Greece economy articles

kefkat

kefkat

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These articles maybe of interest to you whom have a more serious interest in what is happening in Greece, from The Economist! Did you know that on October 28th each year they have a Greek Oxi (no) day

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When banks die

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MARIANA doesn’t really care who wins today’s referendum. The young pharmacist, working in a relatively poor part of Athens, has more pressing problems: she has been running out of medication fast this week. Greece relies almost entirely on foreign imports for its pharmaceutical supplies. But since capital control imposed last Sunday brought the country’s banking system to a sudden halt, some suppliers have stopped delivering key medication because they cannot get paid. Foreign bank transfers have been banned by the Greek government (with some complicated exceptions which in no way suffice) and Greek credit is no longer accepted outside the country (as stranded Greek tourists found this week when their credit cards stopped working). As things stand, she has another week’s worth of insulin in stock for diabetics but will then have to start turning her patients away. “Do you know what that means?” she asks, trying to keep a proud face, “Do you know what insulin does?”

Cont: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/07/greeces-economy-under-capital-controls?fsrc=nlw%7Cnewe%7C6-07-2015%7C

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There comes up a day

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FEW countries put sufficient store in rejecting things to have a national “No” day. But every October 28th Greece’s Oxi Day holiday commemorates the No with which it replied to a humiliating Italian ultimatum in 1940, a refusal to acquiesce that led to invasion.

The snap referendum that Alexis Tsipras called on June 26th after walking out of negotiations with the country’s creditors looks like the Greek prime minister’s attempt to stage another defiant rejection. He has urged Greeks to use the vote on July 5th to say Oxi to austerity and the “blackmail” of Greece’s creditors. The leaders of the European Union, for their part, are hoping for a resounding Nai: Yes to remaining within the euro and the wider European family.

Cont: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21656699-nation-decides-its-fate-again-there-comes-up-day?fsrc=nlw|newe|6-07-2015|
 
And another article:

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Greek tragedy
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ANALYSING a country’s debt sustainability sounds dry and nerdy. But the analysis the IMF prepared for Greece in late June spells out the truly tragic consequences of the Greek electorate’s decision in January to vote in a populist government led by Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister and leader of the radical-left Syriza party. Greece has gone from a position where both its economy and its underlying debt position were on the mend, to one where it will need bucketfuls of further rescue finance from official creditors together with more debt relief, the IMF shows.

Worse, these calculations were made before Mr Tsipras’s reckless decision to call a referendum on the terms of a further bail-out (and to campaign for rejecting it). That has inflicted yet more damage on the economy by closing down both the country's banks and its negotiations with creditors, and caused Greece to become the first developed country to default on the IMF (though the Fund more blandly calls this going into arrears). Even if voters on Sunday vote against Mr Tsipras and support the now withdrawn bail-out proposals made by the creditors, the cost of clearing up the mess caused by the Syriza-dominated government has clearly risen dramatically.

Cont: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/07/imfs-sad-story?fsrc=nlw|newe|6-07-2015|
 
I would view this as an experiment and I know its shitty for millions of people but thats what it is...

I think 'good let it fail', will be interesting to see the consequences because I wanted this for Ireland... We're on the mend now but I still believe we are operating with a system setup to fail eventually... Geeece could possibly have a clean slate but one nation trying to escape the banks is not going to be easy... We are all debt slaves and I hope Greece can rise from the ashes and somehow shake off the debt or resist attempts to crush them and force it back into debt slavery...

The banks work for themselves and not the people, it seems good to me that the Government there did seem to work for the people in some respects... Not everyone but the majority...
 
Have to say that the Greeks brought this on themselves.

I upset people on facebook on a George Gallaway 'well done to the Greeks' shite post. People are hero worshipping them and think they are bringing down capitalism. Well, if you don't like capitalism don't spend beyond your means and don't borrow. Simple.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010

One of many salient points, they've 'had their fun' and now:

"If Greece walks away from $400 billion in debt, then the European banks that lent the money will go down, and other countries now flirting with bankruptcy (Spain, Portugal) might easily follow."

They were reckless with their spending, stupid pay grades for public service staff, retirement age way too early plus the fraud and non tax paying now they expect the rest of Europe to foot their bill.

As one Greek business owner said on the news, a lot of them need to work harder, many are half arsed at best.

I hate this 'good for them' bollocks.

My facebook post at the moment:

I've just held a referendum at my household and we've voted 100% in favour of paying no more of our debts. I've informed Santander of the decision. Whoop. Mortgage free. I might borrow some more money and not pay it back, sounds fun.
 
a senior I.M.F. official told me, not long after he’d returned from the I.M.F.’s first Greek mission. “The way they were keeping track of their finances—they knew how much they had agreed to spend, but no one was keeping track of what he had actually spent. It wasn’t even what you would call an emerging economy. It was a Third World country.”

