Political, financial turmoil in Greece

Haven't they (the EU) done this to the UK before on Portugal, if I recall?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13275470

Portugal reaches deal on EU and IMF bail-out
4 May 2011

Yup. I like this bit:

Mr Socrates resigned as prime minister after failing to get austerity measures through parliament. There will be a general election on 5 June.

...And then he went to jail.

Ireland had to be bailed out, too. Would any of this have happened if they had held onto their own currency, which they could float or devalue as needed, instead of being tied to the euro and the German economy? I doubt it....

The 'austerity' imposed by the Troika has done terrible damage to these countries; they've lost their best young people, and their economies have imploded. Greece has a 25% unemployment rate - where does anyone think the money to repay the Troika is going to come from?

It's also worth bearing in mind that US debts dwarf all these nations - and these countries don't have a Free Shit Army, just people that have hit hard times through no fault of their own.

Yes, I forgot about Socrates.   It is impossible for me to feel anything but sympathy for the people who have been so hard hit.  The Greeks are being kicked to the curb. 

Am well aware of our massive debt, Bonny.  The leaders have to get people to vote for them so what can they do but offer free stuff?  

Oh, it's going up:

http://news.sky.com/story/1518285/britain-may-face-1bn-bill-for-greek-rescue

Britain May Face £1bn Bill For Greek Rescue
Chancellor George Osborne would "resist fiercely" any sizeable UK contribution, Sky sources say.

But never fear....

A Treasury source said: "The idea that British taxpayers' money is going to be on the line in this latest deal is a non-starter."

Look, just pull the plug on the WHOLE misbegotten euro project now. Germany and France can share a currency if they want.

British taxpayers will be liable for £1BILLION of emergency loans to Greece as European Commissioner tears up 'black and white' deal to protect UK from bailout bills
British public could be forced to contribute £1billion towards Greek bailout
Government to fight European bid for UK to release emergency loan funds
Would break deal made by David Cameron that UK would not have to pay
But European Commission officials say that the deal has no legal force


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3159806/British-taxpayers-liable-1BILLION-emergency-loans-Greece.html#ixzz3fomaplDV
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

This is just getting worse and worse.

It's as though they are dictators.....

In the space of twenty-four hours, Merkel and co have destroyed everything the EU was ever supposed to be, Lily. Now, it's reduced to nothing but naked greed and power-grabbing, trampling democracy underfoot along the way.



And now Juncker's torn up a deal made with the UK government. Utter insanity.

Yes it is, Bonny.  They are showing themselves to be desperate, IMO.

You bet.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-13/greece-just-lost-control-its-banks-and-why-deposit-haircuts-are-still-coming

Our only question, one we first asked in April, is whether as part of the deal, the 112.5 tons of official Greek gold will also be handed over to Frankfurt, Berlin or Brussels. Recall back in 2012:

Ms. Katseli, an economist who was labor minister in the government of George Papandreou until she left in a cabinet reshuffle last June, was also upset that Greece’s lenders will have the right to seize the gold reserves in the Bank of Greece under the terms of the new deal.

Since this bailout has the most draconian terms yet, we wonder just what the fate of Greek gold will be?

You aren't all right, you know. But there isn't much point in me expressing an opinion, since you don't actually live with this, and don't really want to know what I think.

There is far more to Greece, The Oppressed, than you realise. Greece has been taking the piss for far too long.

The rest of us have had to tolerate austerity for quite some time, albeit for different reasons. But it can't go on. Greece simply cannot go on spending more money than it actually has on the back of The European Union.

I don't really care if Greece got stitched up by the Deutche Bank, but don't tell me that they didn't know. Unless you all believe that Greece was too thick to notice.
Some arsehole bank came along and stitched up Greece, and Greece just went along with it. Oh really?

But the real point is that something has to be done about this.

And, of course, Greece does have a choice. But then I don't care. Leave The European Union, or don't. No one really cares. And Greece is entirely incapable of taking down The Euro.
Angel Murkell is the best chance that Greece has got.

And would you lend money to a proven defaulter without collateral?

Of course we want to know what you think Sabot.  

This is as I understand it, and please anyone correct me where I am wrong.  The start was the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 engineered by Wall Street and the international bankers.  There was the Sub Prime Mortgage debacle aka securities.  


