Re: EU nations' reality: Greece's woes are theirs, too

Is the above your own opinion?

Is the above your opinion?

Mitsos, this guy is an instinctive Greek hater so any discussion with him is bound to be unproductive and really useless

Greek an a...Greek hater! How sad!

Agreed, it is not desirable. See what is happening in Ireland. Much worse than Greece, it is pounded ferociously. Spain has a 20% unemployment.

Let's get real. The only way out of this dilemma is

(a) Greece exits the Euro and runs its own monetary policy. This is the only way. The Germans, the French and the Dutch may be selling a shitlot of products to Greece but none of the taxes of the corporate profits in these countries can be used to support a Greek economy battling a world-wide recession. The Germans say that they do not want any of their money to support Greece but they still want the Greeks to buy their products. Sometimes this may make sense to Greece and sometimes it may not. If Greece was making its own monetary policy, it would have devalued the drachma making imported goods expensive and Greek goods very competitive in foreign markets. Sure, the Germans would have squealed, but they are squealing now anyway. The devaluation would have allowed Greeks to maintain their standard of living, boost exports, limit imports and restore competitiveness. Now, the government depends on the ECB, a bunch of faceless bureaucrats in Frankfurt. Is this the best way to run a country???

(b) Greeks and Greek banks should buy en mass government issued bonds. If the Greek state can sell most of its bonds internally at a descent interest rate, the citizens win, the state wins and the bond blood suckers lose. My father used to buy government bonds. They can pay a descent rate of return and they can be sold at any time. The Greek state should be out there selling bonds and the trade unions should be out there convincing their membership to buy these bonds.

(c) Reform the state. Shrink the civil service, sell out state enterprises and improve education. Nobody needs to support the Public Power Corporation (DEH). It should be profitable. If it needs to shed half its employees to become so, well, this is what needs to happen. Make tax evasion of crime punishable by seizure of property and assets and by jail time. Informed the citizens of the costs of tax evasion. My mom knows that if some scheister does not pay his/her taxes, it is her pension that suffers. This should be understood widely. The salaried persons should not be the only ones that bear the burden of taxation.

I have no problem in bringing the age of retirement to 65 and stopping early retirement. Life expectancy has increased dramatically, you cannot have the young workers support a huge army of retirees, each one of those staying on the trough for 40 years!! Only special, dangerous and unhealthy professions should be awarded early retirement.

At the end, Greece needs to re-assess if it wants to stay in the EU. The benefits of joining the EU have been minimal. Some will claim that the benefits were not taken advantage of because of the inefficiencies of the Greek state. Well, this is water under the bridge. The train has left the station. Greece would yield more power being outside rather inside the EU. Let Latvia and Estonia lick the German boots. It is high time to chart our own course.

I am really amused how _easily_ some of you explain the statements you dislike with "hate". Of course , a series of Greek governments have repeatedly lied and squandered EU money. The case with the Olympics immediately comes to mind when looking for an example. Then the Greek statistics has been called "basically fraudulent" by number of financial observers. The sad thing here is that the same excessive state bureaucracy personnel that has been doing this for years now are the first people to go in the streets to protest.

PS: For the primitive minds who would now point out the Bulgarian problems with credibility - do not bother.

Greece would be more flexible then.

Greeks eat German feta cheese because it's cheaper ( many Greeks are strugling to make ends meet ) but the wealthier Germans don't buy the more expensive ( but also better tasting Greek feta )

The reason why Greece had always a week currency.

I agree on that. I think half the workforce in the state sector could do the job. I remember a conversation with a young woman in Greece who was working for the state and she told me that they make a coffee pause after another on her workplace. I was working for a youth center here in Finland last year and we were 4 people. 2 could have easily run the youth center. I did half of the cleaning and 2/3 of the snow work and we were four people and it was still a lazy job for me.

I would be careful with this because when the railway was privatized in the UK it become more expensive and less efficient. In a democracy a country should be able to experiment in order to find out whats the best way of doing things. Different situations might require different solutions.

Tax evasion has to be cut at least by 50% or even 75% When I was in Platanias in 2009 many had illegal Albanian workers who paid no taxes or insurance and neither did their employers for them. The police knew this but had both eyes closed.

I am no friend of the EU anymore. We lost much of our independence while benefiting only very slightly from the EU. Greece should look for markets everywhere in the world. All in all I agree. Where I differ is the following points: Privatizations is not always making a service better or cheaper. Some services should not be privatized like universal health care but expenses can be and should be trimmed in state run enterprises without compromising on quality. Efficiency is the magic word

No, I have dealt with this individual before.

Money has been squandered by various governments in every state of the world. I never stated that the Greek state is the model of efficiency. On the other hand, Greek government failings aside, the effects of the crisis are hitting Ireland worse than Greece and unemployment is much higher in Spain. The Irish banks are essentially bankrupt. If funds by the EU have or have not been spent wisely has absolutely nothing to do with the current crisis. The inefficiency of the Greek civil service to even absorb community funds was well known.

No, it has nothing to do with anything. Greece did not and could not utilize EU funds for the Olympics. Yes, it did borrow about $7 billion. I objected to the hosting of the Olympics for other reasons but this amount of borrowing was a minor event although substantial for the city of Athens.

Well, it is difficult to uncover the truth here. According to the Greek PM in his press interview last Friday, the commission and the ECB did have the real numbers; he accused them of being far more friendly to the conservative government; in addition, according to "Businessweek", it was not the Greek statistical service that provided erroneous numbers, it was Goldman Sacks. We would not know where the truth lays here until there is a full investigation.

This is a democracy, they have the right to protest. It does not mean that the "excessive bureaucracy" is well paid to sustain substantial wage cuts. If there are extensive lay offs, somebody would need to pay for the unemployment benefits without collecting anything in taxes!! It is a difficult question.

The government needs to exit the Euro immediately. I know that this will precipitate an immense crisis in the Euro but in the absence of political integration, the Euro makes no sense. It is much better to depreciate your own currency than to cut GDP by 10%. Look at the immense suffering right now in Ireland or the extensive unemployment in Spain. There is no exit out of this without breaking up the Euro.

I would only like to point out that a crisis that would affect Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and it is now closing in on Austria would affect Bulgaria as well.

Therein is why they will not - because Europe will do anything to avoid its integration.

The problem then becomes Spain Portugal Ireland - they will want same. No wonder Ireland reversed to "Yes".

UK deficits are hardly a sneeze either, and a quite likely hung parliament could result in some global market reactions re first budget.

That is for sure. The absurd thing about the EU is that they seem to prefer to apply the same policy to Greece as the Greek banks were operating in Bulgaria - take low interest credits from EU bank and then give them in higher rate to Greece. The idea that France and Germany might buy off the Greek debt is not assuring either. The other excuse - that the EU is not accustomed to deal with srises like that is not credible either. EU has been giving money to the IMF for years and the IMF is run by Europeans (at least 2/3 of the high-level executives are Europeans). So, redirecting the Greek problems to the IMF (as we hear now and again from the European commission )is hardly the best way to deal with a situation that might easily turn into a chain reaction.