Greece

[Stu Monty]

The conspiratory ramblings of a loony leftie.

 

Yup. Or the facts as some might call them.

[Jairzinho]

I think you'll find these are the facts -

 

All Greek people are lazy.

They maxed out the credit card.

We're going to have to make some tough decisions to balance the books.

 

Look, if I don't have enough money to buy a pint at the end of the week...

[Hades]

I think you'll find these are the facts -

 

All Greek people are lazy.

They maxed out the credit card.

We're going to have to make some tough decisions to balance the books.

 

Look, if I don't have enough money to buy a pint at the end of the week...

Extending that idiotic metaphor, what sort of family lavishes attention, money and praise on one kid while the other 2 starve and beg? Why do we lefties not have a better strategy to get these thick cunts on our side? Maybe we need to infiltrate X-Factor and Britain's Got Talent with left-wing propaganda.

[Jairzinho]

Extending that idiotic metaphor, what sort of family lavishes attention, money and praise on one kid while the other 2 starve and beg? Why do we lefties not have a better strategy to get these thick cunts on our side? Maybe we need to infiltrate X-Factor and Britain's Got Talent with left-wing propaganda.

 

Certainly more likely to work than writing books.

 

What about a computer game? A sort of modern version of Risk, but where you have to prevent institutions from capturing your public sector.

 

*Monsanto and Citibank now own your entire country - Game over*

[SasaS]

What wasn't deliberate? The selling of mortgages to people that they knew couldn't pay them (and including rate hikes in them that meant they definitely couldn't) or the chopping up of toxic financial packages, passing them on and then betting on them failing at some point because you knew what utter trash they were?

 

That was deliberate, in order to make money. Crashing global financial system was not deliberate. it was a unwanted consequence of these actions.

[Stu Monty]

That was deliberate, in order to make money. Crashing global financial system was not deliberate. it was a unwanted consequence of these actions.

 

Unwanted?

 

If you get totally pissed up and go tearing around town in your car then the fact you don't "want" to kill someone, and would rather not, is kind of outweighed by the fact you weren't arsed enough not to get in the car in the first place.

 

They knew the probable consequences and didn't give two fucks (as they'd make a shitload of cash either way).

[stringvest]

That was deliberate, in order to make money. Crashing global financial system was not deliberate. it was a unwanted consequence of these actions.

I'm not sure about that. But even if it was an unforeseen outcome - though that really does beggar belief, surely you don't seriously believe it - then financiers around the globe saw it as a massive opportunity to jump three huge unchallenged steps ahead on the road to complete corporatism AND make a shed load of cash in the process.

[Section_31]

I'm not sure about that. But even if it was an unforeseen outcome - though that really does beggar belief, surely you don't seriously believe it - then financiers around the globe saw it as a massive opportunity to jump three huge unchallenged steps ahead on the road to complete corporatism AND make a shed load of cash in the process.

 

Cunts fiddled the Libor rates knowing it would ruin lives. 

[Stu Monty]

Cunts fiddled the Libor rates knowing it would ruin lives. 

 

Mate, people as, we speak, are doing what they can to try and cause bank runs. Because there's a few quid in it or because they want to win an ideological battle. The idea that these aren't deliberate acts of psychopaths is real "gingerbread houses and lollipop lamposts" world stuff.

[magicrat]

That was deliberate, in order to make money. Crashing global financial system was not deliberate. it was a unwanted consequence of these actions.

It was gross negligence on the part of governments and regulators,  

However playing the blame game does nothing to help the Greeks today whose country is about to collapse. Cant blame them for voting No or on the other hand others for not wishing to give them billions with no chance of getting it back. I expect they will be thrown a lifeline short-term and eased out of the Euro .  

[clangers]

It looks like the Germans are going to let the Greeks stew in their own juices for a few days. A very cold logic, come back and talk to us when your banks have collapsed and there are starving masses on the streets.

[Jairzinho]

[Section_31]

It looks like the Germans are going to let the Greeks stew in their own juices for a few days. A very cold logic, come back and talk to us when your banks have collapsed and there are starving masses on the streets.

 

You want money? What kind of terrorists are you? 

[magicrat]

It looks like the Germans are going to let the Greeks stew in their own juices for a few days. A very cold logic, come back and talk to us when your banks have collapsed and there are starving masses on the streets.

Merkel doesn't have the domestic support to start giving them more hand-outs or consensus amongst the other leaders.. Going to drag on as Tsipras must have known,  

[Stu Monty]

If only there were come some other country that people could look at that was plunged into the financial mire and then returned to having flourishing GDP due to Keynesian economics. Like say, Argentina.

