Greece Watch...

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 05 Feb 2015, 18:58

emordnilap wrote:
vtsnowedin wrote:lending money to a country so they can make welfare payments is poring money down a rat hole.
This statement does not apply in the case of Greece or Ireland. Get your facts right. Greece is solvent, as was Ireland. The bailouts, barring a few billion, were for banks - failed capitalist institutions. A baker's or a draper's with the same (relative) debt would have left to go to the wall. But not the 1%. They're the ones receiving the welfare.

Greek and Irish bakers and drapers WERE solvent until someone made a large proportion of the population redundant, curtailing their wages so that they couldn't afford to use those facilities.

Once again, banks don't borrow money to lend it they just create it out of thin air by the click of a mouse. The only collateral they need is your signature on a loan agreement. That's their collateral although they often like your house as additional collateral in case they can make you default in some way.

raspberry-blower · Post by **raspberry-blower** » 05 Feb 2015, 19:57

TAE: Time for #GreekLivesMatter

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 07 Feb 2015, 21:35

Yanis Varoufakis - thoughts for the post-2008 world

I think we had better all follow his blog: http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 10 Feb 2015, 10:47

biffvernon wrote:Yanis Varoufakis - thoughts for the post-2008 world

I think we had better all follow his blog: http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/

Defo. A good man, a man to watch.

raspberry-blower · Post by **raspberry-blower** » 10 Feb 2015, 19:41

Telesur: Greece 'May Go Elsewhere' if debt deal is not reached with Europe

AutomaticEarth · Post by **AutomaticEarth** » 11 Feb 2015, 17:58

Looks like Greece could be looking to exit the Euro (or at least being pushed out). Check the Business Live update on the top right of the page at 17.48.

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

A devalued currency might not be all bad.....great place to visit, and I suspect lots vof people would go there for a holiday, not just just because it's cheap but also to show solidarity with the Greeks - been there a number of times cannotand complain at all.

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 11 Feb 2015, 20:19

AutomaticEarth wrote:Looks like Greece could be looking to exit the Euro (or at least being pushed out). Check the Business Live update on the top right of the page at 17.48.

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

A devalued currency might not be all bad.....great place to visit, and I suspect lots vof people would go there for a holiday, not just just because it's cheap but also to show solidarity with the Greeks - been there a number of times cannotand complain at all.

Was not the plumbing a bit substandard when they last had the Olympics?

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 12 Feb 2015, 11:46

AutomaticEarth wrote:A devalued currency might not be all bad.....great place to visit, and I suspect lots vof people would go there for a holiday, not just just because it's cheap but also to show solidarity with the Greeks - been there a number of times cannotand complain at all.

I know of several people who holiday there every year, they love it. I might put it on my list of "places I'd like to visit (but probably never will)".

The lads are doing good:

Recent polls show between 70 and 75 percent of Greek voters think Syriza is doing the right thing.

What's even more impressive is that this appears to be cross-party support, with about 43 percent of New Democracy voters also backing the new government.

Oh for other governments to do something positive for ordinary people.

Source

Syriza will derail ratification of the TTiP - if it stays in the the Eurozone. Could this be a bargaining chip? The German regime is gung-ho for it.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 16 Feb 2015, 22:00

The thing about Yanis Varoufakis is that he's a seriously bright bloke. You don't always get them in government.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/opini ... urope.html

Go on, read it. You don't often see such intelligent writing coming from a finance minister.

nexus · Post by **nexus** » 17 Feb 2015, 08:22

Thanks Biff, good find.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 17 Feb 2015, 12:09

biffvernon wrote:You don't often see such intelligent writing coming from a finance minister.

And he's better in this second (?) language than some of its native speakers.

We have much to learn from this man.

AutomaticEarth · Post by **AutomaticEarth** » 17 Feb 2015, 17:10

Varoufakis comes out fighting in this exchange:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... 18443.html

This guy just gets better and better

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 17 Feb 2015, 17:37

AutomaticEarth wrote:Varoufakis comes out fighting in this exchange:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... 18443.html

This guy just gets better and better

Spiegel: You are talking about officials who were sent there to do their job.

Varoufakis: And fine people they were. But they were sent to implement a program that caused great damage. We know there were also some pretty good guys in the CIA who took part in the waterboarding interrogations against their will and ended up in awful moral dilemmas.

Love it. Go Varoufakis. This is exactly what's needed.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 17 Feb 2015, 19:16

It's just so refreshing to hear an intelligent and quick witted politician in power. They must really hate him

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 19 Feb 2015, 11:18

Well sneaky

About 15 minutes before the confab began, Varoufakis was given a draft communique outlining the provisions of the proposed loan extension. He was pleasantly surprised to find that the document met all his requirements and, so, he was prepared to sign it. Unfortunately, the document was switched shortly before the negotiations began with one that backtracked on all the crucial points.

I’m not making this up. The freaking Eurogroup tried to pull the old switcheroo on Varoufakis to get him to sign something that was different than the original.

Varoufakis is very, very sharp. He'll be a hard one to fool.

Further on:

They never anticipated that public opinion would shift so dramatically against them

Apart from their dealings being shady, secretive and underhand, people have had no-one to speak for them, no-one to make their case heard. It's not that public opinion has shifted, dramatically or otherwise. People are/feel powerless and are browbeaten with obfuscation and lies. This is why we need more Varoufakises, we need them now and we need them at the top.

Otherwise, the piece is spot-on.