Look at the pot calling the kettle black :) You're getting more heated up, which honestly is only amusing me now.

Here you go in the interest of the audience, I see 4 points in my OP, none of them the one you think I made: And obviously, they're not philosophical at all: This is a geopolitical topic.

Me (474): Stimulus is dependent on nonexistent savings. Greek leadership is incompetent and cowardly. The power is in EU and Germany side. I see this as bad and beginning increased global problems.

You (476): You're advocating the status quo.

Me (478): No I'm not. Objective facts don't have sides. You're also misinterpreting me and taking stuff out of context.

You (493): No I'm not. It was a genuine question. You are exaggerating the inevitability and therefore promoting apathy.

Me (505): Not promoting anything. Exaggerating the inevitability was to highlight the political incompetence. Also, individualism / responsibility is the likely solution. Thanks for clarifying though.

You (559) [this is where you jumped the shark]: You're bullshitting. You're trite. You're self congratulatory. You didn't offer any solutions. You're not contributing anything of value.

Me (561): I told you no twice already. You're right I didn't offer solutions - but I implied them later (505). Surprised at your change in tone, though actually par for the course for you.

You (569): I know better than you what you meant. I'm right. You're conceding I'm right. Why don't you make it easy for me to understand?

Me (580): I have tried, but I don't trust you anymore.

You (584): You're still hiding what you meant and attacking me personally.

Me (now): You are just not listening - recap. And your personal attacks are explicit (559 onwards).

Your contributions to the thread are as usual earnest and constructive. A bit of humor I think is quite appropriate to lighten the mood. :)

And here's a more significant contribution that my recent derailing. As you see, the title itself is humorous, despite the seriousness of the topic. ;) An empire strikes back

Well bankers are to be blamed to a certain extend, but the majority of the blame is on Greece. It is not like someone point a gun at Greece and force it to loan bad money.

EU dotates agricultural production, so expenses of producer are lesser, and his goods cheaper.
Typical food market sees choice - purchase $ 2 oil from Spain with dotation or $4 from hypothetical country which doesn't dotate agricultural sector.
Predictable result of dotated Spain winning markets, expanding olive gardens and inverted results in second country.
Greece, which did not want to become hypothetical country, was forced to dotate their sectors at the same level as Spain In the same currency as Spain. It isn't gunpoint, it is economical blackmail.

You hoped that, people that were obviously corrupted to the core or driven mad by the opportunity for greater power, would spend the money back to build better roads, hospitals and help the actual people?

Sorry, but that's something more than wishful thinking.

I wish it would happen like that, but there are no Robin Hoods in politics. I've lost complete faith and for the last 3 years i only vote a party that wants to do reforms and not just make obvious false promises.

This might sadden people, but the only help i want from Europe is their tech and know-how to establish a somewhat less corrupted and less tax-evasive policy. Cause obviously the German Officials want to fuck Greece (though i totally understand their "we can't trust you anymore" argument, cause well, we can't... i just see it as an excuse to go forward with the country's looting).

Read my link from higher up, for possibilities on how without being malicious German motivations go deeper. In a lot of ways more than the superficial humanitarian one the situation in Europe is very tragic.

Sorry, but that's something more than wishful thinking.
EU helped to establish 'better government' on Ukruine.
Let that sink in.

Could you please link the post you made? I read some answers from you but they were just fights with another user (not exactly interested in those :D).
Thanks.

@Gremlion well don't know much for Ukraine, but the little i've read and heard both sides (Europe and Russia) have or brought their fascists to fight, but the european-sided fascists are a bit worse.
I guess it's not anymore about ideals like "Democracy" but more like "Evil Central Left Commies" and "Good Right-wing Pets that suit our interests".

<3

Yes. Seriously.

You're right, that particular comment was just a plea for inequality. This is me and I make no excuses for taking a subject like EU politics and expanding it to highlight a greater global reality.

