8.5 billion euros of Greece’s bonds mature on May 19, 2010. Greece has no money to pay the debt. The Germans, the only country with money in Europe, are very angry with the Greeks.The Europeans made a mistake taking in Greece into their Union. They were thinking they were admitting Socrates, Leonidas and Aristotles, and they received Papaconstantinous.
Follow Up: The sentiment in the bourses all over the world is worsening and the prices are falling. Just now I too am having something of a negative sentiment towards Greece.
Update: The European Union has to put 30 Billion Euros to save Greece from bankrupcy, with 8.5 Billion coming from Germany. The Germans today are more angry than yesterday, they are furious. There are public protests in Greece because they resist paying more taxes. My sympathies are 100% with the Germans.
17 comments:
The EU was a plan by the Germans to be made part of acceptable society again. Imagine (God forbid) you are a murderer but a wealthy murderer. You have gotten out of prison and been restored to your fortune but people still think of your past. You start a club and subsidize it. All your friends , especially the ones who are not working, come to your pool and tennis courts and they forget your murderous past or at least are too polite to mention it any more while they are drinking your beer (if you stopping giving free beer they will remember again). This is worth a lot to you psychologically - perhaps more than money.
The Germans mistake was lending their "credit card" (DM or as it is called today "Euro") to their new "friends".
K
You make another good point. The ancient Greeks with their advanced ideas were long ago replaced by a barbarian Balkan people using their name. As a captive nation they made deception and theft into a virtue (see the situation in Palestine - when given their freedom, honesty and democracy did not suddenly emerge like Venus complete in her seashell). If "Greece" was called "Albania" or "Bulgaria" then no one would have any high expectations for it.
That is exactly what is happening now with Makedonia. They are fighting for the name of an ancient and distinguished people, which they are not.
There is no solid population genetic evidence for a replacement of the Greek population by Balkans, nor is their evidence for a close genetic relationship between Greeks and sub-Saharans (claimed in a hatchet job of a population genetics article by Arnaiz-Villena, the methods of which were excoriated by scientists such as the great Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza).
I know. I was talking about Makedonia - apparently there was population replacement in Makedonia.
Regarding Greece - where are the Athenians? They were the smartest people in history.
Even if the Greek people today are direct descendants of Socrates, their culture can degrade. Knowledge is not passed down genetically. The Aztecs, Maya, etc. once had great civilizations but their descendants live in mud huts and cultivate little plots of maize.
As we have seen in Argentina, having a racial stock with adequate intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a society to function at advanced Western levels. There are all sorts of other cultural and historic factors that can cause a society not to reach its full potential, just as their are individuals of great brilliance who never achieve anything because they fixate at some juvenile level or become addicted to some bad habit.
Greece is in need of therapy but sometimes the patient has to hit rock bottom before they are willing to go into rehab. As long as Germany plays the dysfunctional parent to the Greek "teenagers" and keeps giving them their allowance despite their bad behavior, the Greeks will continue to act like spoiled children.
K
K, I am pessimist about Greece's chances of regeneration. They are not children and the Germans are not their parents. It is not only culture. Athens looks like Gaza City.
"Culture" is a pretty broad term. If it is not culture, what is it?
I would say that Athens does not look worse than Tel Aviv did say 30 years ago. Parts of it are better - they have a very decent subway train line (surely paid for with EU money) and a decent highway that was built for the Olympics (more EU $). Anything that was built with EU funding looks nice.
K
The weather is nice.
The ruins are nice.
The islands are nice.
The food is nice.
The retzina is nice.
The people are nice.
The history is nice.
The monasteries are nice.
The olives are nice.
The donkeys are nice.
The politicians are ...too nice?
None of this was built with EU money. They should be able to earn a living on their own, without handouts, with a modicum of self-discipline, just on tourism alone.
Anon.
Thank God the EU is unravelling. it often happens that the hinges of history are pushed open by unwitting participants. The Greeks are doing the Europeans a great service by kicking their collective balls in. I see only sunshine in all this. Lower growth means less money to spend on socialist nonsense and the meddlesome bureaucracy. Sovereignty will return to the ancient countries of Europe. There will be less immigration from the Third World. No more talk of an ever closer union. The Germans and the French can marry each other and leave everyone else alone.
This is an ugly crisis caused by accumulating hidden debts. Greece should be expulsed from the European Union and Turkey taken in.
Anonymous - the tourist sector is good but it can't support a whole nation at a high standard of living (hotel maids don't make much $). Maybe a few small islands but Greece has many mainland cities that are not tourist spots. Donkeys, olive trees - as J says, it sounds like you are describing Gaza, not a modern European country. Where are the aircraft factories, the chip fabs, the research institutes? The Greek education system stinks - they produce anarchists, not software engineers. The whole country was living at a standard that they did not work for and do not deserve (but rationalize that they do - they invented democracy, the Germans looted their country 60 years ago, the world owes them, etc.) and now that it is about to be lowered, they strike and riot and chase away the tourists too.
K
J said...
Greece should be expelled from the European Union and Turkey taken in.
No, then Turkey could join the Shengen union and its citizens would have freedom of movement throughout Europe. Admitting Turkey would allow almost everyone in Turkey to pack up and leave for the continent, furthering the Islamification of Europe.
If you mean the currency union, then no. I'm not even sure why there was a currency union to begin with - not being able to control your own monetary policy is a major loss of national sovereignty. I thought Europe fought countless wars just so they could have national determination.
The only way it could have worked was if there were strict rules for member states to obey - we can see that the Greeks lied and cheated (they are like the scorpion in the fable - they just can't help themselves) and the EU is such a paper tiger that there were no consequences (other than a bailout by Germany - crime really does pay). Once upon a time this would have been grounds for an invasion. Now the criminals know that there is no punishment, so why not steal?
K
K, the real problem was not that Greece was using the Euro, but that the European Central Bank had price controls on interest rates that allowed Greece to borrow at German rates. Realistically Greece should have been paying 10-20% all along, instead of German rates of around 5% or lower. Ecuador uses the Dollar but the US doesn't control interest rates, or anything else, in that country.
Greece may end up being the Ecuador of Europe.
Ronduck, what were these price controls and why are they no longer effective? How could the ECB tell the markets how much to pay for Greek debt?
K
K
150 years ago, German warships would have appeared and bombarded Athens, just as Turkey was when didnt pay its debts.
Could it be that the Greek accumulated through cheating will lead to an European intervention?
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