Germany rattled as taxpayer losses loom in Greece

[dipsydoodle]

A draft version of the Troika report obtained by Spiegel magazine said EMU governments and the European Central Bank must accept their share of losses in order to bring Greece’s public debt back to 120pc of GDP by 2020, deemed the sustainable level.

Greece must carry out a further 150 reforms, some involving a drastic loss of sovereignty. Troika payments will be held frozen in a special account under creditor control.

The Troika will have power to raise taxes automatically. There must be new laws to make it easier to fire workers and adjust the minumum wage.

In exchange, Greece should be given two extra years until 2016 to meet budget targets, costing up to €38bn.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9639512/Germany-rattled-as-taxpayer-losses-loom-in-Greece.html

[bemildred]

1. Not working, is it? nt

[jmowreader]

2. What good is raising taxes if tax evasion is that widespread?

When people refer to tax evasion as the National Pastime, like Americans refer to baseball, you've got a huge problem.

Greece's problem isn't overspending, overtaxing or any of the other RW shibboleths...it is that no one pays the amount of tax they're supposed to, and a lot of people don't pay any. If Greece can fix this problem within the next two to three years they will eventually be okay, and if they can't fix it they're sunk.

The best foreign aid we could possibly give Greece is to go through the IRS, find every auditor they have who speaks Greek, and ship them to Athens on a five-year loan.