years, and have studied the economic crises of the twentieth century as background to my advisory work. In all crises, there is an inherent imbalance of power between creditor and debtor. Successful crisis management therefore depends on the creditor’s wisdom. In this regard, I strongly urge Germany to rethink its approach to Greece...

In normal circumstances, economies overcome a debt crisis by cutting government deficits, shifting production from domestic sales to exports, and recapitalizing banks. The budget surplus and export revenues allow the economy to service its foreign debt, while bank recapitalization permits renewed credit expansion.

If the export boost is large enough and rapid enough, the earnings it brings largely offset the decline in domestic demand, and overall output is stabilized or even returned to growth. Spain, Ireland, and Portugal were all able to cushion their post-2008 slumps with a surge in export earnings. Remarkably, Greece could not. In fact, Greek export earnings in 2013, at €53 billion, were actually €3 billion lower than in 2008, even after domestic demand collapsed.

That is not surprising, for three reasons. First, because the European rescue packages did not recapitalize the Greek banking sector (the focus was on bailing out German and French banks), potential exporters could not obtain the operating credit required to support their retooling needs. Second, Greece’s economic base is too narrow to support a significant short-term increase in exports. Third, administrative, regulatory, and tax obstacles hindered the export response, especially as the tax increases in the rescue packages made it even harder for small and medium-size enterprises to grow and establish new markets abroad.

In my view, the policy response by Greece’s partners, led by Germany, has been unwise and highly unprofessional. Their approach has been to extend new loans so that Greece can service its existing debts, without restoring Greece’s banking system or promoting its export competitiveness. Greece’s initial €110 billion bailout package, in 2010, went to pay government debts to German and French banks...

Year after year, Greece’s creditors have promised that the bailout packages would bring about a meaningful rebound in output, employment, and exports. Instead, the country has experienced a depression comparable to the decline in output and employment that Germany suffered from 1930 to 1932, the years that preceded Hitler’s rise...

The formula for success is to match reforms with debt relief, in line with the real needs of the economy. A smart creditor of Greece would ask some serious and probing questions. How can we help Greece to get credit moving again within the banking system? How can we help Greece to spur exports? What is needed to promote the rapid growth of small and medium-size Greek enterprises?

For five years now, Germany has not asked these questions. Indeed, over time, questions have been replaced by German frustration at Greeks’ alleged indolence, corruption, and incorrigibility. It has become ugly and personal on both sides. And the creditors have failed to propose a realistic approach to Greece’s debts, perhaps out of Germany’s fear that Italy, Portugal, and Spain might ask for relief down the line.

Whatever the reason, Germany has treated Greece badly, failing to offer the empathy, analysis, and debt relief that are required. And if it did so to scare Italy and Spain, it should be reminded of Kant’s categorical imperative: Countries, like individuals, should be treated as ends, not means.

Creditors are sometimes wise and sometimes incredibly stupid. America, Britain, and France were incredibly stupid in the 1920s to impose excessive reparations payments on Germany after World War I. In the 1940s and 1950s, the United States was a wise creditor, giving Germany new funds under the Marshall Plan, followed by debt relief in 1953.

In the 1980s, the US was a bad creditor when it demanded excessive debt payments from Latin America and Africa; in the 1990s and later, it smartened up, putting debt relief on the table. In 1989, the US was smart to give Poland debt relief (and Germany went along, albeit grudgingly). In 1992, its stupid insistence on strict Russian debt servicing of Soviet-era debts sowed the seeds for today’s bitter relations.

And an older article written just before Greece's "partners" handed the country a long list of "reforms" to "help get the country back on its feet".

I'm hoping all you guys in here realize that every single time you heard the words "Greece has come unprepared" or "Greece has not proposed any reforms" or "Greece has written out its suggestions on the back of a napkin"...