As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. “We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension,” Manos put it to me. “And yet there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.” The Greek public-school system is the site of breathtaking inefficiency: one of the lowest-ranked systems in Europe, it nonetheless employs four times as many teachers per pupil as the highest-ranked, Finland’s. Greeks who send their children to public schools simply assume that they will need to hire private tutors to make sure they actually learn something. There are three government-owned defense companies: together they have billions of euros in debts, and mounting losses. The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as “arduous” is as early as 55 for men and 50 for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than 600 Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on. The Greek public health-care system spends far more on supplies than the European average—and it is not uncommon, several Greeks tell me, to see nurses and doctors leaving the job with their arms filled with paper towels and diapers and whatever else they can plunder from the supply closets.

“The Greek people never learned to pay their taxes .... because no one is ever punished. It’s like a gentleman not opening a door for a lady.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010
 
Wish they'd hurry up and default - be handy to top up the ISAs
Anyway a long and proud history of financial responsibility
http://thereformedbroker.com/2015/06/28/some-stuff-you-should-know-about-greece-before-you-lose-your-s/
 
All part of the great European vision.
Invent a currency that applies to 19 countries which have differing economies. Deny these countries the means to alter interest rates to suit their own particular needs. Install this currency without political union. Make up rules for joining the currency then bend or ignore those rules so that countries that don't meet them can join by fraudulent means.(Helmut Kohl, I'm looking at you).
When the economies of these countries begin to fail chuck money at them to make sure the European dream doesn't fall apart. Make sure that Germany benefits indirectly from this by getting contracts for German firms to build infrastructure in Greece that the Greeks can't afford. Sell the Greek Government B.M.W. limos on tick so that their, largely corrupt, politicians can swan about in fine form. Make sure that the said politicians have a large client base who will vote to keep the gravy train running. When the auditors of the E.U. refuse to approve its accounts for the 19th or 20th year running sweep it under the carpet and carry on regardless.
And we laughed and tutted at the goings on in F.I.F.A.

 
ironside - 7/7/2015 19:59

All part of the great European vision.
Invent a currency that applies to 19 countries which have differing economies. Deny these countries the means to alter interest rates to suit their own particular needs. Install this currency without political union. Make up rules for joining the currency then bend or ignore those rules so that countries that don't meet them can join by fraudulent means.(Helmut Kohl, I'm looking at you).
When the economies of these countries begin to fail chuck money at them to make sure the European dream doesn't fall apart. Make sure that Germany benefits indirectly from this by getting contracts for German firms to build infrastructure in Greece that the Greeks can't afford. Sell the Greek Government B.M.W. limos on tick so that their, largely corrupt, politicians can swan about in fine form. Make sure that the said politicians have a large client base who will vote to keep the gravy train running. When the auditors of the E.U. refuse to approve its accounts for the 19th or 20th year running sweep it under the carpet and carry on regardless.
And we laughed and tutted at the goings on in F.I.F.A.
Click to expand...

:1: in a nutshell. What you failed to add was make it impossible to pay the debt back, (like a loan from a loan shark), and then rape the country of all its assets etc to service the debt. Greece has been selling off its beaches, and Germany etc has been circling like a vulture over its infrastructure, utilities etc.
some conspiracy theorists might even suggest the plan all along was to put these countries in a position where the people that run 'our' governments get richer by buying assets for a pittance to service debts held by the private banks of the world richest people, but surely nothing like that could really be going on in the democracy we live in..... Could it?
 
The Fear - 7/7/2015 08:49

a senior I.M.F. official told me, not long after he’d returned from the I.M.F.’s first Greek mission. “The way they were keeping track of their finances—they knew how much they had agreed to spend, but no one was keeping track of what he had actually spent. It wasn’t even what you would call an emerging economy. It was a Third World country.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010
Click to expand...

I'm not an economist, but even I with my knowledge on the subject wouldn't have lent a 3rd world economy huge amounts of money they had no way of servicing. Why lay all the blame at Greece's door? Do the lenders not need to shoulder any of the responsibility?
 
How can an organization that can not get its own books properly audited and in order expect any thing other than the same from its members ? Whole E.U. is a joke I understand the risk we run getting out but staying part of an organization that cant run itself is surely a bigger risk.
 
The latest thinking from The Economist, now the referendum has taken place

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IN A crisis studded with missed deadlines, Sunday July 12th really could mark the denouement of the Greek debt drama. The leaders of the euro zone along with those of all the EU’s 28 member countries will gather for a set of meetings in Brussels. If Alexis Tsipras, Greece’s prime minister, can strike a deal with his creditors that day, his country will stay afloat inside the euro. If there is no such deal, Greece is heading inexorably towards the whirlpool of Grexit. Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council—a Pole not prone to hyperbole—calls it “the most critical moment in the history of the EU”.

All sides insist that their aim is not to eject Greece from the euro, but rather to find a way to keep it in. But the more honest European politicians admit that the likelihood of Grexit has never been higher. Betting now puts it at around 50%. Shockingly, for something so imminent, probable and with such dramatic consequences, there has been remarkably little public debate about how Greece would leave the euro. The best outcome for Europe would still be a deal on July 12th that keeps Greece in. But it is also time to make contingency plans for the sort of Grexit that does the least harm.

Cont: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21657394-deal-between-greece-and-its-creditors-would-be-best-if-there-has-be-grexit-here?fsrc=nlw|hig|9-07-2015|
 
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