Euro stability more important than Greece, says Angela Merkel

[dkf]

Greece will receive no more European bailout money until it decides whether it wants to stay in the eurozone, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel announced on Wednesday night.

The French president and German chancellor hastily convened a late-night press conference after holding what they called "tough and hard" emergency talks with the Greek prime minister on the margins of the G20 summit in Cannes.

They made clear that saving the euro was ultimately more important to them than rescuing Greece.

European leaders were angered and markets wobbled over George Papandreou's surprise unilateral announcement on Monday that he would hold a referendum on a €130bn (£111.9bn) bailout deal reached with eurozone leaders at a Brussels summit last week.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/03/euro-stability-more-important-greece

[tama]

1. Mammon worshipers

What they are saying is that money is more important than people. We the people hear what they say and we don't like what we hear.

Sarky and Murky, shut up and go away.

[dkf]

2. Well why would they want to support the Greeks any more than you do?

[tama]

5. More debt and interest

is not supporting Greeks. I don't have other resources of support for Greek people than my words and my heart, but I give them free.

[dkf]

14. Cutting their obligations by 50% is nothing?

[tama]

18. Oh, it's something - a gift to banks

50% of the nominal value is much more than the current market value of the bankster papers. It's not free market economy, where speculative investments can and do go bad, it's corporate socialism and desperate bailout attempt to protect bankrupt banks.

[vets74]

27. It's not really 50%. Changes in maturity schedules make that a PR stunt.

The Greeks are cursed with an inflation of wages and prices, brought on by hypertrophy of the euro money supply in 2001-2003 that settled to the south.

Germany got out of a recession.

Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Iceland got whacked. Nobody retires from the south to the north....

[BeyondGeography]

3. She is right to dig in

You have an inept government that has sold off the future (of course with the help of American financial "innovation") to subsidize an unsustainable way of life. Now it is being asked to change. But the country is undermined by too many selfish, independent operators with no sense of obligation to the state other than to strip it for all it's worth. There's no future in making the world safe for 65,000-euro-per-year railroad employees who can retire with pension benefits at 50 or 55 after years of not running the trains on time, when they show up to work at all, to choose but one of many examples. Hairdressing (and lots of other run of the mill service professions) designated as a hardship profession which means its members qualify for early retirement, etc. It's an absolute joke.

[Fumesucker]

4. You can find similar stories right here in the good ol' USA..

If you look for them.

Frankly I'm really starting to wonder about the amount of condemnation I'm hearing of the average Grecian, what's missing in these condemnations so often is any examination of the Grecian 1%.

When monstrous sums of money go missing it's rarely the 99% who are at fault.

[JVS]

6. Please don't use "grecian", it's a Bushism. Greek is the adjective.

[Fumesucker]

8. Snarkometer..

Yours could stand to be recalibrated. ;)

:hi:

[BeyondGeography]

9. Focusing on the top 1% is a sad joke

if you use that to exonerate 99% of the people of all accountability. Do the financial problems of San Jose have anything to do with ravenous public safety unions and elected officials who rolled over for them? You're kidding yourself if you say no. Grift is not confined to the top; to believe so is to turn a blind eye to human nature. The top sets a tone, the rest may follow. In Greece, the problems run very deep and are intractible, I don't blame Merkel at all for drawing a line.

[Fumesucker]

10. And yet your focus was on the 99% and not the leaders..

That's the bias I was picking up on..

As you say, the top sets the tone.

What, should the 99% be abstemious while the 1% steal *everything*?

If you live in a kleptocracy the only way to have anything at all is by hook or by crook.

[tama]

11. You should not

let the corrupt politicians and corporate media turn nations against each other. We are all in the same boat, suffering from the same ills of capitalism.

[tama]

7. "Unsustainable way of life"

"inept government that has sold off the future"

"country is undermined by too many selfish, independent operators with no sense of obligation to the state other than to strip it for all it's worth."

Thou project too much? Why point your finger at Greeks, when all you say applies also to my country, your country, every capitalist state on Earth, including Germany?

