Greece

[SasaS]

Meanwhile in Greece, the court declines to stop this referendum nonsense and the plot thickens. 

[Jairzinho]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/04/greeces-mass-psychology-of-revolt-will-survive-the-financial-carpet-bombing

 

 

 

When Times correspondent George Steer entered the city of Guernica in April 1937, what struck him were the incongruities. He noted precisely the bombing tactics “which may be of interest to students of the new military science”. But his report begins with a long paragraph describing the city’s ceremonial oak tree and its role in the Spanish feudal system.

 

Sitting in Athens this week, I began to understand how Steer felt. Sunday’s referendum will take place under a kind of financial warfare not seen in the history of modern states. The Greek government was forced to close its banks after the European Central Bank, whose job is technically to keep them open, refused to do so. The never-taxed and never-registered broadcasters of Greece did the rest, spreading panic, and intensifying it where it had already taken hold.

 

When the prime minister made an urgent statement live on the state broadcaster, some rival, private news channels refused to cut to the live feed. Greek credit cards ceased to work abroad. Some airlines cancelled all ticketing arrangements with the country. Some employers laid off their staff. One told them they would be paid only if they turned up at an anti-government demonstration. Martin Schulz, the socialist president of the European parliament, called for the far-left government to be replaced by technocrats. And the Council of Europe declared the referendum undemocratic.

 

With ATM cash limited to €60 a day, one shopkeeper described the effect on her customers: on day one, panic buying; day two, less buying; day three, terror; day four, frozen. The words you find yourself using in reports, after looking into the eyes of pensioners and young mothers, make the parallel with conflict entirely justified: terror, fear, flight, panic, uncertainty, sleeplessness, anxiety, disorientation.

 

If the effect was to terrorise the population, it has only half worked. The pollsters are simply finding what Greek political scientists already know: society is divided, deeply and psychologically, between left and right.

 

The anthropologist David Graeber points out, in his history of debt and debt forgiveness Debt: The First 5,000 Years, that the transaction carries the implicit threat of violence. Debt gives you the power of rightful coercion with all the blame attaching to the victim. But rarely has that power been used as Europe used it against Greece last week. In the 2013 Cypriot crisis, where the EU enforced the seizure of money in people’s bank accounts, the government caved in at the first confrontation.

 

Greece is different. If I were to pick out the equivalent of Guernica’s symbolic oak tree here, it would be the graffiti. “We didn’t die for love so why would we die of starvation?” reads one plaintive message. Throughout the five years of the crisis, Greeks have been using the walls for mutual public psychotherapy. “I’m being tortured,” reads a popular tag by a famous graffiti sprayer. “I’m spinning,” reads a parody tag that rhymes with it, often found close by, reportedly sprayed by the first guy’s jilted girlfriend.

 

I’ve often wondered what it would take for the walls to go white again. But there is no obvious answer. The graffiti, like the sporadic rioting and casual ultra-leftism among the young, broke out in 2008 during the two weeks of violence after the killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos by police. That was the modern Greek 1968, and if you measure it against the original, by now, we should be in the mid-70s, a moment of demobilisation and defeat. But whatever the outcome of Sunday’s vote, it is hard to see this mass psychology of revolt and refusal going away. Like the oak tree at Guernica, it can survive financial carpet-bombing.

 

What worries me now is whether Europe can survive the act of inflicting it. Sitting in their ministries, the Greek negotiators were coolly drawing parallels with the 2005 Dutch and French referendums on Europe, where no votes led to a change in the European offer and a yes thereafter. But they had misunderstood. To drive a country to the point where its banks close and its pharmacies run out of medicine is not done to force a mind change. The aim was, as Telegraph journalist Ambrose Evans Pritchard wrote, regime change.

 

But here lies the central problem. Most of the time, when states deploy decisive measures against other states they have a plan not just for who will govern but what the replacement system will be.

 

Germany’s mistake, in this sense, since 2010, has been its failure to demand a modernised and productive capitalism. It imposed European debt rules via parties who were never prepared to impose the European norms of business and social equity. Indeed, the EU has relied on a local business elite that is often physically absent: happier in Knightsbridge than in its Athenian equivalent.

