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[Banjax]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8661385.stm


it's all kicking off as deep cuts threaten the stability of the country, as ordinary tax payers are forced to pay the price for bankers greed

even armed forces have been protesting 

[cem_devecioglu]

all flights to greece suspended in the last few days..

and there is no doubt it will effect other countries including us..

however may mean cheapo holliday for you..

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8661385.stm


it's all kicking off as deep cuts threaten the stability of the country, as ordinary tax payers are forced to pay the price for bankers greed

even armed forces have been protesting 

.....apparently .....some people on here think it was not their fault ......

[Tony H]

all flights to greece suspended in the last few days..

and there is no doubt it will effect other countries including us..

however may mean cheapo holliday for you..

Not by thetime you take into account the cost of full body armour, riot shield, baton, c.s gas and a tazor gun!

[Nickbat]

Profligacy, waste, corruption. Yes there has been some rather dodgy doings by financial organisations, as noted below, but the crux of the crisis was cheap money which, in turn, was brought on by joining the eurozone, when, strictly speaking, it should never have been admitted. 

I have plenty of other friends who work for the state. I use the word 'work' loosely. Some of them are conscientious and do their nine-to-five hours with a degree of enthusiasm. But the fact is that some didn't even bother turning up for work at all; they do other jobs instead, but still collect their state salaries.

I think of them as 'ghost workers' - and every Greek knows at least one of them. These ghosts have been milking the taxpayer for every penny they could take. Now, let's look at that word 'taxpayer'. In Greece, tax has long been something regarded by most people as entirely optional. You may choose to pay it, or you may not. There are a hundred ways of finding loopholes - some of them legal, many of them not.

Perhaps the greatest corruption of all was the way Greece managed to join the euro. There was no way in the world the government could have met the strict financial criteria, so they took another route: they lied. With the help of foreign bankers they simply misled Brussels and everyone else as to the true degree to which the state was in hock to the lenders.

Read the whole article. Most enlightening.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=503560&in_page_id=2

[Varche]

is this a vision of our near future? Yes (in November 2010). However there will be one big difference. All the rioting and protesting will be done on Internet chat forums and not outside in the cold!

[pscocoa]

20 years ago there was a coup in a West African country - yes there have been many.

Prior to the coup (but hopefully not a cause of it) we were licenced to set up an operation to bring in foodstuffs in exchange for commodity exports because the state systems had run out of money.

This went well and we had a total staff of 50. The World Bank asked me to look at the state systems governing the port area which had failed. There were 2000 mainly ghost workers.

They asked me would I sort it out - I said can I sack 2000 workers - answer no!! I did not take it on and we pulled out when licence expired

9 months later there was a bloody coup and no progress since economically even though fighting resolved for now.

[cem_devecioglu]

all flights to greece suspended in the last few days..

and there is no doubt it will effect other countries including us..

however may mean cheapo holliday for you..

Not by thetime you take into account the cost of full body armour, riot shield, baton, c.s gas and a tazor gun!

nope.. no worries.. Greece wont shoot shelf

tourism areas wont be effected .. unless they have customers 

[Banjax]

all flights to greece suspended in the last few days..

and there is no doubt it will effect other countries including us..

however may mean cheapo holliday for you..

Not by thetime you take into account the cost of full body armour, riot shield, baton, c.s gas and a tazor gun!

nope.. no worries.. Greece wont shoot shelf

tourism areas wont be effected .. unless they have customers 

do i detect a note of schadenfreude in your neighbours downfall cem?

[cem_devecioglu]

all flights to greece suspended in the last few days..

and there is no doubt it will effect other countries including us..

however may mean cheapo holliday for you..

Not by thetime you take into account the cost of full body armour, riot shield, baton, c.s gas and a tazor gun!

nope.. no worries.. Greece wont shoot shelf

tourism areas wont be effected .. unless they have customers 

do i detect a note of schadenfreude in your neighbours downfall cem?

 :-/

nope..

in all crysis the middle and lower working class pay ..

and imo I'm one of them.. no matter which country is..

but good news is people in Greece start to wake up from their sweet dreams (and hoping mine will also) , because the capitalist system start to collapse over them.. and also in other countries..

and guess what will happen after..

