Greece's final countdown... Germany says no more!

Very interesting comment below the article.... Love Merkel's comment to Farage at the end.....Is something sinister going on?

"That's the way Germany. With Greeks scavenging trash cans to feed their families and increasing numbers living on the streets and even more yet to lose their homes, you stick to your guns and tell them that in the interests of a mad communist idea they must starve to make the Euro work.

Meanwhile you keep feeding your faces with herring and potato salad because you are the only damned country which can afford to do so.

You knew when Greece joined the EU that its figures were false and that it could not possibly afford the cost of entry but the dream came first and everything was swept under the carpet.

Now the utterly obvious has happened you think you can solve their problem by starving most of them to death. You probably can but you are as guilty of their situation as they are. With free movement within Europe you are forcing austerity only on those who cannot afford to move to other countries - austerity which is not going to work because simply put the Greeks are not earning anything and they have no way left to reduce their expenditure.

Everything they spend is needed to feed their people, pay for doctors, electricity, gas and other things essential for life.

Let them leave the Euro and take up their own currency because until they do they don't have a chance of recovery.

When Nigel Farage suggested this to Merkel she replied "Mr Farage, if we let Greece leave the Euro it could be the end of all our dreams".

So there you have it. A country dying to fulfill a dream of an ex communist.

Austerity rules but not for the people but for the EU and its German owners"
 
I don't know enough about the German culture at the moment. Are there still a lot who are socialists/fascists at heart?

Obviously the EU bureaucracy is massively socialist given its ridiculous bill of "rights" etc, and clearly very significant portions of the population in France, Greece, Spain, Italy are socialists/fascists but are most Germans the same?
 
I doubt they will let Greece fallout. If they do, then the market will eye Spain straight away.Greece is a peanut compare to others.
 
Lunardragon said:
I doubt they will let Greece fallout. If they do, then the market will eye Spain straight away.Greece is a peanut compare to others.
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Only the ECB can save them.......Saw an article about Spain over weekend..... A German advisor thinks they will not need a bailout.
 
Of course this is what Germany wanted all along if they couldn't get their budgets in order. The second the ECB created the mechanism for non-sovereign banks to get directly bailed out Merkel began licking her lips.

Now and only now can she veto further funding to Greece.. As a result they will have to default on the bonds owned by German commercial banks.... The commercial banks will get bailed out by the ECB directly without the German government having to provide guarantee or collateral. Germany gets Greece ( shortly followed by the rest of the PIIGS) off their backs without having to take a hit to their own debt to GDP ratio.

If only they had the spine of a Goldman Sachs trader, they could have offered to buy up all the gold of the piigs with soon to be worthless Euro's to support the Deutschmark when this experiment finally fails.
 
This is getting very confusing..... But still very exciting at the same time lol.... Not much on MSN about it either.... Olympics not quite over yet.
 
bordsilver said:
I don't know enough about the German culture at the moment. Are there still a lot who are socialists/fascists at heart?

Obviously the EU bureaucracy is massively socialist given its ridiculous bill of "rights" etc, and clearly very significant portions of the population in France, Greece, Spain, Italy are socialists/fascists but are most Germans the same?
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To be honest, you sound like the kind of person that needs to stick to the basic American dichotomy of "anything I don't like = socialist or fascist (probably both)".
The history of Europe is very complex which is why the politics is just as complex.
And the reason why they don't see the world as simply as you do is because you've never had your house bombed to the ground, your family taken away for slave labour or the chaos that comes from the day your government just ceases to exist.

To me, people complaining about the EU project being "socialist" are the ones that have lived it soft and think they can judge without having suffered the European experience.

Simply put, No EU = War
 
Hang on there EJ, Greece were broke before they entered the EU......They dug theyr'e own grave.
 
WOOHOO
As long as they bring back the DRACHMA I'm rich :lol:
I wander if 50,000,000 will buy me an Island :P

:lol:
 
spannermonkey said:
WOOHOO
As long as they bring back the DRACHMA I'm rich :lol:
I wander if 50,000,000 will buy me an Island :P

:lol:
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It could probably buy you Ireland.
 
