After years of pain and humiliation Greece may exit Euro AND EU... PVC says...

[Brandy Blue]

The British electorate in general, and the Scottish electorate in particular, have had a political discourse on precisely those economic points that seem to elude the Greek politicians. Is it too much to expect professional politicians to have a better grasp of economics than a population numbering millions?

Sorry, but I don't see the connection between what you are saying and what I said. I never suggested that the Greek politicians should not have known better. I did suggest that the Greek voters, who were not AFAIK exposed to any such discourse, might be excused for not knowing better than their leaders. Or is your point that the Greeks should have listened to the BBC?

[Crandar]

The Greek economy is collapsing and the country is in danger of joining the Third World. No people deserve that, certainly not for irresponsible fiscal policy.

The way people talk about the Greeks you'd think they all bathed in the blood of Arian children.

Well, they deserve it, if they have been short-sightedly focusing their economy on how to get as much money as possible from the EU, inspite of being instructed to the contrary, and when that farce eventually stopped, they chose to elect a couple of opportunistic politicians, whose promises every Greek knew they were contradictory (euro without austerity).

Well, you reap what you sow and I hope that this small adventure will teach the Greeks that they are not God's chosen people. But mentioning Fallmerayer is still a tabboo over there...

[Fragony]

Let the French, Benelux, and German banks reap what they sowed I'd say. Without troubling the Greeks and most importantly me.

[InsaneApache]

The Greek economy is collapsing and the country is in danger of joining the Third World. No people deserve that, certainly not for irresponsible fiscal policy.

A few years back, when I was visiting my dad over there, I got talking to an ex-pat who'd lived in Greece since the 80s. He told me that when he first came to Greece there were more people riding around on donkeys then there were driving cars. So yes, it is a third world country propped up by rich EU nations. I also remember him saying that if they ever left the Euro/EU then that's what the Greeks would have to go back to. BTW the last time I was there there were more Beemers and Mercs around than you could wave a stick at.

The country has no industry to speak of. We in Yorkshire have more railways than the whole country for instance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railways_of_Greece. So how they hope to get out of this mess is a mystery.

Just an anecdote. In 2001 I went to Corfu with some friends, when Greece still had the Drachma. A beer cost around 500 Drachma, about a quid in those days. Fast fowards to 2004 when I went to Crete, (Knossos was a BIG disappointment btw) they had changed to the Euro and beer was now 2.5/3 Euros a giant hike to about 2 quid a beer. So in the space of a year or so they doubled their prices. It gets even better.

When the crisis hit and visitor numbers fell off a cliff what did the Greek businesses do? The opposite of what any good businessman would do if you can't shift your stock. They put the price up. That's right, they couldn't sell a beer for 3 Euros so they hiked the price to 4 Euros. Moronic doesn't even start to cover it.

Pater says that the problem is a long term brain drain, with the brightest and best departing the country leaving the idiots behind. He has no love for the Greeks after living amongst them for 10 years. Who am I to judge?

Oh another anecdote for you. They believe that fairies and goblins live in the woods. I've heard it with my own ears. Explains a lot.

Oh I nearly forgot about the endemic corruption. Nothing and I mean nothing is done in Greece unless you cross a palm with silver. From buying a ferry ticket to getting a telephone installed. Not to mention the other national sport of ripping people off.

[Crandar]

Pretty much everything you listed is accurate, except for the goblin part, which is utterly ridiculous. Whoever told you that, he was just trying to laugh at you.
Anyway, that's not important, but as you said, the worst part of the Greek people live in the islands and Crete.

It's not a coincidence that especially in the north, most people despise them and I personally consider them to have a fascist attitude. Gun ownership and murder percentages are top high, the clientele system is impregnable, in some drug villages the state and the police have no authority and they have a code of honour close to the Pashtuns.

Recently, a Cretan student was forced to commit suicide, because he was not "masculine" enough, according to his backward compatriots. Of course, their attitude towards the tourists isn't very different.
If you want to visit Greece, I would suggest the northern part. Less corrupted individuals, more archeological sites, lower temperatures and a bit better organised, thanks to the prolonged Ottoman occupation.
It's not a coincidence that the better-informed Slav tourists come exclusively to northern Greece.

[InsaneApache]

Pretty much everything you listed is accurate, except for the goblin part, which is utterly ridiculous. Whoever told you that, he was just trying to laugh at you.