Tony Blair, for instance, and other politicians got paid by Big Banks to peddle these dangerous securities to pension funds, municipalities and countries around Europe. Banks and Wall Street gurus made hundreds of billions of dollars in this scam scheme.

Come 2010 Greece was nearly bankrupt.   The Troika came to their aid with the wonderful idea of bailouts - two of them totaling 240 billion Euros - or 264 in today's market.  Together with tough austerity.

Fast forward to now - this is an extremely simplified version, and they are broke under the payments on those billions.  I think it's somewhere around 150% - 180% of their GDP??

http://moneymorning.com/2015/03/25/how-much-does-greece-owe-4-charts-that-put-greek-debt-in-perspective/

It is 175%.  This is a good explanation?

Lily is perfectly correct, Sabot. This has NOTHING to do with 'Greece taking the piss' and everything to do with rampant corruption in the world of mega-banking.

Just do some fact-checking. You will soon find out that 92% of the previous bail-outs has gone nowhere near Greek people - it went straight to non-Greek banks, particularly French and German banks. Deutschebank in particular has been kept afloat on this swindle.

France's finances are in pretty much the same state as Greece's - Merkel just hasn't got around to looting France yet - and for pretty much the same reason.

This business of blaming ordinary people for messes made by corrupt bankers is shameful, and contrary to the rubbish in the Daily Mail, this has NOT been caused by Greeks taking long siestas.

Oh, and don't let's forget the involvement of Goldman Sachs. Read the financial blogs - read the real story, not the version conjured up to make the sheeple hate Greece.

Thanks, LL:

Chancellor George Osborne has moved to block any attempt to use British taxpayers' money as part of the Greek bailout, Treasury sources have said.
Mr Osborne is said to have told other ministers that using EU-wide cash for a bridging loan was a "non-starter".
Doing so would breach an agreement that an EU-wide emergency fund would not be used to underwrite bailouts, he is expected to tell eurozone colleagues.

The very fact that Juncker thought he could just rip up the agreement and demand money speaks volumes about their utter arrogance.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/colette-browne/vultures-are-already-circling-athens-now-the-troika-is-in-charge-31374685.html

Vultures are already circling Athens now the Troika is in charge


This deal would have been the same no matter who was in office. Greece has gotten zero concessions, despite its large mandate in last week's referendum. A vague commitment to discuss the debt at some unspecified future date was always there and there is no new growth plan. Tsipras muttered that at least the €50bn privatisation fund, which the eurozone had wanted to manage from tax-haven Luxembourg, will now be run from Greece, but that is hardly anything to crow about. No matter where the sale takes place, the end result remains the same - state assets in a firesale with the proceeds going to prop up broken banks. No doubt the vultures have already begun to circle over Athens.


And in all the uproar over Greece, this has passed almost unnoticed:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-13/1984-comes-europe-end-freedom-speech-spain


'1984' Comes To Europe - The End Of Freedom Of Speech In Spain


Submitted by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

Spain has shown that it is fully on board with the Brussels authoritarian direction of ending democracy. Those in power have simply convinced themselves that the people do not understand what is good for them so they must impose their will upon the people but raw force. How does this differ in any what from the justification of imposing communism? This is the death of all freedom and it is upon our doorstep.

Read that and feel very, very afraid. The whole euro/EU experiment is on course to end very badly indeed. This time, sovereign nations aren't being invaded. Instead, they are being picked off one at a time by financial predators and a corrupt elite, and told it's for their own good.

That is a good piece, Lily:

http://moneymorning.com/2015/03/25/how-much-does-greece-owe-4-charts-that-put-greek-debt-in-perspective/

This one's good-

honestly, I don´t know who is telling the truth: if it is the Greek government, the press, or the Eurozone, or if it is the Troika.

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/09/29/german-company-is-top-tax-evader-in-greece/

A German company was found to be the biggest tax evader in Greece. A court in Athens found that Hochtief, the German company that was running the “Eleftherios Venizelos” Athens International airport was not paying VAT for 20 years. It is estimated that Hochtief, will have to pay more than 500 million Euros for VAT arrears. Together with other outstanding payments, like those to social security funds, it might have to py more than 1 billion Euros.