Earthjade said:
bordsilver said:
I don't know enough about the German culture at the moment. Are there still a lot who are socialists/fascists at heart?

Obviously the EU bureaucracy is massively socialist given its ridiculous bill of "rights" etc, and clearly very significant portions of the population in France, Greece, Spain, Italy are socialists/fascists but are most Germans the same?
Click to expand...

To be honest, you sound like the kind of person that needs to stick to the basic American dichotomy of "anything I don't like = socialist or fascist (probably both)".
The history of Europe is very complex which is why the politics is just as complex.
And the reason why they don't see the world as simply as you do is because you've never had your house bombed to the ground, your family taken away for slave labour or the chaos that comes from the day your government just ceases to exist.

To me, people complaining about the EU project being "socialist" are the ones that have lived it soft and think they can judge without having suffered the European experience.

Simply put, No EU = War
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Well it's not ironic that a guy with an avatar of Karl Marx stands up for everything that is socialist.

I don't see where bordsilver actually got anything wrong. When you have a bureaucracy the size of the EU writing the majority of legislation for other sovereign states, many of which are not wanted by the citizens themselves then you only get a choice of totalitarian style regimes to chose from when trying to describe them. You can try to defend socialist/communist governments all you like Earthjade, but the facts of the matter are that these failing European states got that way because of a combination of socialist policies they were never ever going to be able to afforded and state sponsored crony corporatism.

As sad as it is, the fact that large parts of Europe have undergone such hardship of wars and genocide followed by socialist/communist governments providing further hardship means very little. One would have thought that many of them would have learnt the first time that socialism doesn't work past a certain point. As sad as it is, they are going to have to learn the hard way once again. My only hope is that they make this the last time they have to go through it and learn from this.
 
hotel 46 said:
goldman sachs lent greece the money to get in to the euro, bet they would fail, pulled the plug on their loans to greece and collected on the fail bet to double up.
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Hotel 46, Can you provide links to that please?

I know about the original loan to hide the debt, I know about the debt restructure that made things much worse with a massive profit to Goldman but I am not aware of them pulling the plug on their loans. As far as I was aware Goldman still holds a huge amount of Greece's debt and it structured as such that they can't just outright default.
 
As sad as it is, the fact that large parts of Europe have undergone such hardship of wars and genocide followed by socialist/communist governments providing further hardship means very little. One would have thought that many of them would have learnt the first time that socialism doesn't work past a certain point.
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Maybe you should back off from the dogmatic labels.
The EU was not about "socialism".
The EU was a realpolitik move to incorporate Germany into the European political structure, mainly by controlling their heavy industry.
If this did not occur, then the natural tendency of Germany would be to dominate Europe as its natural power, in the same way France was Europe's natural power before 1870.

It's no coincidence that Britain, whose policy has always been to oppose Europe's natural hegemonic power was best friends with the German states pre-1870 but all of a sudden became France's strongest ally post-1870, throwing away centuries of animosity when it was clear Kaiser Wilhelm had the biggest army.

The EU is a political project to prevent war, not an economic project to make a socialist economy.
Personally live through a holocaust and I don't think you would be so hostile to the idea of governments cooperating with each other.

Let me ask you a question -
If you could do anything to the EU, what would you do?
Break it up completely?
 
Personally would love to see it broken up and not arbitraily force any internal borders based on some arbitrary historical language/cultural links. The freedom of the people to live, work and associate with who they choose will bring real benefits to everyone.

W.r.t. a political project vs an economic project, I would strongly argue that you simply cannot have one without the other. Economics happens as soon as you have division of labour and trading between people (and perhaps even before this). Even Marx knew this even if his poisonous ideas were flawed in many ways. My comment (and other's who actually live there) was that the rules that set up the political project embedded socialism into the heart of the entire project and hence was doomed from the start.
 
bordsilver said:
Personally would love to see it broken up and not arbitraily force any internal borders based on some arbitrary historical language/cultural links.
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So you want it broken up yet have freedom of movement.
Who is going to enforce the freedom of borders and movement?

