Bascially the situation in my island might result in me not being able to get a job. (I am in Political Science)

I fully agree. And they probably should still do it now.

But that also still leaves the debt resolution question open. Even after a default, how much of the debt has to be paid back? There are no good (generally accepted) rules to that (see recent events in Argentina). The solution should probably adapt to the economic development, i.e. the more Greece grows the more must be paid back. But how much exactly and who decides it? Difficult.

Actually I don't really understand why people see the Euro as threatened by a leave of Greece from the Euro zone. One could certainly argue that it is a very special case here and actually is better for all involved, the Euro zone and for Greece. But still having a single currency zone and a stable currency has it's advantages too so the others will surely stick to the Euro. And Greece may as well come back after the economy has regained the strength. Given the current circumstances the change to Drachme doesn't sound impossible. My gut feeling is that one should try it.

I think that in the medium to long run the most important thing for Greece is regaining the competitiveness of the economy. This is the most important thing of all. If it hapens all other things will improve too. Independent of all other things, one could for example increase the efficiency of the government, cut non-wage labour costs, cut expenditures on more or less useless things like the military and fight hard on corruption.

Are Syriza and Anel the best choice for doing that? I don't know, but the other parties already had their try. It's a difficult situation and my opinion is that Greek leaders are failing their people now already for a long time. I wish we would support Greece (the Greek economy) more but I also wish Greece would help itself more. Both together would be like a win-win situation, as it is it is more like a lose-lose situation.

I personally wish the EU would have offered much more help and investment but also would have asked for much more and faster reforms in return (and reforms of government institutions first). I'm not sure Greek governments/people would have liked that any better but I would have.

The problem with the referendum is that while an exit of the Euro would be better (probably) a No as a decision will have very bad short term consequences and will not improve the organization of the government. Corruption will not go away just because the whole country is in chaos. So is this really the better option? Very difficult.

Russia doesn't seem to have that much positive vibes in EU countries, mainly due to Ukraine and Putin. True or not, I think Putin is now largely regarded as a warmonger, wanting to cause instability in Europe. A man whose words can't be trusted, words and actions don't match.

Some might see e.g. Finland as one of the friendliest EU countries towards Russia. Not sure if true, maybe so. My view is that Finnish people welcome Russian money (=tourists, and exporting Finnish goods to Russia, which now have suffered due to the sanctions), but don't really trust Russia as a country. Kind of like a forced relationship due to the proximity. The Finnish and Russian mentalities seem quite different too, on how we consider e.g. our country leaders (Russians seem to like strong leaders who promise to lead the country to its former glory, while Finns see the president as one of us who is serving us, and who can be openly criticized).

You even drink vodka differently than we do (we usually mix it with something, while you drink pure vodka shots in between drinking soda, separately).

At the same time, Finns might generally find it a bit overkill how e.g. Estonia seems to regard Russia (and Estonia doesn't understand why Finland isn't as much a hard-liner towards Russia as they are), but then our histories are somewhat different. Estonia keeps poking the sleeping bear, while we just let it sleep.

That's something that most people seem to forget these days... ECB, IWF and Euro-states started to give Greece money when normals banks didn't want to do that anymore. Without the "institutions" (because there's no Troika anymore) there wouldn't be any econonomy to "destroy" anymore.

Private banks: "Sorry Greece, your economy is completely fucked up and we can't see how you plan to pay us back. No more money for you. We have to do some damage limitation now."
Greece: "Shit, we're screwed!"
Institutions: "Don't worry, we'll give you some money to pay your debts now and then we'll come together and have a look at some possible long term solutions."
Greece: "Great! And don't forget to give us some more money to do these reformations, please."
The next day...
Greece: "Evil, evil institutions. Paid all our debts we had with private banks just to destroy our economy!"

Seriously, I can't see how it is the institutions' fault that Greece's economy is dwindling. Without the European billions over all those years, there wouldn't be a Greek economy anymore. Sure, maybe there are things that the institutions could've done better (I'm not a 20 years long studied economist with enough background information to understand the role of Euro-Greece in the global market, so I can't judge this), but... It's still not their fault that Greece mismanaged things so badly that the market didn't want to give them any more money. Greece went bankrupt some years ago, before Europe told them what to do.

That's really not true. There are many ideas:

- Ensuring no war breaks out in the middle of Europe (more actual than ever but always a very driving force)
- Promoting freedom and democracy
- Enabling free movement of its inhabitants
- Economic prosperity and free trade
- Cultural exchange
- Secularity

That's already something. You can surely make an attractive Union out of it. But also you don't need unlimited help for each member state for it. Greece exiting the Euro now would not be the end of anything, rather a relatively small step back which might even be good for all in the long run.

I guess the problem of Europe amonst all it's problems is not because of a lack of ideas but because nationalism runs so strong lately. And this doesn't even has to do with Greece. I'm not sure why this happens but I think that in times of trouble many people just go back to a simple we/them world view. I wonder how it has to do with egoism and missing solidarity of the people.

Homo homini lupus est - still true.

About the incoming referendum itself, frankly I don't think it will really matter either way, other than in speeches.

No one seems to know what exactly the referendum will ask exactly, but it will mostly have a symbolic meaning anyway, at least to the negotiations. It will be more about asking "Will we agree on any terms that EU/ECB/IMF demands from us, yes/no?", and everyone is expected to answer no.