Once again, I agree with your comment saying "inequity of the human condition (which isn't changing any time soon)". - It isn't changing any time soon. So should I be content with accepting a system that's failing anyone other than the elite? No, I don't want to be someone who thinks that this is how things are ,as long as we stick within the parameters of how an economy should work, then that's ok.

Your analogy of putting band aids on bullet holes made me pause and consider for a while. Isn't putting a band aid on a bullet hole better than taking a knife and twisting it in the wound?

Somehow the chemistry wasn't right, right from the beginning in 2010. The Greeks never really seemed to make this their own national project. Most of what was communicated to here was complaining about losing of independence and hating the EU for imposing cuts and reforms. Also many statements were on an very emotional basis like Greece gets humiliated or a coup would be happening. And all this while billions of euros were spent to help Greece stay afloat (besides the banks). This is of course a really bad situation and jeopardizes all future collaborations. And certainly it leads to radicalization on all sides. Many people here would never think to humiliate anyone (why, just why would anyone want to do this), but we also don't want to pay for someone else, that's all. In our view the euro zone was not created with the purpose of the richer areas subsidizing the poorer ones. I don't think this is completely right, you have to show some solidarity and you have to give the future generation of Greeks a chance to live and prosper, but I also don't think huge transfers should happen.


I can understand that people lose faith into their politicians. Especially in Greece where government failed really bad for a really long time.

But just for the looting. I doubt it. Simply because there is not enough of value existing (no offence meant) that can be sold and therefore the privatizations will only bring a few billions... if we are lucky. It may as well be that the value of Greece was negative in 2010 if you add up all the assets and offset it with the debt.

In the end, if Greece gets rescued, the economy is growing again and the debt is restructured (=partly forgiven), I'm sure that the resuce of Greece will have cost many billions of euros... and I will say that it was worth it but I will deny that paying billions is equivalent to looting.

A 3% surplus to pay for the debt is actually not that much if only the economy would be better and the unemployment lower. It would be a low price for a rescue.

Sure, here it is, was on post 587
https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/empire-strikes-back-germany-and-greek-crisis

In fact, on the Stratfor homepage if you click on Geopolitical Weekly you'll find Friedman has been at the topic for 3 weeks at least. I think I posted one of the older articles sometime back. Despite being somewhat repetitive, I like reading him as he's far from an idealist American, and he is usually quite balanced - apportioning responsibility to both Germany and Greece, for example, but also understanding the intents of both as not being malicious and rather "natural" for lack of a better word.

Many today seem to expect indignation and passion are necessary around such topics, which I find a very black and white tendency, unenlightened in a nutshell. It struck me you might be interested in such cool-headed takes from your earlier post.

Ding ding ding

But it goes much farther, and there's zero need to attribute it to national character - their geographical position in Europe contributed hugely to this. And no, I'm not a geographical determinist, but Geography does play an important part. As far I recall they joined the EU back in 86 together with PT and ES. Yet until very recently they had no physical border with the rest of the EU, unless you count Adriatic ferries. Basically Greece was more peripheric than most, due to no fault of its own.

And all the countries of the EU got cold feet when it came to passing on sovereignty to federal bodies. The bigger countries like UK, FR and DE should have been the leaders in that, and they completely missed their opportunity while times were good.

Edit PS: It is interesting to consider that if not for the trauma of WW2, Germany would be the ideal leader/model to federalize Europe, it being the closest to a federation of states in Europe (Switzerland is too small to count). The UK was always very ambivalent about deeper political integration of the EU, due to its Atlantic / Continental split personality and the fact its political Union is a much different animal (still a Kingdom, United due to royal unions or almost colonialism of its near abroad in Wales and Eire). As for France, it could have leveraged its influence over Germany to drive on this, but it is almost the home of modern nationalism, hence natural it would be conflicted about how to proceed with integration - look no farther than its opposition to English adoption as lingua franca. In fact, as Germany naturally slides, despite its passivist inclination (not a typo) into the closest thing to an European Empire head (Friedman's title is poetic / prophetic and aptly chosen) I expect France will be its main opponent. Feels like we're going back to the 19th century honestly... deja vu all over again...

