Beware of Greeks bearing fists.....

[marmar]

from the Guardian UK:



Greece erupts in violent protest as citizens face a future of harsh austerity
May Day clashes in Athens as belt-tightening policies are set to reverse rights won by workers over 30 years

Helena Smith in Athens
The Observer, Sunday 2 May 2010


Athens erupted into violence as traditional May Day festivities turned into a bitter protest against draconian austerity measures aimed at tackling Europe's worst debt crisis in decades.

For the tens of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets in rallies that quickly descended into clashes with riot police, the show of force was just the beginning – a prelude of the storm that will rock Greece if its Socialist government "caves in" to the dictates of the IMF and enforces policies that have been likened to "the coming of Armageddon".

To make the point, scores of stone-throwing youths chanted "people don't bow down, it's time again for revolution" as a petrol bomb set fire to a police officer in the heart of Athens.

"They say the only way of salvaging our economy is more austerity, but that's a total lie," said Nicolaos Danizis, a 60-year-old shipyard worker participating in a Communist-led demonstration outside parliament. "These latest measures have been cooked up by outsiders and are totally outrageous. They are aimed not at the rich but at the poor. What we are saying here today is that they will pass only over our dead bodies." .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/02/greece-violence-bailout-imf-euro

[ZeitgeistObserver]

1. Dead bodies it is then.

[JackRiddler]

5. Oh look, it's Boss Frick.

Would you like to see a Pinochet? Obviously that's unpleasant, but surely much better than a (gasp!) debt default!

You planning any coups and massacres for other unruly nations that don't play by your rules?

[JackRiddler]

15. Actually, this didn't deserve an ironic answer.

Disgusting.

Fascist is an overused term I am reluctant to apply. Please explain to me how your policy prescription of killing the protesters differs from it.

[killbotfactory]

2. “Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis...

so long as they make the workers pay”

[ZeitgeistObserver]

3. The elected govt ran up the debt, and it has to be paid.

[bemildred]

4. Actually, no, it doesn't have to be paid. nt

[ZeitgeistObserver]

6. Yes, I'm afraid it does.

And you'd better hope Greece manages to do it.

[bemildred]

9. What is this, faith-based economics?

Debts are not repaid all the time. It happens. Lots of countries have repudiated debt, now it's Greece's turn.

[JackRiddler]

10. Greech will, but Greece probably won't.

Seriously, what are you, the CIA? Have you got the New Colonels lined up for a junta, in case the Greek unrulies don't get off the streets and start paying a larger chunk of their lower wages to the Gods of Compound Interest?

[bemildred]

19. I don't live in Greece, and I hope they tell the banks to fuck off. nt

[truedelphi]

44. That is so true. It doesn't have to be repaid.

The IMF has acted like a financial terrorist, and it is more than time that people across the world denounce this organization, and let those that caused the problem suffer the effects of the problem.

[JackRiddler]

7. Many nations haven't paid, and prospered afterwards.

In fact, they've often done better than others who did keep up their payments. (See: Argentina)

And bankruptcy is a time-honored American institution. I find it hard to take people seriously if they haven't had at least one. ;)=

[ZeitgeistObserver]

8. Try to be serious.

[bemildred]

11. Try to make a coherent argument. nt

[JackRiddler]

12. "Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!!!"

[bemildred]

14. "Noah? This is God. " nt

[JackRiddler]

33. "First one of them wanted their freedom, now they all want their freedoms!"

Grrrrr!!!

[bemildred]

13. It's almost a rule, you don't pay, then you are better off. nt

[ZeitgeistObserver]

16. Argentina had 25% unemployment,

and the peso was devalued by 70% when they did it. Oh yes, much better off. :eyes:

[bemildred]

17. They seem to think so.

And they get to judge.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

18. They didn't at the time. People starved.

[bemildred]

20. People starve when the "austerity program" is enacted too.

In fact more people starve when the "austerity program" is enacted, that's what austerity programs are all about.

[JackRiddler]

26. Those starving people deposed a half-dozen presidents until they got one who was willing to default.

Funny that. Would seem to contrast with your claims. Ever so slightly.

[JackRiddler]

22. Hm, you left out what happened in the eight years after Argentina's intelligent default.

First of all, Argentina had 25 percent unemployment as a result of the crisis, which preceded the default.

Secondly, 70 percent peso devaluation was exactly the idea - by capitalist rules.