Then the negotiations restart again (this time without IMF I guess), as if nothing had changed.

I don't think "yes" will win because it will be worded so that it makes no sense for any Greek to vote yes, as in "do you really want to forfeit all your human rights?". If the unthinkable happened and yes won, at best it would mean re-elections in Greece, more time wasted, and then the negotiations continue, with new faces possibly on the Greek side. Or same, if Syriza wins again, which means nothing has changed and the referendum is meaningless as there were re-elections after that.

A professional soldier's, or army man's daughter, when unmarried, can claim father's pension. Sad as it is, many of them remain unmarried purposefully. And yes, no disability required.

Also, many people feign disability and gain illegal disability pensions and raised pays.
Also, many people try to find shortcuts and "glitches" to cheat the system in any way possible, imaginable or achievable, legally or not.
Also, many people ask for european money with the preface and promise to invest them in business like agricultural for example, keep their sh*t exactly the same, stagnant, stationary it had always been and proceed to eat up all the money in some expensive sh*t, like a villa, a car, or that Lamborgini tractor they close the road with when on protests, when pay reductions or tax additions are announced.

This place is honestly, Hell-ass and the pun, nickname and monicker is fully deserved. I am almost ashamed to belong here. Especially since in the past i was betrayed in horrible manners and had "kin" and "neighbors" crap on me from such a height, that my life is *almost* ruined (and remains such up to now).

But that doesn't change the fact that opportunist outsiders are effectively bribing our politicians to leech us dry (Siemens scandals) and seizing our own faqing country cheaply, blackmail us and even go so far as to puppeteer our government (Papadimos formation in the past). Espionage and sabotage from our ever european "allies" hasn't stopped for a second, 1821 onwards (even from our war of independence, european agents were involved in the assassination of prominent military leaders of the era and trying to manipulate the political persons).

Because the political situation in other Euro-countries isn't THAT different from the political situation in Greece. Ever heard of They're the purple line on this graph (the one that comes out of nowhere and goes straight to the top), which shows which party people in Spain want to vote in the elections at the end of this year. If Syriza is successful, this could be a sign for Spain to vote for Podemos. And I'm pretty sure that Italy and Portugal have their equivalent to Syriza and Podemos too.

See why Greece is in shit? Because everyone is overanalysing everything that they never find the where the problem starts and where the solution ends.

While... reality is... simple ?

I heard of Podemos. However I guess they do not want to exit the Euro and the situation in Spain and Italy or even Portugal for example is much better than in Greece. From the graph I would judge that Podemos will become third or second strongest party in the coming elections and may be part of the government (with the red line maybe) - but who knows.

Also Syriza successful? So far not very much and also the future doesn't look too good in any case. If I were Podemos I would try to get a bit of distance in order not to get associated too closely with Syriza (and Anel).

But yeah it's possible. Maybe Europe breaks apart. It's allowed according to the EU founding treaties and so it may happen. In the US or in Russia or China or any other coherent monolithic superpower the government would just send some troops to any part that wants to be independent. In Europe you just go. It's possible. It's not a single country but also not independent countries either. Maybe that makes it so fascinating to discuss and exhausting at the same time.

It's all a big experiment. How big will countries be in the future? All as big as China/Russia/US? Or will there be a big number of small ones (let's say as small as England) and if so how will these small ones live (peacefully) together? My guess is that the ability to step back is one of the big things that make Europe different from other big political entitites.

It surely makes it more unstable but may have other advantages...

P.S.: What's the situation in Catalonia? How large is the risk/chance of independence in the next time? The crisis in Greece kind of swamps all the other problems and there are a quite a few (refugees, referendum in Britain, nationalism in the member countries, islamic terrorism, ...).

I found one sentence there with your opinion, and that was: "that referendum was indeed needed" (and what's around it). The rest is mostly about how everyone lies and so on. So my tl;dr of your opinion is: "I have no clue what's really going on and have no opinion on how to solve it, so I'd leave that to the Greek people to decide. And don't you dare listen to anyone who does have an opinion, because there's something wrong with them for having one."

(And apologies to everyone for these posts, I find the rest of the discussion interesting and I'm just interrupting it.)

Yeah maybe this is exactly the idea behind. I actually wondered most why they made it one week after the deadline? One would think that a referendum last sunday about the exact wording of the proposal of one week before would be perfectly within the rights of a democratic state but doing it one week later and campaigning for a NO? This does not make much sense. If the government doesn't like the offer, it should just say no to it, otherwise it should not say anything and let the people decide about the offer but within the timeframe.

Maybe it's just bad luck and coincidences but more probable is that Syriza (and Anel) just wants to save their heads.

Found the referendum text: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33311422
And the EU proposal is found here http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-5270_en.htm
The most important points are (VAT to 23%, cut early pensions, fight corruption, get money in exchange).

The fight corruption (a bit more detailed what this means, see document) is actually a really good idea and should be done in any case although judging from history this will be the part which probably won't be done in every case.

Yes, it is. Do you realize that Greece doesn't have problems with unknown forces of this universe?

Yeah but what is the root of the Greek problems? Everyone seems to have a different opinion and so far nobody found a good solution maybe because of that and what do you mean by overanalyzing? Should we just not analyze Greece anymore, maybe just sleep over it, and this will solve the problems of Greece?