And these borders based on language and culture are arbitrary?
No, they are natural.
It seems naive and unrealistic to think you can throw a thousand years of history to the wind and blend all of Europe into a homogenous melting pot.
It sounds like the solution somebody that doesn't understand Europeans would want to prescribe to Europeans.
Hold hands and la-di-da.

The problem with EU critics is that the alternatives they offer (when they offer them at all) equally stink.
The EU is not in a good situation and it has been of their own making, yes.
But Europe never had any good alternatives.
Most people here would trot out the dogmatic line that free markets and a gold standard would solve all the world's problems.
And yet, a gold standard and strong international trade were precisely the conditions that led to millions of Europeans getting killed in the trenches of World War 1 (and a fair share of Australians as well).

image_7.png
 
Earthjade said:
bordsilver said:
Personally would love to see it broken up and not arbitraily force any internal borders based on some arbitrary historical language/cultural links.
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So you want it broken up yet have freedom of movement.
Who is going to enforce the freedom of borders and movement?
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Ha ha. Dude there's your problem right there. You think you need someone to ENFORCE freedom of movement. WTF? The borders are totally arbitrary no matter how you look at them. How many of them were the same 200, 300, 400, etc years ago? How many people who live near the borders have completely different dialects? How many have intermarried for generations? Yes, a bloody great mountain range or fast flowing river originally enabled a natural separation which enabled cultures to diverge but except when separation was forced by some overlord there was still mixing.

throw a thousand years of history to the wind and blend all of Europe into a homogenous melting pot.
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Awesome! If this had been allowed ages ago you probably wouldn't have ended up with murderous dictators like Napolean, Mussolini and Hitler who use National Socialism as a tool to make war for their own ends. Xenophobia is encouraged by arbitrary borders with restrictions imposed on people by violence and property theft.

But Europe never had any good alternatives.
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Let my people go! Freedom from arbitrary nationalism as well as from parasitic overlords who want to run my life the way they see fit.

[Edit: And unlike the random political regimes that have been forced on the average person in Europe through war and violence I am not going to enforce my views on them by violence. This is a massive difference between socialists and libertarians. And no, libertarians are not "la-di-da" let's all hold hand hippies.]
 
I am not pro socialism, but without a dash of socialism, how are you going to keep the 99% from rioting?

They outnumber the money controllers 99 to 1. Even if you have police at your side, have you seen a million people on the streets? There just ain't enough ammo.

Pure capitalism ... It is a strange idea. Because Capitalism exists along socialism to keep the system working and to keep the humans working and maintaining the system happy. Pure capitalism or socialism is idiotic.
 
jpanggy said:
I am not pro socialism, but without a dash of socialism, how are you going to keep the 99% from rioting?

They outnumber the money controllers 99 to 1. Even if you have police at your side, have you seen a million people on the streets? There just ain't enough ammo.

Pure capitalism ... It is a strange idea. Because Capitalism exists along socialism to keep the system working and to keep the humans working and maintaining the system happy. Pure capitalism or socialism is idiotic.
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??? This is illogical. Laissez-faire capitalism does not equal rioting masses. It is a fear that has been instilled in all of us throughout our formative years. Indeed, you would be more likely to have the opposite.

If you are only one step away from smashing the window of the guy's shop next door, stabbing him in the gut, raping his wife and stealing anything of value then you are a worthless piece of trash. I wouldn't want anything to do with you and I'll shoot you if you tried to initiate the same thing on me.

[Edit: jpanggy - just in case it isn't clear, I'm not saying YOU are any of these things. BTW there are many libertarians/free marketeers who don't go the whole hog. Taxes/costs needed for the protection of life, property, and the market place are not a burden on the market. The market needs protection. It can only operate under peaceful conditions. Such taxes/costs are just as necessary as the costs of any of the factors of production.

Some people lean towards a democratically elected government entity of some sort being the best to provide these services, some believe that a competitive private market will supply them better. Compared to the system that we are living under now, I think this is the last thing anyone needs to really argue about. Indeed, I would be stoked if society had managed to unwind the encroach of the Government interference in people's welfare to the point that this was a real source of discontent.]
 
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