It wasn't one person it was several. A Czech guy my dad was friends with told me, that ex-pat I mentioned told me and when I asked my dad he confirmed it. A deeply superstitious naive people. Like I said, only the idiots left behind.

I agree with you about the islands though. The mainlanders look at them as ignorant bumpkins.

[Crandar]

Goblins (orcs and cratures like that) were never part of the Greek mythology. Never. Not during antiquity, medieval times or the ottoman occupation. There isn't even a word for them, when the public learnt about them, after having played TES and watched LotR, they just called them using the english word.
Don't get me wrong, the Greeks are highly supertstitious, with the highest theist percentage in Europe, but their superstition concerns the conspiracy theories, christian miracles performed by images of Virgin Mary and the sainthood of some monks, who are considered as modern prophets.
Equally stupid with the fairy tales, but let's be precise.

[Sir Moody]

Goblins (orcs and cratures like that) were never part of the Greek mythology.

This is entirely correct - Goblins are from French/British mythology (thought to be similar to the Germanic Kobold)

[Gilrandir]

It would be funny if China or Russia put up the money for Greece...

Russia doesn't have the money, China doesn't have the reason.

[Kagemusha]

The Greek economy is collapsing and the country is in danger of joining the Third World. No people deserve that, certainly not for irresponsible fiscal policy.

The way people talk about the Greeks you'd think they all bathed in the blood of Arian children.

What on earth are you talking about?

Greece has already made considerable cuts, and all that has happened is the economy has shrunk faster than the debt. Tax rises will simply produce more tax evasion, especially in a climate where people have almost no money to begin with. The worst part is the forced sell off of profitable assets that will further beggar the Greek state.

At least now we know the Germans are finally over World War II because their politicians are back to being merciless and inhumane (not a Nazi reference, btw).

Have you heard of the saying: " Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach man to fish and feed him for a life time" ?

What the offered package essentially does, is that it puts Greek economy under the supervision of the other EMU countries, whom actually have been able to take care better of their economies.

The package does not mean robbing Greece, but giving endless amount of bailouts would mean robbing both Greece and the rest of the EMU countries tax payers.

I also do not understand how many portray the possible default and Grexit. Look at Iceland. After their default they are now better off and their economy is enhancing. There is no point hanging into Euro, if the currency is not suited for Greece, but if they decide to hold unto it no matter what cost, then i dont see any other option then EU taking control of their economy and turning their economy into more suited of Euro. Which is essentially victory for more pro Federalist elements of EU.

If Greece wants to become vassal of EU then they should take the package. If not, they should Grexit. Life goes on, no matter what they do, unlike what the market wants everybody to believe.

[Montmorency]

It seems all of you are missing the fundamental point that Greece and Germany had put each other in such a desperate position that the only possible outcome was (and will be) an escalating series of faits accompli.

What else could Germany do? What else could Greece do?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

What on earth are you talking about?

I'm talking about a 25% contraction in five years and 50% of young people without jobs.

Oh - and Greece might run out of beef by the end of the month.

Have you heard of the saying: " Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach man to fish and feed him for a life time" ?

Have you heard the story about the time the Spartans offered to free the Athenians from Tyranny and the Athenians refused, saying they'd do it themselves?

What the offered package essentially does, is that it puts Greek economy under the supervision of the other EMU countries, whom actually have been able to take care better of their economies.

And what does this teach the Greeks? It teaches them to hate the rest of the EMU for their hardships and not to take ownership of any success, as soon as the EMU countries leave Greece will change direction. Greece has to dig itself out of the hole, it shouldn't get a bailout - rather it should get a complete writedown on ECB and EMU debt. That money is gone, at this point the rest of the EMU area is pouring money into Greece to service debts the Greeks owe them. It's a snake eating it's own tail, because every go round the money is being siphoned off in fees, graft and expenses and everybody is gradually getting poorer.

Greece cannot may its debt, so cancel the debt and let the Greeks figure out how to run the economy without outside help.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

and a bit better organised, thanks to the prolonged Ottoman occupation.

The Eastern Roman Empire called - it would like to talk to you about its administrative system. It seems unlikely the Ottomans had a net positive influence, the amount of graft in modern Greece is best explained by a repressed population - same as Russia - rather than an in-bred indolence or native corruption. If your yardstick for administrative efficiency is the hated Turk it's not surprising corruption is the national sport.