 

When Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy overthrew first George Papandreou and then Silvio Berlusconi, they could at least console themselves that it was a political mercy killing. Not many people rioted. And as Sarkozy implied, when he slapped me down at a press conference, this was the European way.

 

After this week, the narrative of the EU as “imperialist” will blossom in Greece – but true imperialisms imposed order. The outcome here is likely to be very different.

[stringvest]

Does anyone here think that being able to retire at 50 on a state pension of 95% of your salary is sustainable?

About as sustainable as being able to live on a salary earned for working three days a week.

[Strontium]

About as sustainable as being able to live on a salary earned for working three days a week.

 

Congratulations, you can take things out of context. Gold star awarded.

[cloggypop]

The Greeks do of course work the longest hours per week in Europe. It is nearly 7 hours a week longer than Germany. I would be wanting to stop earlier as well.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/03/13/contrary-to-what-most-people-think-greeks-work-the-longest-hours-in-europe-infographic/

[SasaS]

Germans are actually known for not working long hours, however, they are also supposedly making the most of that time. As the article says, "long hours do not necessarily have anything to do with efficiency."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/greece-overspending-defence-wages-taxation-economic-crisis

On Greece's spending in the past, from yesterdays Guardian.

[stringvest]

Congratulations, you can take things out of context. Gold star awarded.

 

Being awarded a gold star by the king of selective statements is indeed an honour.  

[stringvest]

My neg was just for his bog standard pretence of being a fucking idiot. It's offensive.

meant to + but I did a -.  Can someone please help me out.

 

SD is the most disingenuous poster on here.  Not necessarily because he explicitly lies - he's often quite careful not to do that - but the facts or the context he chooses to omit usually overwhelmingly negate the point he is trying to score with.  

[Jairzinho]

meant to + but I did a -.  Can someone please help me out.

 

SD is the most disingenuous poster on here.  Not necessarily because he explicitly lies - he's often quite careful not to do that - but the facts or the context he chooses to omit usually overwhelmingly negate the point he is trying to score with.  

 

He posts like a politician's appearance on QT, desperately trying to say as little of substance as possible. Pointing at statistics that are utterly meaningless without context (and often actually from laughable sources - like posting figures from the World Bank when we're discussing the influence of the World Bank), and shutting down when faced with a conversation that requires more nuance. Not because he isn't capable, but because he'd have to break character. A quite bizarre internet persona, like MT's.

[Stu Monty]

Congratulations, you can take things out of context. Gold star awarded.

 

Still waiting for you to tell me why it's not possible that it could be sustainable given you think it's possible for people to be paid 100% of their wages for 50% of their labour?

 

If you want sensible discussion it's there for you. You just tend not to want it.

[Anubis]

He posts like a politician's appearance on QT, desperately trying to say as little of substance as possible. Pointing at statistics that are utterly meaningless without context (and often actually from laughable sources - like posting figures from the World Bank when we're discussing the influence of the World Bank), and shutting down when faced with a conversation that requires more nuance. Not because he isn't capable, but because he'd have to break character. A quite bizarre internet persona, like MT's.

It's not really bizarre. He quite clearly felt that this became an us vs. Lib Dem thread when people got pissed off that they couldn't wait to jump into bed with the Tories, and ever since that point he's deliberately taken a stance and adopted a persona that he feels will cause the maximum amount of annoyance to people he sees as his persecutors. He's been trolling the shit out political threads since then.

[Jairzinho]

That is quite bizarre, to be fair. 

[Nightcat]

Blaming Greece for spending "rescue deals" and "loans" on a "good times" lifestyle, while they instead used them to refinance loans, which were taken to refinance previous loans and pay interests, is as clueless as...

 

...as blaming Liverpool and its fanbase for the loans H&G loaded the club with and forced Liverpool F.C. to enter a self-destructive refinance spiral. 

