Tuesday - June 28, 2011

Greece Is The Word

ATHENS (Reuters) - Thousands of demonstrators began gathering in front of the Greek parliament Tuesday at the start of a two-day strike to protest against painful cuts demanded by international lenders as the price for more financial aid.

With Greece teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, parliament is due to vote this week on a package of spending cuts, tax increases and privatizations agreed as part of a massive bailout aimed at averting the euro zone’s first default.

Following weeks of protests and rolling strikes, ADEDY, the public sector union representing half a million civil servants and GSEE, which represents 2 million private sector workers, are stepping up pressure on deputies before the votes.

Transport and public services were hit, schools were shut and many shops and businesses were closed, while the streets of central Athens were virtually deserted.

“We expect a dynamic and massive participation in the strike and the march to the center of Athens. We will have 48 hours of working people, unemployed, young people in the streets,” ADEDY’s leader Spyros Papaspyros told Reuters.

Deep in deficit and unable to borrow on financial markets, Greece depends on international support to keep going. A default would spread contagion around the 17-nation single currency area and cause a deep shock to the global economy.

Prime Minister George Papandreou appealed to lawmakers late Monday to back the austerity measures in two votes on Wednesday and Thursday, which he said represented the final chance for Greece to get back on its feet.

Although the socialists have a majority, with 155 deputies in the 300-seat house, some MPs have warned they may vote against the austerity plan.

The austerity plan has caused deep anger among Greeks disillusioned with years of political corruption and inefficiency and now bitterly resentful of the conditions imposed by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
...
In a sign the discontent has spread well beyond the union movement and far left, the Greek Confederation of Commerce (ESEE), a trade association of retailers, also rejected measures its leader Vassilis Korkidis denounced as “predatory.”

It urged shopkeepers to raise Greek national flags at their stores and announced an Internet campaign to convince cabinet members and MPs to renege on the austerity plan.

Greece is stuck in its worst recession since the 1970s, with a youth unemployment rate of more than 40 percent and public finances shattered by a debt equivalent to some 150 percent of gross domestic product.

Gosh, maybe if they could actually start producing something the world wanted to buy they wouldn’t be in such dire straits. Maybe if they started selling dinner plates instead of smashing them, you know? And maybe if the entire country wasn’t one vast collection of sinecures, no work jobs, price supports, useless government departments, and people on the dole they’d have some way out of this mess.

But even when the reality hits the spoiled little infants in Greece will not accept it. No, let’s protest. Let’s riot. Let’s set things on fire and kill people again to prove to the government that we won’t take any cuts in the handouts purchased with borrowed money lying down. Let someone else pay the bill, 20 years down the line. Problem is, there is no someone else. And the bill is due today.

This is what happens when generations live high on the hog off of future earnings and the bill comes due. You can’t run an economy like a ponzi scheme. Is anyone in DC listening? Hello? Oh, sorry, they’re not. They’re too busy playing golf and eating fried fat in Africa.

How about - purely as a lesson and a warning to others - the EU kicks Greece to the curb? Let their creditors seize whatever assets they can. Toss the country out of the EU, which they never should have been allowed to join in the first place. Nations can’t file for Chapter 11. The Repo Man comes along and collects territory instead of the sofa and TV. Maybe they should sell the Athenians to the Persians once and for all, because there are no 300 to save an ungrateful Greece this time around. No wait, that would put even more terrorists in Europe. Crap. Ok then, turn Greece into the debtor’s prison of Europe. For 5 generations they’ll be doing all the scutwork, until “Greek” is synonymous with “maid” “pool boy” and “factory plod”. The only problem with that is that there won’t be any more Greeks after the 3rd generation. In which case they’ll cease to exist, and Europe can just seize the land and the buildings and use the whole country as a holiday time share. No tipping the maids and the pool boys!

Harsh? Utterly. But if Greece gets a pass, what will Spain and Portugal do? Nothing.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/28/2011 at 07:49 AM   
Filed Under: • Economics • EUro-peons • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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