[Montmorency]

Greece cannot may its debt, so cancel the debt and let the Greeks figure out how to run the economy without outside help.

The problem is, Germany is deathly-afraid of seeing that through. So afraid that they would rather, as you say, feed the snake its own tail by indefinitely and indirectly servicing Greek debts owed to their own banks.

Just like Russia, Germany has driven itself into a really tight spot with European economic cooperation, and so must re-assert some of its latent authoritarian bluster to bluff away disaster.

If we're going to indulge in ancient allusions, then recall the Athenian maxim to the Melians:

The strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.

This maxim was never quite right. You see, it is the strongest of us who chafe most against their chains.

A corrected version would read:

'The strong do what they must until the weak have suffered what they can.'

[Montmorency]

'The strong do what they must until the weak have suffered what they can.'

I rather like that, actually. Let's have done with "justice" and "blame".

[Brenus]

So, that is it: IMF officially said that European plan won't work as Greece won't be able to pay debts. So, that is official, the Financial Coup implemented by the EU is just for political punishment, not for development and growth...
So Tsipras and his incompetent bunch were all along right.
Greece poorest will become beggars, unemployment will go up, GDP will shrink. And EU will have to pay the bill anyway and betrayed the reason why EU was built for.
UK will vote against EU, then who's next? Spain, Italy? France (well we did, but it was ignored by politicians)?

But at least, these lazy Greeks will suffer, which is exactly what some want...

[Kagemusha]

So, that is it: IMF officially said that European plan won't work as Greece won't be able to pay debts. So, that is official, the Financial Coup implemented by the EU is just for political punishment, not for development and growth...
So Tsipras and his incompetent bunch were all along right.
Greece poorest will become beggars, unemployment will go up, GDP will shrink. And EU will have to pay the bill anyway and betrayed the reason why EU was built for.
UK will vote against EU, then who's next? Spain, Italy? France (well we did, but it was ignored by politicians)?

But at least, these lazy Greeks will suffer, which is exactly what some want...

Nope. What IMF is saying is that EMU countries have to forgive some of the Greek debt additionally to the bailout package for the Greek debt to become manageable.

I think EMU countries should just force an Grexit and then give direct emergency aid to Greece. Holding Greece artificially in the Euro will be just endless drain of money. Hopefully Greek parliament will understand that also and say no today.

[Fragony]

So, that is it: IMF officially said that European plan won't work as Greece won't be able to pay debts. So, that is official, the Financial Coup implemented by the EU is just for political punishment, not for development and growth...
So Tsipras and his incompetent bunch were all along right.
Greece poorest will become beggars, unemployment will go up, GDP will shrink. And EU will have to pay the bill anyway and betrayed the reason why EU was built for.
UK will vote against EU, then who's next? Spain, Italy? France (well we did, but it was ignored by politicians)?

But at least, these lazy Greeks will suffer, which is exactly what some want...

'Financial coup', indeed, I couldn't call it anything else.

[Crandar]

The Eastern Roman Empire called - it would like to talk to you about its administrative system. It seems unlikely the Ottomans had a net positive influence, the amount of graft in modern Greece is best explained by a repressed population - same as Russia - rather than an in-bred indolence or native corruption. If your yardstick for administrative efficiency is the hated Turk it's not surprising corruption is the national sport.

The Ottoman Empire took great care to establish an articulate and efficient bureaucracy, including one of the first welfare systems, called waqf. She cared about her subjects as much the British or the Hapsburg Empires did.
Unsuprisingly, the Greek mountain populations, accustomed to their lifes of banditry and the absence of any centralised authority, desperately tried to avoid fullfilling their obligations as citizens of the Ottoman Empire.

Of course, that wasn't the case in Macedonia, where the populations learned to appreciate the positive consequences of the revided trading routes, the redistribution of land, the elimination of local barons or the establishment of an advance railway system and etc., but unfortunately the Greek state was formed by the southerners, who're still holding most of the legislative, executive and judiciary power.
Think of Greece, like Italy being ruled by the backward south and the remnants of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

[Montmorency]

^^^ Such advanced irony not even Husar could apprehend.