It must be noted that under the “Troika” austerity programme Greek employees lost around 400 million Euros from cuts to their salaries.

Hochtief, which is the biggest German Construction company, specializing in airports, was also running the Athens International airport through a subsidiary until 2013, when it sold it’s share to a Canadian company.
(source: neurope)

- See more at: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/09/29/german-company-is-top-tax-evader-in-greece/#sthash.E0gmDTiR.fJX8iqec.dpuf

Germans taking the piss out of Greece.

Another good piece:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11736779/Greece-is-being-treated-like-a-hostile-occupied-state.html

HOME»FINANCE»ECONOMICS
Greece is being treated like a hostile occupied state
A new deal for Athens is the worst of all worlds and solves nothing

Like the Neapolitan Bourbons – benign by comparison – the leaders of the eurozone have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.
The cruel capitulation forced upon Greece after 31 hours on the diplomatic rack offers no conceivable way out the country’s perpetual crisis. The terms are harsher by a full order of magnitude than those rejected by Greek voters in a landslide referendum a week ago, and therefore can never command democratic assent.
They must be carried through by a Greek parliament still dominated by MPs from Left and Right who loathe every line of the summit statement, the infamous SN 4070/15, and have only agreed – if they have agreed – with a knife to their throats.
EMU inspectors can veto legislation. The emasculation of the Greek parliament has been slipped into the text. All that is missing is a unit of EMU gendarmes.
Such terms are unenforceable. The creditors have sought to nail down the new memorandum by transferring €50bn of Greek assets to “an independent fund that will monetise the assets through privatisations and other means”. It will be used in part to pay off debts.
This fund will be under EU "supervision". The cosmetic niceties of sovereignty will be preserved by letting the Greek authorities manage its day to day affairs. Nobody is fooled. ....etc.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/greek-deal-coup-used-financial-system-instead-of-tanks-342319.html#.VaTdtv_nebc.twitter

Greek deal: Coup used financial system instead of tanks
Tuesday, July 14, 2015Rory Hearne
A united Europe is dead, buried in the rubble of the economic war unleashed against the people in the peripheral countries that were bailed out by the troika, writes Rory Hearne

HE ideal of a united Europe providing a global beacon of peace, democracy, and sustainable growth is dead.

It is buried in the rubble of the economic war unleashed against the people in the peripheral countries bailed out by the troika: Greece, Ireland, Cyprus, and Portugal.

The EU institutions, ECB, and core Eurogroup countries, led by Germany, have forced these countries to disproportionately pay for a crisis caused by the design of the euro currency and failures of these very institutions.

The Europe of solidarity, human rights, and social inclusion has been replaced with institutions and politics that look more like those of past empires and colonial powers.

What is going on now is a form of economic war and coup d’état against a democratically elected government of an EU member state. The parallels with recent and past historic catastrophic events should not be ignored. .....etc

Pedro Silva wrote:honestly, I don´t know who is telling the truth: if it is the Greek government, the press, or the Eurozone, or if it is the Troika.

The short answer is, None of them, Pedro. Every single one of them has their own agenda, which has nothing to do with the welfare of ordinary Greeks.

As ever, the truth lies beyond the headlines.

Wings Over Scotland retweeted
Max Keiser ‏@maxkeiser 1h1 hour ago
The bailout of Citibank was more than 10 X's bigger than Greece. Nobody batted an eyelash.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/42099554

Now it can be told: The bank that exposed the federal government to the greatest potential loss during the government bailout was Citigroup, which received a grand total of $476.2 billion in cash and guarantees, according to a new report of the Congressional Oversight Panel which oversees the TARP program

The Oversight panel tallied up the amounts of aid each bank received from the alphabet-soup panoply of federal bailout efforts, including TARP, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve.

For example, of Citi's total federal assistance, $25 billion came from the TARP's CPP program, $68.6 billion came from the FDIC's TLGP debt issuance program, and $88 billion came from the Federal Reserve's TAF liquidity program, among others.

The second biggest recipient of federal assistance, the new report says, was Bank of America , which racked up $336.1 billion in federal help.

Third on the list was Morgan Stanley , with a total of $135 billion in help.



And all of it, taxpayers' money.

Now we know what has been planned over many years by an elite group of people? Money was not enough......