What that really meant was, "We're ignoring any rational arguments and suggestions. This has nothing to do with economics. It never did. This is about b****-slapping Greece and any other country that even dreams about making any economic suggestions to Dr Schoebbels. We'd send you an email with our demands if only to avoid Varoufakis' machine-gun yammering (which we don't understand anyway, doesn't he know we're all just a bunch of lawyers?) but we fear the peasants people of Europe may get upset if we do. We are not psychopaths and we are not stupid. The ball is in Greece's court. Our door is shut."

-----

NEW YORK – The Greek catastrophe commands the world’s attention for two reasons. First, we are deeply distressed to watch an economy collapse before our eyes, with bread lines and bank queues not seen since the Great Depression. Second, we are appalled by the failure of countless leaders and institutions – national politicians, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank – to avert a slow-motion train wreck that has played out over many years.

If this mismanagement continues, not only Greece but also European unity will be fatally undermined. To save both Greece and Europe, the new bailout package must include two big things not yet agreed.

First, Greece’s banks must be reopened without delay. The ECB’s decision last week to withhold credit to the country’s banking system, and thereby to shutter the banks, was both inept and catastrophic. That decision, forced by the ECB’s highly politicized Executive Board, will be studied – and scorned – by historians for years to come. By closing the Greek banks, the ECB effectively shut down the entire economy (no economy above subsistence level, after all, can survive without a payments system). The ECB must reverse its decision immediately, because otherwise the banks themselves would very soon become unsalvageable.

Second, deep debt relief must be part of the deal. The refusal of the rest of Europe, and especially Germany, to acknowledge Greece’s massive debt overhang has been the big lie of this crisis. Everyone has known the truth – that Greece can never service its current debt obligations in full – but nobody involved in the negotiations would say it. Greek officials have repeatedly tried to discuss the need to restructure the debt by slashing interest rates, extending maturities, and perhaps cutting the face value of the debt as well. Yet every attempt by Greece even to raise the issue was brutally rebuffed by its counterparties.

Of course, as soon as the negotiations collapsed two weeks ago, the truth about the Greek debt began to be stated. The IMF was the first to break the silence, acknowledging that it had been urging debt relief but to no avail. The United States then let it be known that President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had been trying to convince German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble to offer debt relief to Greece, also without success.

Then even Schäuble himself, by far the staunchest opponent of debt relief, admitted that Greece needed it; but he also claimed that such relief would violate European Union treaty provisions barring bailouts of governments. Following Schauble’s remarkable acknowledgment (made publicly only after utter catastrophe had struck), Merkel herself opined that perhaps certain kinds of relief (such as cuts in interest rates, rather than in the debt’s face value) could do the job in a way that would be consistent with EU rules.

The fact that the Greek debt overhang was acknowledged only after negotiations had collapsed exposes the deep systemic failures that have brought Greece and Europe to this point. We see a European system of crisis management that is fraught with ineptitude, extreme politicization, gamesmanship, and unprofessionalism. I certainly do not mean to excuse Greek clientelism, corruption, and mismanagement as ultimate causes of the country’s predicament. Yet the failure of the European institutions is more alarming. Unless the EU can now save Greece, it will not be able to save itself.

The EU today operates something like the US under the Articles of Confederation, which defined the US’s ineffectual governing structure after independence from Britain in 1781 but prior to the adoption of the Constitution in 1787. Like the newly independent US, the EU today lacks an empowered and effective executive branch capable of confronting the current economic crisis. Instead of robust executive leadership tempered by a strong democratic parliament, committees of national politicians run the show in Europe, in practice sidelining (often brazenly) the European Commission. It is precisely because national politicians attend to national politics, rather than Europe’s broader interests, that the truth about Greece’s debt went unspoken for so long.

The Eurogroup, which comprises the 19 eurozone finance ministers, embodies this destructive dynamic, meeting every few weeks (or even more frequently) to manage Europe’s crisis on the basis of national political prejudices rather than a rational approach to problem-solving. Germany tends to call the shots, of course, but the discordant national politics of many member states has contributed to one debacle after the next. It is the Eurogroup, after all, that “solved” Cyprus’s financial crisis by partial confiscation of bank deposits, thereby undermining confidence in Europe’s banks and setting the stage for Greece’s bank panic two years later.