[Kagemusha]

European commission is proposing a emergency loan of 7 billion euro to Greece. I think we are about to find out how much solidarity Greece will get from non Euro, EU countries like UK, Sweden and Denmark.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/...-greek-bailout

[InsaneApache]

Oh the UK will pay up they always do. They'll make a song and dance about it but they will pay up.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The Ottoman Empire took great care to establish an articulate and efficient bureaucracy, including one of the first welfare systems, called waqf.

Having systematically demolished the previous Greek bureaucracy. I suppose my point here is not quite obvious, so I'll try again in more bland terms. Greece basically invented bureaucracy for Europe, and formalised the theory of the Polis, the relationship between the citizen and the state. All the things that make modern Western Democracies work were invented and refined in Greece, then filtered and further refined in Rome before being revived and adjusted during the Renaissance.

During the Middle Ages there were no functional "states" in Western Europe, we had "nations" that were collections of people with a roughly common language and culture but they were fluid and heavily dependent on a small aristocracy to keep them together. Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe the Roman Empire was hanging on tooth and nail and repeatedly recovering from disaster after disaster. The tide of history might have been coming in, but it is a testament to the resiliency of the Roman State that it took about eight centuries of constant pummelling by various Muslim powers to topple the last Emperor, and that there were periods of recovery.

So, if you're looking back into Greek history and describing the Ottomans as "occupiers" then it follows that modern Greeks are the direct descendants of the last vestige of the Roman Empire and thence a direct descendent of Classical Antiquity. I'm clearly not the first person to advance this point, because modern Greece is modelled on Classical Greece - the capital is Athens, there's a modern Sparta and a modern Corinth.

So maybe the problem isn't Greek society, but the Greek national mythos that only looks as far back as the Ottomans rather than to the period before that when Greece controlled its own destiny.

Maybe that's because the Greeks failed to retake Constantinople, I don't know.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

European commission is proposing a emergency loan of 7 billion euro to Greece. I think we are about to find out how much solidarity Greece will get from non Euro, EU countries like UK, Sweden and Denmark.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/...-greek-bailout

You'll be surprised because...

Oh the UK will pay up they always do. They'll make a song and dance about it but they will pay up.

...we're real Europeans. Weird isn't it? You'd think we'd be the most humbug of EU members, but if you look at the history of the UK in the EU you'll find an overwhelming tendency towards common solidarity, which is the source of our opposition of political union.

[Gilrandir]

And Finland may have its government down because of Greece:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/...ro-says-report

[Crandar]

Having systematically demolished the previous Greek bureaucracy.

Roman bureaucracy.

I suppose my point here is not quite obvious, so I'll try again in more bland terms. Greece basically invented bureaucracy for Europe, and formalised the theory of the Polis, the relationship between the citizen and the state. All the things that make modern Western Democracies work were invented and refined in Greece, then filtered and further refined in Rome before being revived and adjusted during the Renaissance.

Our modern institutions have been firstly invented by the flourishing city-states of Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia. Thanks to the continuous imitation, they were gradually adopted by their neighbors (Akkad, Assyria, Hittites, Lydia an etc.), until they reached Greece. What you decribe is a common misconception, dominant due to the fact that for historical reasons, we have much concerning the matters of Greece compared to that about the Semite or Iranian civilizations.
The Phoenician cities had an equally complicated bureaucracy with their Greek counterparts.

That being said, although the Roman Empire was, at first, bacially a collection of cities with a varied level of autonomy, it is true that after the reforms of Diocletian, a proper bureaucracy was established. However, when the Ottomans set their foot on the Balkan Penninsula, there was no more an organised state, just a plethora of warlike baronies (the collapse of the Serbian Empire caused the creation of 23 petty kingdoms).

Crushing those statelets and replacing them by a highly centralised authority, which focused on internal stability and not on how to capture the goats of the neighboring noble, was one of the biggest contributions to humanity made by the Ottoman Empire. The existence of a large state made possible the realisation of more ambitious projects, from irrigation to roads and hospitals.

It's not a coincidence that the first cracks on the imperial structure came from the most underdevelopped regions, like southern Greece, a land infested with bandits and nomads, with little interest in values that didn't belong to their tribalism.

[Kagemusha]

And Finland may have its government down because of Greece:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/...ro-says-report

I dont know how you read the article, but Finland´s two largest parties of the ruling government coalition are against further bailouts and the majority in our parliament are of same opinion. I think most know already that Finland is pretty like minded with Germany in this issue.