[Anubis]

Pesky South Americans.

[Red Phoenix]

Have got a lot of respect for the Greeks right now, well done! A well known narrative is to talk about how the Greeks have ran up a debt, etc, and not really cared. Well the bankers, IMF, the Brussels sprouts, etc, have ran up a debt too. It's a moral one as well as a financial scam that Interpol should be all over, and it's far worse than anything the propaganda mob direct at Greece. Most of the Greeks are decent people, just like the majority of every country. The parasites behind this international scam though, are sick and twisted people. If more of us could vote on IMF terms instead of the IMF disregarding us as they negotiate scams with government suits, these idiots would be relegated into the history books a lot faster.

[Section_31]

Have got a lot of respect for the Greeks right now, well done! A well known narrative is to talk about how the Greeks have ran up a debt, etc, and not really cared. Well the bankers, IMF, the Brussels sprouts, etc, have ran up a debt too. It's a moral one as well as a financial scam that Interpol should be all over, and it's far worse than anything the propaganda mob direct at Greece. Most of the Greeks are decent people, just like the majority of every country. The parasites behind this international scam though, are sick and twisted people. If more of us could vote on IMF terms instead of the IMF disregarding us as they negotiate scams with government suits, these idiots would be relegated into the history books a lot faster.

 

It's a load of bollocks. 

 

All the media do these days is repeat nuggets the rest of the media are spouting. 

 

'Grexit'. 

 

Is right up there with storms called 'the beast from the east' and 'weatherbomb'. 

 

Basically, entire lives, civilisations and national cirses are condensed into 140 characters or less. Absolute waste of time, 

[SasaS]

Isn't Argentina usually used as an example by those arguing against defaults, as in, you don't want to go through what they have been through, before huge rise in global (Asian) demand and food prices helped them finally reach that light at the end of the tunnel?.

[Red Phoenix]

It's a load of bollocks.

 

All the media do these days is repeat nuggets the rest of the media are spouting.

 

'Grexit'.

 

Yep, it's like they've been trained to be as cold as possible and not give a shit, no matter what the cost in Human suffering.

 

It reminds me of what Glenn Greenwald said in an exchange with Bill Keller from the NYT :

 

 

A journalist who is petrified of appearing to express any opinions will often steer clear of declarative sentences about what is true, opting instead for a cowardly and unhelpful “here’s-what-both-sides-say-and-I-won’t-resolve-the-conflicts” formulation. That rewards dishonesty on the part of political and corporate officials who know they can rely on “objective” reporters to amplify their falsehoods without challenge (i.e., reporting is reduced to “X says Y” rather than “X says Y and that’s false”).

 

Worse still, this suffocating constraint on how reporters are permitted to express themselves produces a self-neutering form of journalism that becomes as ineffectual as it is boring. A failure to call torture “torture” because government officials demand that a more pleasant euphemism be used, or lazily equating a demonstrably true assertion with a demonstrably false one, drains journalism of its passion, vibrancy, vitality and soul.

 

Worst of all, this model rests on a false conceit. Human beings are not objectivity-driven machines. We all intrinsically perceive and process the world through subjective prisms. What is the value in pretending otherwise?

 

[Section_31]

Yep, it's like they've been trained to be as cold as possible and not give a shit, no matter what the cost in Human suffering.

 

It reminds me of what Glenn Greenwald said in an exchange with Bill Keller from the NYT :

 

I think objectivity should be the cornerstone of journalism but I see it less and less now. 

 

It's often subtle, and sometimes not so subtle. 

 

The way they show migrants in Calais 'storming' lorries but don't bother to tell the story of what's going on in their homes, or how they describe some factions in a war as 'muslim rebels' and others as 'islamist insurgents'. 

 

The Iraq war was the death knell of modern journalism, never has a media been so complicit in a government outrage as that generation of media were. 

[Ranxerox]

A good day for democracy. 

[Ranxerox]

Isn't Argentina usually used as an example by those arguing against defaults, as in, you don't want to go through what they have been through, before huge rise in global (Asian) demand and food prices helped them finally reach that light at the end of the tunnel?.

 

No country should want to go through default. However it is better than never ending depression which is all the Germans are offering the Greeks. Bankruptcy is an extreme process financially but is sometimes necessary when debts become unsustainable and a borrower does not have the ability to service them. 

[Section_31]

[Section_31]

Won't let me embed, but worth a watch that.