Amid all this dysfunction, one international institution has remained somewhat above the political fray: the IMF. Its analysis has been by far the most professional and least politicized. Yet even the IMF allowed itself to be played by the Europeans, especially by the Germans, to the detriment of resolving the Greek crisis many years ago. Once upon a time, the US might have pushed through policy changes based on the IMF’s technical analysis. Now, however, the US, the IMF, and the European Commission have all watched from the sidelines as Germany and other national governments have run Greece into the ground.

Europe’s bizarre decision-making structure has allowed domestic German politics to prevail over all other considerations. And that has meant less interest in an honest resolution of the crisis than in avoiding the appearance of being lenient toward Greece. Germany’s leaders might rightly fear that their country will be left holding the bill for European bailouts, but the result has been to sacrifice Greece on the altar of an abstract and unworkable idea: “no bailouts.” Unless some rational compromise is agreed, insistence on that approach will lead only to massive and even more costly defaults.

We are now truly at the endgame. Greece’s banks have closed, its debt has been acknowledged as unsustainable, and yet the future of both the banks and the debt remains uncertain. The decisions taken by Europe in the next several days will determine Greece’s fate; wittingly or not, they will determine the EU’s fate as well.

The EU seems to attract crooks and even the IMF.

Rodrigo Rato, the ex-head of the International Monetary Fund has been summoned by a judge for questioning over alleged money-laundering, the latest in a string of court cases targeting him.
http://www.thelocal.es/20150721/judge-to-quiz-ex-imf-head-rato-in-latest-fraud-case
I wonder how many crooks there are controlling the ECB...
The Euro zone are maybe becoming like this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNzRAnhLwWY

Perhaps don't blame it all on Germany. Germany is a powerful European player sure, but it isn't all powerful. In the case of Greece, Germany has been the more visible player but lets not forget that the German course of action has been strongly supported by countries such as the Netherlands and Finland as well as a bunch of others. Without their support Germany would not have been able to get this far.

Perhaps don't blame it all on Germany. Germany is a powerful European player sure, but it isn't all powerful. In the case of Greece, Germany has been the more visible player but lets not forget that the German course of action has been strongly supported by countries such as the Netherlands and Finland as well as a bunch of others. Without their support Germany would not have been able to get this far.

So in layman's terms, the EU is nothing but a crock of shyte, run by shysters.

@Alex, it seems Greece has started a ball rolling & it's beginning to pick up momentum.

Does Britain owe India?

Hmmm, interesting proposition. Let's see a possible outcome of this if it takes hold: -

Germany
to pay all countries successfully invaded - oops nice state of bankruptcy.

Britain
To repay all countries colonised - lovely, another bankruptcy.

France
All countries colonised - possible bankruptcy.

Netherlands
All countries colonised - if not bankruptcy, definitely hurt for a few years.

Result?

BYE-BYE Eurozone.

Meh there has been talk about payments for historical grievances for some time now and they don't go anywhere and will not go anywhere. No government will pay them. And really, they are sort of bad ideas, I mean look at last time a country was forced to pay back damages.

Meh there has been talk about payments for historical grievances for some time now and they don't go anywhere and will not go anywhere. No government will pay them. And really, they are sort of bad ideas, I mean look at last time a country was forced to pay back damages.

Yea, that country got massive aid then a debt haircut - now look at Cyprus & Greece. Where is their haircut?

Meh there has been talk about payments for historical grievances for some time now and they don't go anywhere and will not go anywhere. No government will pay them. And really, they are sort of bad ideas, I mean look at last time a country was forced to pay back damages.

Yea, that country got massive aid then a debt haircut - now look at Cyprus & Greece. Where is their haircut?

Not before we fought another World War.

But as I've stated before, I would support debt relief for Greece.