Here, I'll let the criminal agency that enforces strict Western debt payment schedules by imposing dictatorships on unruly countries tell the story:

A severe depression, growing public and external indebtedness, and a bank run culminated in 2001 in the most serious economic, social, and political crisis in the country's turbulent history. Interim President Adolfo RODRIGUEZ SAA declared a default - the largest in history - on the government's foreign debt in December of that year, and abruptly resigned only a few days after taking office. His successor, Eduardo DUHALDE, announced an end to the peso's decade-long 1-to-1 peg to the US dollar in early 2002. The economy bottomed out that year, with real GDP 18% smaller than in 1998 and almost 60% of Argentines under the poverty line. Real GDP rebounded to grow by an average 9% annually over the subsequent five years, taking advantage of previously idled industrial capacity and labor, an audacious debt restructuring and reduced debt burden, excellent international financial conditions, and expansionary monetary and fiscal policies. Inflation also increased, however, during the administration of President Nestor KIRCHNER, which responded with price restraints on businesses, as well as export taxes and restraints, and beginning in early 2007, with understating inflation data. Cristina FERNANDEZ DE KIRCHNER succeeded her husband as President in late 2007, and the rapid economic growth of previous years began to slow sharply the following year as government policies held back exports and the world economy fell into recession. Her government nationalized private pension funds in late 2008 in an attempt to bolster government coffers, but the move also adversely affected private investment spending. GPD growth fell to 0.5% in 2009.

I looked around for current economic outlook, see 10% growth is expected in 2010.

According to you, things would have been much better if they'd been stuck handing over whatever share of their annual product the IMF and Citigroup declared acceptable.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

37. Try again.

Record foreign debt interest payments, tax evasion and capital flight resulted in a balance of payments crisis that plagued Argentina with severe stagflation from 1975 to 1990. Attempting to remedy this, economist Domingo Cavallo pegged the peso to the U.S. dollar in 1991 and limited the growth in the money supply. His team then embarked on a path of trade liberalization, deregulation and privatization. Inflation dropped and GDP grew by one third in four years;<75> but external economic shocks and failures of the system diluted benefits, causing the economy to crumble slowly from 1995 until the collapse in 2001. That year and the next, the economy suffered its sharpest decline since 1930; by 2002, Argentina had defaulted on its debt, its GDP had shrunk, unemployment reached 25% and the peso had depreciated 70% after being devalued and floated.<75>

In 2003 expansionary policies and commodity exports triggered a rebound in GDP. This trend has been largely maintained, creating millions of jobs and encouraging internal consumption. The socio-economic situation has been steadily improving and the economy grew around 9% annually for five consecutive years between 2003 and 2007 and 7% in 2008. Inflation, however, though officially hovering around 9% since 2006, has been privately estimated at over 15%,<80> becoming a contentious issue again. The urban income poverty rate has dropped to 18% as of mid-2008, a third of the peak level observed in 2002, though still above the level prior to 1976.<81><82> Income distribution, having improved since 2002, is still considerably unequal.<83><84>

Argentina ranks 106th out of 179 countries in the Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2009.<85> Reported problems include both government and private-sector corruption, the latter of which include money laundering, trafficking in narcotics and contraband, and tax evasion.<86> The country faces slowing economic growth in light of an international financial crisis. The Kirchner administration responded at the end of 2008 with a record US$32 billion public-works program for 2009–10 and a further US$4 billion in new tax cuts and subsidies.<87><88> Kirchner has also nationalized private pensions, which required growing subsidies to cover, in a move designed to shed a budgetary drain as well as to finance high government spending and debt obligations.<89><90>


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina#Economy

[JackRiddler]

42. Hello, it says the same thing as the passage I posted...

Can you read? Do you post big blocks of data hoping it will intimidate me from reading it?

Just like the bit I quoted from the CIA, your quoted passage from wikipedia says things were really, really bad, up until the default in 2002. After that, everything got much, much better, although many problems remain.

Anyway, thanks for the assist against your own false arguments.

[JackRiddler]

53. (Oops - forgot to give the citation: It's from the Argentina entry in the CIA World Fact Book)

[truedelphi]

51. BTW Roubini seems to agree with many of us that it DOES NOT have

To be paid.

From his article this week: "The 2010 IMF Spring Meetings in Washington (April 24-25) focused on the first sovereign debt crisis in living memory in a high-income country, and in the Euro Zone no less. Even more telling than a shift of focus from emerging markets crises is a widening divide in the views of the major players, and little appreciation of the lessons from modern sovereign debt crises.

Continuing on the path of least resistance —a ”Plan A” of augmented official financing, banking on an unlikely mix of deep fiscal cuts, inadequate structural reforms and hopes that markets will stay open, with growth "

The Big Players are not at all interested in real economic growth and real value, only that their terribly silly machinations be honored. (Okay, because their machinations are legalized by the Congress and the President whom they have in their control, those machinations are not silly. But they would appear silly if they had not been made legit and thus become reality. They sold Triple A rated "SIV's and CDO and CDO -imaginary products whose ratings they had paid for by offering the heads of the rating agencies fabulous Christmas gifts. They fired anyone that understood that their machinations would implode the economy.

They get to fail, and then feed at the trough, while the rest of us are supposed to pay for those failings? And pay and pay? Why? What moral principle are we who would refuse to pay not honoring?



I was not brought up in that world. I don't think most people were. In fact, back in the1950's, even the Mafiosa of my south side Chicago neighborhood had a code of honor a tad bit higher.

[killbotfactory]

52. The elected government, with help from Goldman Sachs, committed fraud

The workers, whose benefits many fought, struggled, and died for, did not vote for fraud. Yet they are the ones who will pay. Along with news reports stroking the flames of envy over their "extravagant" benefits.

