ECON Athens in Chaos

[feralmama]

Coming soon to a city near you?

Fair Use
Entire article can be found here http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/06/28/greece-strike-protest.html


Excerpt:

Greek police said Tuesday 18 people were detained, with five of them later arrested, during rioting in central Athens.

Four policemen were injured and transferred to a military hospital.

The arrests came as young men hurled rocks and fire bombs at riot police to protest against new spending cuts and tax hikes being debated in parliament.

For several hours, police fired repeated volleys of tear gas and stun grenades at masked and hooded demonstrators just before the second day of debating was to resume.

Earlier, tens of thousands of angry protesters turned Athens into a violent riot scene.

The latest measures must pass in two parliamentary votes Wednesday and Thursday if Greece is to receive bailout funds from the EU and the IMF that will keep it from becoming the first eurozone nation to default on its debts.

The clashes with police came at the start of a two-day general strike called by unions furious that the government's new €28 billion ($39 billion) austerity program will slap taxes on minimum wage earners and other struggling Greeks. The measures come on top of other spending cuts and tax hikes that have battered the Greek economy, which is currently labouring under an unemployment rate of more than 16 per cent.

 

[Hokey]

I didn't know they had a hockey team in Athens. Did they lose a championship or something?

 

[nharrold]

I dunno...if what I've been reading on the internet is any indication, Greece is now reaping what it sowed. And since the US is going down the same road, I don't see that we can avoid similar chaos. Especially with our huge ghetto populations.

 

[Red Baron]

Always fun to watch a bunch of Socialist/Commies have to bow down to reality.

It's not about minimum wage earners as the CBC article might have you believe. It is about a structurally bankrupt Greek government doling out lavish pension, vacation and insurance benefits. It's about a country that has no manufacturing base but continues to bestow unreasonable benefits to the "workers" despite the whole EU having to constantly bail out their deficient little country to the tune of billions of Euro's.

Boo hoo.

 

[Repairman-Jack]

Kind of funny (well not really) that the DOW was extending gains on Greece Hopes....and then I see Drudges page has links for riots, tear gas and fires.

"Always fun to watch a bunch of Socialist/Commies have to bow down to reality." I don't think they ever bow down to it. They just stomp their feet and light stuff on fire

How long will Greece circle the drain...I honestly thought they would already be down, but I guess with the EU giving them more money it just extends the pain

 

[Richard]

guess they will keep rioting until the bankers give them loans

until they find out that the principal has to be paid back with interest, it does not matter what credit institution grants a loan, the money is created out of thin air and has to be repaid with interest
they may just as well create loans from their own central bank in drachmas, but the EU of course means centralised EU banking, thus making the EU itself the sole grantor of credit, making the EU a totalitarian political institution, this is the whole point of the Unions.......

 

[almost ready]

Vulture funds to profit from a second Greek bailout
Vulture funds stand to make a fortune from a second Greek bailout after buying hundreds of millions of euros of distressed sovereign debt in the past few months.

...

In the past three months, US asset managers Loomis Sayles and BlackRock, Swiss private bank Julius Baer, French asset manager Natixis, German investment fund StarCap and Luxembourg-based Ethenea Independent Investors were among a raft of funds to have bought Greek sovereign debt in the secondary market.

Between them, they acquired around €150m (£133m) of Greek debt, public filings on Bloomberg show. Market sources said there is still a lot of activity in Greek debt, despite the crisis, with data from public filings just the tip of the iceberg.

On average, Greek debt is trading at around 50pc of face value, but markdowns are smaller for short-dated bonds and larger for longer-term debt. If bonds are redeemed at par as part of a second bail-out, vulture funds may as much as double their money, debt traders said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...ds-to-profit-from-a-second-Greek-bailout.html

found during this interesting news video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdqcCi0GYd0

Just maybe these guys have inside information that this bailout will not only pass but will guarantee all the previous Bonds -- and make a quick 100% -- double your money double your fun.

On a more somber note, it appears that the head of the EU has gone stark raving mad.

THis is related, peripherally, because of the importance of the Greek, Spanish, Irish and Italian crisis.

Yes, The EU is secretly concocting administrative zones -- one of which will combine south of England with the North of France -- and of course, they deny it. The evidence of the plans and billions of euros spent on this project has been uncovered by an angry Brit.

Key elements:

This is the precise scheme, which would amalgamate vast swathes of both countries from Normandy to Land's End, that official EU spokesmen insist doesn't exist.

It's called the INTERREG programme and was signed off by Labour's Hazel Blears when she wasn't too busy 'flipping' her homes for the purposes of fiddling her expenses and avoiding Capital Gains Tax.



...
Needless to say, that rejection did nothing to derail the process of 'ever-closer union'. Having failed to impose a formal structure, the Eurocrats have simply done what they always do and forged on regardless of the democratically-expressed will of the people.

Arc Manche is one of the 13 different districts into which Britain will be carved up if we are stupid enough to remain in the EU.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds are being spent trying to convince the disparate peoples of Calvados country and the scrumpy hounds of Zummerzet that they share a common cultural identity.

We are living in a time of unprecedented financial crisis. Gordon Brown left Britain effectively bankrupt, Greece has gone belly up since joining the euro, and yet we continue to pump billions of pounds into an unaccountable, unpopular supranational government which is part of the problem, not the solution.

It is a government of politicians, by politicians, for politicians. We the people don't get a look in.

Never mind the Arthurian fantasies and contemporary cross-Channel dance groups. The EU is a flying circus we can no longer afford."

The rest of the article is details about the bike paths and other things in the works, probably not worth your time perusing unless you are in the area.

THis guy has been exposed time and time again as a loony-tune. They call him Rumpy-Pumpy === and that's the nice public name.

I'd say it's clear that on both sides of the pond, the leadership has lost their marbles, utter endless spewings of utter gibberish instantly recognized as BS by everyone not in their inner circles. THe dam has broken.

For more gibberish, see the you tube link in which Bernanke explains how he doesn't understand at all why the US economy is so slow -- it's a classic performance and one that couldn't be iimproved by Saturday Night Live. Sorry, but the reality has long since overtaken any satire!

 

[almost ready]

A reply to Richard

THis greek bailout will bailout the bankers. It won't do a thing for the greek people but place them more in debt.

The bankers, due in large part to Goldman Sachs jiggering, got the Greeks in way over their heads, much as has happened to many counties in the USA.

Goldman's actions were so outragous they are now banned from participating in state banking in some Euro countries. The Greek people had no more part in this than the Icelanders did when their PM, an outsider, signed them onto unpayable debts.

The Greeks aren't rioting until they get money, but to stop the increase in their debt limit, which is already unpayable. All bailout funds will go to mainly French banks, a few other Euro ones, and the hedge funds that bought up their debt on the cheap. See previous post.

You are 100% correct that this is a major power play - and there is legislation in the works in the EU to completely run all the individual countries' economic life from Brussels.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/27/greece-bailout-eu-neocolonialism

It is effectively neocolonialism. Details at link. Too much to post here.

 

[Emily]

Amazing what happens when the socialists run out of other people's money that was generated from that evil capitalism. What a bunch of hypocrites.