Meh there has been talk about payments for historical grievances for some time now and they don't go anywhere and will not go anywhere. No government will pay them. And really, they are sort of bad ideas, I mean look at last time a country was forced to pay back damages.

Yea, that country got massive aid then a debt haircut - now look at Cyprus & Greece. Where is their haircut?

Not before we fought another World War.

But as I've stated before, I would support debt relief for Greece.

There was another World War after 1953?

Sheesh, where have I been hiding to have missed that?

A quick flashback to 2010 when this whole mess got started...

It's easy to forget just how panicked the US was. It's easy to forget Sarkozy threatening Merkel he'd break up the Euro and take the South on his side. It's easy to forget Merkel crying like a baby because she would actually have to make some sort of decision for once in her life. It's is to forget how Merkel immediately started lying her ass off about how lazy Southern Europeans are, in effect trying to turn the people of her country into racists. It's easy to forget how Dr Schoebbels opposed bailing out the EU and how much he hated Greece and wanted it thrown out. It's easy to forget how -once he found out he couldn't throw Greece out- he immediately started handing out punishment to force Greece out. It's easy to forget that the biggest loan in history was dumped on (tiny) Greece in order to bail out the EU and had ****-all to do with any kind of "solidarity" towards Greece.

Oh and apparently it's easy to forget that this was all Team Germany. All other core EU countries were still licking their wounds for the first 3 years and not a peep was heard by ANY of them.

And by forgetting all that it's very easy to miss the fact that it took Dr Schoebbels 5 whole years to prop-up the EU banks by plundering Greece as punishment for its "profligate ways". And now that everybody feels safe there'll be no contagion, the "solidary" thing for Dr Schoebbels to do is to throw a thoroughly destroyed country to the wolves and finally be able to single-handedly guide Europe into the Dark Ages. It's a good thing he's not a psychopath or anything (yes, that's sarcasm).

Or did you guys miss all those episodes? I'm sure they're quite easy to find if you DO feel like watching them.

Meanwhile, here's a (random) quick summary of Episode 1 (Pilot):

-----

On the optimistic view, the crisis consisted of the acute risk that a Greek default on its national debt would lead to a cascading series of defaults in Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and maybe even Italy. That series of defaults would crush the European banking system, possibly bankrupt the government of France, and create huge ripple effects in Asia and the United States. Even worse, mere fear of this scenario was becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy. Investors worried about a Spanish (and Irish, and Portugese, and Italian) default were pushing up borrowing costs and therefore making a bankruptcy more likely.

...

Policymakers around the world worried about a scenario in which a single national default (most likely in Greece) would create bank runs in other countries, which in turn would force new defaults. Those defaults would create their own bank runs and an even bigger waves of defaults. Defaults by countries the size of Italy and Spain would cause massive losses to foreign banks, and trigger a new round of global financial crisis.

In the interests of avoiding mass panic, non-European leaders generally tried to project an air of public calm about this. But certainly the American government spent much of 2010 and 2011 terrified of a true disaster emanating from the other side of the Atlantic and lobbied as hard as possible for a solution that would avoid as much.



http://www.vox.com/2015/7/1/8871509/greece-charts

All Dr Schoebbels had to do was to extend the debt repayments which many have said was the best way forward & force reforms as they have done - BUT this should have been done 5 years ago.

Greece is screwed in that all these bailouts are actually doing is repaying interest on the previous ones - the principal still remains.

All that is needed now is for another country to experience such difficulties...

...with the way the EU is heading that is going to happen much sooner than some expect.

Funny thing about Germany - Does 9 have a religious fervour about it?

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/1/8871509/greece-charts

Good link Alex.

13) The Greek people don't think their voice counts in the Eurozone (and they're right)
This 2014 poll by the European Commission offers a damning look at the resentments building within the Eurozone. Only 23 percent of Greeks believe their voice is listened to within the Eurozone. But perhaps more tellingly, only 52 percent of Germans feel the same.