"Dotate" means "endow"... I'm not certain that is what you actually mean when you use the word in this context. Is "subsidize" ("to aid or promote (as a private enterprise) with public money") closer to what you mean?

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_greek_referendum/post595

I haven read this entire topic, its quite long, i do know that something must be done.
I read some of the articles on yahoo and other news, and some in dutch nu dot nl and more dutch sites.

I also know that drachma value is and was , non existent like the italina lira was, the belgium franc was 5 tot 7 cents
so that was also not big, and french francs were 50 cent(guilders) at most as far as i remember when i was a kid.

Hfl(dutch guilder) was pretty good and stable :D
deutsch mark was 89 cents (in guilders)at most i think (its a very long time ago)
USD was good and higher then dutch guilder, GBP(british pounds were more then 200% value of our dutch guilders) so these currencies were pretty stable and strong.

Anyways, the point is they have to reform or whatever they call that , in holland we had to cut down , peoples incomes are cut down, social benefits are cut down , and more.
Every member of europe had to cut down on things , so its logical Greece has to do the same.

I dont know how the 'benefit' works in Greece, in Holland they have cut it down severly, also in most european countries aswell i assume, cause this way lots of money can be saved and may help to solve the crisis.
Ofcourse there was 1 political party that seemed to have twitterd that the netherlands (Rutte) was cutting down on care in the netherlands, and spending that money elsewhere.
Most European countries have gotten their fair part of cutdowns in social security , incomes and the likes ,so Greece should also participate on that i guess.

our nationaldebt meter: destaatsschuldmeter.nl
theres a german: staatsschuldenuhr.de/
from these sites you can check other debts.

It seems not much is going to happen in Greece now. Over 50 parliamenterians from Siriza party have already denied the European loan and will vote against and the prime minister seems to be hidding before the party. It seems Grexit is now coming near. I wonder if the conditions set by european delegation were set so that Greeks themselves would make an exit. But maybe something will change till tomorrow.

Yes, I mean subsidies. About actual amount and types you can read in this document (Olive oil producers were paid per tree or per acre)
http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/oliveoil.pdf
So, real situation:
Spain subsidizes agrarians in euro, job cost is in euro, fuel in euro, Final olive oil price $2. Subsidies are provided from taxes on their manufacturers and loans, because manufacturers also subsidised. They are subsidised because they need to compete with german manufacturers, who in their turn subsidised to compete with US and Chinese manufacturers. And it is hard to compete, because US subsidises with painted paper, and China uses slave labour.

Greeks subsidize agrarians in euro, job cost is in euro(and minimal wages, pensions are enforced by EU laws), fuel in euro. Subsidies are from loans, because Greece is denied from big infrastructural projects by eurocomission.
In hypothetical situation where Greece uses drachma and independent:
Greeks job cost is in drachma, fuel in euro(they use imported afaik). Exchange rate drachma/euro regulates final price on oil, so it can be even less without subsidies than subsidized oil from Spain at the right rate.

You should, they live under full IMF control over their economic system and they already have what would be greek austerity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Jaresko - US citizen, minister of Ukrainian finance leftovers.
IMF demanded Ukraine to cut subsidies for everything. Seniors, fuel, cancer patients (heard of Chernobyl? They have a lot of them)
Because, like Greeks, they have negative trade balance, their currency inflated to 4 or 5 times already and soon it would be even worse.
Without subsidies communal payments in Ukraine are on EU level (200-400 euro) and average MONTHLY wage $40.
Pensions are like $20. Their seniors currently commit suicides
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=ru&amp;sl=ru&amp;tl=en&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fivesti.com.ua%2Fharkov%2F76266-harkovskiy-pensioner-v-vyshivanke-pokonchil-s-soboy-s-krikom-slava-ukraine.html&amp;sandbox=1