[malaise]

15. This government did no such thing

-it was a neo-liberal government

[BeyondGeography]

16. This government appears to be falling apart as we speak

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2011/nov/03/greek-crisis-referendum-eurozone

Papandreou's Finance Minister has broken ranks.

[malaise]

17. Yes but when it loses its majority

that still means elections

[tama]

19. Confusing

Does Venizelos oppose referendum about the Troika-offer? Or just Sarko's demand?

Sarko has demanded, being the asshole he is, that Greek referendum would be about the membership in Eurozone. Papandreou has made it clear that the referendum is about the package, not membership in Eurozone.

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. So are you saying that the Greek people have the right to stay in the Eurozone

even if they decide to default on all of their government debts?

Without the package, what do you think Greece should do?

[tama]

28. Why not

let the "market decide" instead of bailing out banks with tax payer liabilities? What is the worth of loan shark papers aka "financial investments" of European and other banks in the financial markets? Why don't neoliberal "free-marketers" believe in free markets but demand corporate socialism and bank bailouts?

And as for your question, in the EU-treaties there is no possibility of resigning from Euro, but obligation for all EU members to join - with "special arrangements" for certain countries like UK, Sweden and Denmark.

Under no EU treaty or rules nobody has the right to demand that any member resigns from the Eurozone. This is mobster behaviour, not legitimate in any way.

As for your second question, all of EU should socialize the whole banking system, giving nothing to stock holders.

[coyote]

12. The title should be changed to "German stability more important than Greece, says Angela Merkel"

because that is what it comes down to. Germany is the glue that keeps this whole Euro charade from falling apart. Germany should just dump the Euro....the German people never wanted it to start with. It was forced on them without a referendum.

[tama]

20. IIRC

Only euro referendums were in Sweden and Denmark. Their answer was no.

[malaise]

13. Yes the financial markets are more important than democracy

and the consent of the governed.

Fuck you too Angela Merkel
:puke:

[dipsydoodle]

22. Its Germanys own vested interests

Their continuous growth is export led. The demise of the Euro and reintroduction of the German Mark would make that the world's strongest currency and in doing so end their growth - their exports would cease to be competitive.

Good mornin' :hi:

[malaise]

23. You nailed it

:Good morning! :D

[Prometheus Bound]

21. Translation: German and French banks are more important than Greece.

[vets74]

29. Translation: there is no way to "save" Greece. Period.

The hyperinflation has Greek wages and assets running at 30% to 50% above their euro prices in the northern countries.

Germans, et.al. took their money south for years. Now they don't.

And the governments in the south got fat on the land booms... and now they don't.

Therefore, because money cannot be allowed to grow on trees though that is exactly what the European Central Bank made to happen.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum ::: there is no "solution" that maintains Greece in the euro system, plus no "solution" that makes repaying the crazy-balloon debts feasible ever.

Screw Goldman, Sachs for betting on Greek bonds. Screw Corzine, too. The crook.

According to multiple reports, almost $700 million in customer money has gone “missing” from MF Global, the brokerage firm helmed by former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday. And no one seems to know where it went.

Did MF Global use its own customers’ money to support its faulty trades? Were they just sloppy? Are banks simply refusing to send the troubled firm its own money?

Regulators don’t know. What is known is that the sale of a large part of MF Global to Interactive Brokers Group — a deal that seemed all but completed on Sunday — collapsed because of the missing money.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/700_million_disappear_from_corzines_firm.php

Can't tell your crooks without TPM....

[sfpcjock]

24. The people will, fortunately, vote the referendum down

tomorrow because it is a reverse German Versailles Treaty that requires more and more cuts. In a way it is similar to the Supercommittee cuts with no tax increases. The problem in Greece is that the rich do not pay their fair share. Same as here.

[Mudoria]

30. The problem in Greece is that very few pay their taxes, rich , middle class or poor

But they do expect full benefits.

[JCMach1]

25. Funny how they bailout banks without austerity- Dexia, at least 4Billion Euros

this was in addition to the billions already poured into the bank.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/10/dexia-new-bailout-belgian-deal