I see a pattern here.
New members in the EU and also members in the EMU don't think their voice counts.

It doesn't!

I object to the terms 'psychopath' and 'fascist' because it would be the incorrect use of both terms.

You are wise to do so because statistically you'd be right. Attacking a rant on the internet usually ends up in the level-headed person's favor. Your only mistake is thinking the person doing the ranting is NEVER being level-headed. I know I'm "loud" but I'm nowhere near as loud as the average opinionated Frenchman for example. And if you're wondering why I think I can get away with a French cliché it's because of real-life experience i.e. having travelled to half of France on 3 separate occasions and having quite a few "loud" French friends whom I love dearly. At first you feel like you are being "attacked" but you soon realize it's not personal, just their "normal" tone of voice and attitude.

I've spent a ridiculous amount of time with psychopaths at work. They make fantastic movies and television. I also hear they make wonderful surgeons for example. I think you are assuming that ALL psychopaths are criminal or homicidal. They are not. But they do ALL lack empathy and that's another little fact you got wrong (IF I remember correctly, you may never have said that in which case I'd obviously be mistaken).

So anyway, you made me read through the whole wall-of-text on Wiki about what a psychopath REALLY is... and he's exactly who I thought he was. In fact, it just reinforced my "diagnosis". And since I'm in the rare mood of actually enjoying nitpicking etymology:

Wolfgang Schäuble: Psychopath (clinical). Also an Empire Builder.
Jean-Claude Juncker: Psycho* Chief executive officer
Martin Schulz: Psycho* President
Jeroen Dijsselbloem: Haven't made up my mind yet

(Donald Tusk is the next guy that will be going through my vetting process btw because of a couple "red flags". But I know nothing about the guy so any info you guys already have would be deeply appreciated.)

*Now obviously there's no psychiatric definition for "psycho". These two are actually narcissists. But "narcissist" sounds way too innocent, because in reality "narcissists" are pretty much a different kind of psychopath. In other words, just as bad. Therefor the word "narcissist" is not pejorative enough to help us understand each other so I'll be using "psycho" instead.

-----

High PCL-R scores are positively associated with measures of impulsivity and aggression, Machiavellianism, persistent criminal behavior, and negatively associated with measures of empathy and affiliation.

Facet 1: Interpersonal

Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative

Facet 2: Affective

Lack of remorse or guilt
Emotionally shallow
Callous/lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Facet 3: Lifestyle

Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
Parasitic lifestyle
Lack of realistic, long-term goals
Impulsivity
Irresponsibility

Facet 4: Antisocial

Poor behavioral controls
Early behavioral problems
Juvenile delinquency
Revocation of conditional release
Criminal versatility

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_Checklist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

-----

As to the word "fascist" I'm using it in the neo-Italian context. More to do with dictators and less to do (in fact not at all to do) with Nazis. Or, for example, have you ever heard the expression "eco-fascist"?

I'm not saying you aren't level headed. In fact you make quite a few good points. Except the psychopath/fascist bit.

If you seriously want to claim that someone fits the psychiatric definition of a psychopath you have to do better than just quote a wiki and say you think the guy fits all the symptoms. You are making a claim, doubling down on it, so now you got to provide evidence that Schäuble actually exihibits any of those symptoms. Prove he is a pathological liar with a overinflated sense of self worth and a glib manipulator. Prove that he has no emotions, feels no guilt, has no empathy and lacks any kind of personal responsibility. Prove that he fits the psychopath lifestyle (I can tell you already that the fact that he is a successful politicians pretty much disproves any suggestion he fits within the described lifestyle model). And prove that basically the guy is a criminal. And no, pushing for harmful and stupid economic policies does not count as criminal behavior. Being wrong or an idiot is not a crime.

As for fascist, well again prove that he fits the model of Italian fascism. I have no doubt that the guy has some authoritarian tendencies, he has proven that, but again, thats not the same as fascism, not even the Italian kind.