[Nickbat]

:-/

nope..

in all crysis the middle and lower working class pay ..

and imo I'm one of them.. no matter which country is..

but good news is people in Greece start to wake up from their sweet dreams (and hoping mine will also) , because the capitalist system start to collapse over them.. and also in other countries..

and guess what will happen after..

Yet it was a high-spending socialist government that got them into the mess in the first place...

[cem_devecioglu]

:-/

nope..

in all crysis the middle and lower working class pay ..

and imo I'm one of them.. no matter which country is..

but good news is people in Greece start to wake up from their sweet dreams (and hoping mine will also) , because the capitalist system start to collapse over them.. and also in other countries..

and guess what will happen after..

Yet it was a high-spending socialist government that got them into the mess in the first place...

only in name..

question is why USA give this much credit to a socialist govt

[Nickbat]

:-/

nope..

in all crysis the middle and lower working class pay ..

and imo I'm one of them.. no matter which country is..

but good news is people in Greece start to wake up from their sweet dreams (and hoping mine will also) , because the capitalist system start to collapse over them.. and also in other countries..

and guess what will happen after..

Yet it was a high-spending socialist government that got them into the mess in the first place...

only in name..

question is why USA give this much credit to a socialist govt

I think much of the credit came from the EU...

[cem_devecioglu]

:-/

nope..

in all crysis the middle and lower working class pay ..

and imo I'm one of them.. no matter which country is..

but good news is people in Greece start to wake up from their sweet dreams (and hoping mine will also) , because the capitalist system start to collapse over them.. and also in other countries..

and guess what will happen after..

Yet it was a high-spending socialist government that got them into the mess in the first place...

only in name..

question is why USA give this much credit to a socialist govt

I think much of the credit came from the EU...

just check this,

and you will see close debit-credit relation

http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/2010-05-04-stocks-tuesday_N.htm

and another
"Greece's debt managers agreed a huge deal with the savvy bankers of U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs at the start of 2002, according to the Spiegel.

“The deal involved so-called cross-currency swaps in which government debt issued in dollars and yen was swapped for euro debt for a certain period -- to be exchanged back into the original currencies at a later date.”

The U.S. bankers devised a special kind of swap with fictional exchange rates, Spiegel reported.

“That enabled Greece to receive a far higher sum than the actual euro market value of 10 billion dollars or yen. In that way Goldman Sachs secretly arranged additional credit of up to $1 billion for the Greeks.”

THE FRAUD

This credit disguised as a swap didn't show up in the Greek debt statistics, wrote Spiegel. In previous years, Italy used a similar trick to mask its true debt with the help of a different U.S. bank. In 2002 the Greek deficit amounted to 1.2 percent of GDP, it added.

“At some point Greece will have to pay up for its swap transactions, and that will impact its deficit. The bond maturities range between 10 and 15 years. Goldman Sachs charged a hefty commission for the deal and sold the swaps on to a Greek bank in 2005.”

THE DISGRACE

This led German Chancellor Merkel to state on February 17, 2010: "It would be a disgrace if it turned out to be true that banks that already pushed us to the edge of the abyss were also party to falsifying Greek statistics."

The New York-based Goldman Sachs Group, Inc, which was founded in 1869, is a global investment banking and securities firm which engages in investment banking, securities services, investment management and other financial services primarily with institutional clients.

Other reports on such financial speculation refer to a deal between Greek government and Goldman Sachs in 2001, involving the exchange into euros of some 13,7 billion dollars in dollar and yen-denominated Greek government bonds. The deal used artificial exchange rate.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud case against Goldman on April 16, alleging that Goldman sold mortgage investments without telling buyers they had been put together with help from a hedge fund client that was betting on the investments to fail.

The Greek case may be just the tip of an iceberg of other huge speculative operations between some EU countries and Western market-based financial giants, in particular the U.S-based ones. The American roulette seems to keep turning. "


EU is far away from what is happening..

reason simple : Greece is an important part of their system not only for EU.. and they cant let it collapse..

[Nickbat]

Cem, I know about the surreptitious efforts to disguise the Greek debt, but the point I am making is that the debt existed first...before the attempts to hide it. And that debt came about because of Greece's membership of the EU.