[Fragony]

Oh the UK will pay up they always do. They'll make a song and dance about it but they will pay up.

Don't you have the Irish for that, Bono works every time

[Montmorency]

Roman bureaucracy.


Our modern institutions have been firstly invented by the flourishing city-states of Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia. Thanks to the continuous imitation, they were gradually adopted by their neighbors (Akkad, Assyria, Hittites, Lydia an etc.), until they reached Greece. What you decribe is a common misconception, dominant due to the fact that for historical reasons, we have much concerning the matters of Greece compared to that about the Semite or Iranian civilizations.
The Phoenician cities had an equally complicated bureaucracy with their Greek counterparts.

That being said, although the Roman Empire was, at first, bacially a collection of cities with a varied level of autonomy, it is true that after the reforms of Diocletian, a proper bureaucracy was established. However, when the Ottomans set their foot on the Balkan Penninsula, there was no more an organised state, just a plethora of warlike baronies (the collapse of the Serbian Empire caused the creation of 23 petty kingdoms).

Crushing those statelets and replacing them by a highly centralised authority, which focused on internal stability and not on how to capture the goats of the neighboring noble, was one of the biggest contributions to humanity made by the Ottoman Empire. The existence of a large state made possible the realisation of more ambitious projects, from irrigation to roads and hospitals.

It's not a coincidence that the first cracks on the imperial structure came from the most underdevelopped regions, like southern Greece, a land infested with bandits and nomads, with little interest in values that didn't belong to their tribalism.

Leaving aside the noxious chauvinism, this is simply not correct. The Balkans have always been underdeveloped precisely due to the absence of central authority. The Ottomans did not introduce central authority at all, but simply emphasized and perpetuated the separation of the Balkans from the larger European and Mediterranean economy while establishing a different nominal suzerainty over the region. In other words, the Balkans suffered peripheralization after religious and political schisms left Byzantium standing alone between Moslems and Catholics, and that peripheralization was only exacerbated by the onset of Muslim domination over the area. Ottoman investment was minimal, as the Balkans were a warzone throughout the late Middle Ages, and afterwards stabilized into a mere geographic buffer between Anatolia and Central Europe that was ultimately even less valuable to the sultans than it was to the autokratores. So religious and political divisions compounded the existing lack of infrastructure in the Balkans, making the rise of Northern Europe not just something the region was unable to tap into, but also a shift in continental center-of-gravity that essentially condemned even Greece as fly-over - sail-past? - country.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Roman bureaucracy.

No, not since Heraclitus at the latest, it was a Greek bureaucracy run by Greeks for a Greek Basileus. The system as it developed increasingly owed more to Hellenistic-era Greek kingdoms than it did to the Latin Roman Emperors.

Our modern institutions have been firstly invented by the flourishing city-states of Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia. Thanks to the continuous imitation, they were gradually adopted by their neighbors (Akkad, Assyria, Hittites, Lydia an etc.), until they reached Greece. What you decribe is a common misconception, dominant due to the fact that for historical reasons, we have much concerning the matters of Greece compared to that about the Semite or Iranian civilizations.
The Phoenician cities had an equally complicated bureaucracy with their Greek counterparts.

None of this is relevant - here in the West we read Plato, Aristotle, Xenaphon, Plutarch... we don't read anything from Iran, from any period. So, for the West, Greece and Rome are the model.

Now, it has been said that the Greece we in the West see is not the Greece that actually exists, but rather Greece as we would have it be.

That being said, although the Roman Empire was, at first, bacially a collection of cities with a varied level of autonomy, it is true that after the reforms of Diocletian, a proper bureaucracy was established. However, when the Ottomans set their foot on the Balkan Penninsula, there was no more an organised state, just a plethora of warlike baronies (the collapse of the Serbian Empire caused the creation of 23 petty kingdoms)

Why was there no more state? Because the Muslims and the Latins had crushed it in successive invasions.

what you're basically saying is the Greeks are a people with no pride in their history and no sense of common benefit. That's pretty sad, given that the same area you have being pooing on is the area that spawned both the Mycenaean Kingdoms and the later Classical City-States, as well as being the cradle of Western Philosophy in the wider sense (as opposed to Middle or Far-Eastern philosophy.