[JackRiddler]

54. As for the "extravagant" benefits, these are mostly their wages...

The "two extra months" of pay are simply 1/7 of a workers annual salary. All it means practically is that they get 14 paychecks a year rather than 12. The bottom-line annual salary is usually just enough to get by and have some middle class pretenses.

Two of the paychecks are represented as "extra months" because that's how the government negotiated it with the unions. They didn't want to officially raise salaries so they pretended that salary raises were actually extravagant bonuses.

This is a bonanza for foreign propaganda dispensers, like Mr. Zeitgeist, and it allows the government now to cut salaries by 1/7 and pretend they are merely cutting undeserved bonuses.

Given the country's chronic economic problems, what do you think they would have if they didn't have a few 58-year-old pensioners? Correspondingly more unemployed! Pensioning them off and making jobs for the young is better than not taking care of your own people.

Cutting salaries is action to deflate. It's murder on an already down economy. Plus, the government workers are, of all workers, the ones who most reliably pay their taxes (to deal with the other big myth).

And Greeks pay 21 percent VAT!

[ZeitgeistObserver]

21. When you lot are through with the rah rah routine

let me know.

Until then consider the fact that European and American banks have $1.7-trillion (U.S.) of exposure to Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Greece.

That should sober you up.

[JackRiddler]

24. Excellent.

Maybe this will finally kill them.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

27. No, it never will. But it might kill you.

[JackRiddler]

30. That's all right, no one gets to live forever.

[bemildred]

34. Always with the threats.

Not much of an argument, just threats and fearmongering.

[bemildred]

29. Tsk. Feeling grumpy are we?

[ZeitgeistObserver]

31. Skipping out on debts is never a wise idea.

[bemildred]

36. Still no facts, just fear.

Skipping out on debts can be a great idea, corporations do it all the time.

[JackRiddler]

39. List of famous bankruptcies, most of whom went on to great success afterwards.

Freedom from debt slavery: It's the American way!

The list includes Fortune Magazine's "Greatest Businessman of the 20th Century," none other than HENRY FORD.

Tom Petty, Cyndi Lauper, Walt Disney, the founders of 20th Century Fox and the Heinz ketchup fortune, Kim Basinger... all had bankruptcies before going on to fame and fortune. For others it didn't turn out as well, but you know what? I bet they make for a lot more interesting company than YOU.

http://bankruptcy-usa.info/famous-bankruptcies.html

[Pryderi]

23. Retirement benefits at age 58????

[ZeitgeistObserver]

25. Plus 2 months extra pay a year, at jobs people often

don't show up to do, and refusing to pay taxes is a national sport.

[JackRiddler]

28. You should want to see it universalized.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

32. Being deadbeats? No

[JackRiddler]

35. Obviously you think it's better when just a few deadbeats get 90 percent of the pie.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

38. Since you are still unable to discuss this rationally,

there is no point in continuing.

If Greece falls, it'll hit the US too, and 2009 will look like a party in comparison.

Then you won't find it so amusing.

Αντίο

[Rex]

40. Right, you should just give up now.

You are so amusing.

[marmar]

41. WTF are you talking about?

You've certainly added a healthy dose of irrationality to this post.

[bemildred]

43. Well, you are definitely in the wrong place if you want supine agreement

with your dogmatic drivel.

[JackRiddler]

45. Just like those lazy subprime borrowers in Cleveland caused the crash of 2008...

so too will the Crash of 2011 be the fault of the Goddamn Greeks?

Fage me, malaka.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

46. That's the problem. Nobody knows what they're talking about.

So I'm not going to waste time arguing with you.

Ciao.

[marmar]

47. Yeah, you certainly haven't wasted time arguing with people in this thread....

:crazy:

[JackRiddler]

55. "arguing" is a charitable description

argument (noun)
a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong

[bemildred]

48. Well you definitely don't.

I don't know when I've read such a pile of empty-headed dogmatic horseshit. Can you even form a coherent argument?

[Rex]

49. Right, no one knows what they are talking about except you.

Run away now and go entertain the flora & fauna with your incoherent babbling.

[unkachuck]

50. "...May Day festivities turned into a bitter protest against draconian austerity measures..."

....hey Greece, it's time you stop playing capitalism and start playing Democratic Communism....forget about your foreign debt, focus on internal self-sufficiency and distribute that 'austerity' evenly....

....you invented Democracy....now invented free, fair and Democratic Communism....take a look at what the Communist Chinese are doing; then adapt and improve....I'm rooting for ya....

[MellowDem]

56. I still think it's hilarious that

Communists are at this rally. They really should convert Greece to Communism and see how great their economy would be. It would be very informative to all involved. The problem is the representatives they elected that got them into massive debt by promising them great social programs for all that the country couldn't afford and making stupid investments. They should throw out their reps for that, but it was their fault for electing them, and they will have to face the consequences of their actions, whether fair or not. That's representative democracy for you. You'd think the Greeks would get it.