[Red Phoenix]

Blaming Greece for spending "rescue deals" and "loans" on a "good times" lifestyle, while they instead used them to refinance loans, which were taken to refinance previous loans and pay interests, is as clueless as...

 

...as blaming Liverpool and its fanbase for the loans H&G loaded the club with and forced Liverpool F.C. to enter a self-destructive refinance spiral. 

 

FF on the GF, it never ends well.

[SasaS]

Maybe Leeds United would be a better comparison. Didn't rescue deals began when the level of debt reached unsustainable level?

[dennis tooth]

Everything births from football, did not the big bang blow up the ball for game to take place that the very cosmoses could set up dark matter for goalposts in a game of infinity a side? Theres no gf without the ff.

[Strontium]

Still waiting for you to tell me why it's not possible that it could be sustainable given you think it's possible for people to be paid 100% of their wages for 50% of their labour?

 

 

Just so we're clear, three days out of five is 60%, not 50%.

 

And if you can't get your head round the fact that people are paid more for five days labour nowadays than they used to be for six, then nothing I write is going to mean much to you, is it.

 

 

If you want sensible discussion it's there for you. You just tend not to want it.

 

You can't even represent my claims accurately (see above).

[Strontium]

Probably because people think you just pick the "facts" that you want, and that don't paint a very full picture of things and as such it irritates them.

 

Ignoring the fact that New Labour held down the most consistently low unemployment figures for the last 30 years before the global crash just makes you look either ignorant or dishonest.

 

The best period of unemployment in this country over the last 30 years was under the most left-leaning and least neoliberal government. THAT is the bigger picture. THAT is the important "fact".

 

So New Labour aren't a bunch of neoliberal sellouts this week? But they will be again next week no doubt.

 

If my point is that every Labour government has exited office with higher unemployment than when they took office, I'm hardly going to be talking about the colour of the Prime Minister's underwear am I.

[Strontium]

It's not really bizarre. He quite clearly felt that this became an us vs. Lib Dem thread when people got pissed off that they couldn't wait to jump into bed with the Tories, and ever since that point he's deliberately taken a stance and adopted a persona that he feels will cause the maximum amount of annoyance to people he sees as his persecutors. He's been trolling the shit out political threads since then.

 

I haven't been trolling anything. The stance I take is always the one that best advances the cause of liberty, with no exceptions.

[Hermes]

 The "Labour" Party. That has to be the most comical name for a political party in the history of politics. Founded by the unions with policies that put people out of work.

[Rico1304]

Probably mentioned already but a new book out this week detailing the levels of corruption/tax avoidance in the Greek economy. Headlines are very poor.

[Anubis]

I haven't been trolling anything. The stance I take is always the one that best advances the cause of liberty, with no exceptions.

Well if I'm wrong, then politically you really are a disingenuous weasel.

[VladimirIlyich]

The "Labour" Party. That has to be the most comical name for a political party in the history of politics. Founded by the unions with policies that put people out of work.

Without their policies,NHS,free Education(seems like you missed this one) you'd probably have died in infancy from some easily curable disease.

Putting people out of work? Ok then,so how do explain full employment under labour goverments back in the 1960s?

Your bunch of wankers put everybody out of work so as to rob the taxpayer(including you) by selling off what you/we owned but you are too stupid to know.

[Stu Monty]

 

Just so we're clear, three days out of five is 60%, not 50%.

 

And if you can't get your head round the fact that people are paid more for five days labour nowadays than they used to be for six, then nothing I write is going to mean much to you, is it.

 

 

 

 

You can't even represent my claims accurately (see above).

You are the sad thing is we both know just how worthless this post is but one of us deemed to post it.

 

A pathetic comment disputing 10% and then nothing of worth after that. You should genuinely be ashamed of that contribution. It's abysmal.

 

I sit here still waiting your explanation of how retirement at 50 is not sustainable and yet full pay for half the labour is.

 

And I wait.

 

And wait.

 

And.......

[Hermes]

 Labour came into office in Oct 1964 unemployment 1.6%

 

Left office in June 1970 unemployment 2.5%

 

Fact not opinion.