Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

A good thing to come out of the Greek situation is a message that it is a waste of time electing a loony left anti austerity government. That should shut up Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland.

hay you are a bloody dimwit thick as shit shut up



cynic . eu leaders and family have made a fortune out of insider dealing
on the markets .
and the big winners financers made millions

portugal's present gov't is certainly far from "loony left", and i'm sure ireland's is too, and probably even those of spain and italy

Who was in charge when all the bills were run up?



clue: It wasn't Syriza

and perhaps an inspection of the bank accounts of the main parties would be revealing too

It is not the current parties that are in charge that is the oroblem in Spain etc. It is the growing left wing anti austerity parties that are pushung ahead. Success for Greece would have given Spain's left a boost before elections this autumn. I doubt the creditors have made much money. The money was lent at very low preferential EU rates and they are not going to get their money back for a very long time. The current Greek government really messed things up. Their games theory discussions made things worse. The game theory did not allow for pissing the creditors off in the process of talking. The government has had to renege on every policy that they promised in their election. Like all left wing governments, they are unrealistic about the economy. It is not possible to run a socialist economy in a capitalist world. Even Marx said the communism would not work unless the whole world was communist.

The Greek gov/people are the only section of europe to really stand up to the unelected prats intent on steamrolling a (dis)united states of europe on the people of Europe.
2517

Unfortunately France, Germany and a couple of other countries are bent on federation. The Euro is still a project in development. They know that for monetary union, there must be fiscal union. The trend is that all budgets will be set centrally and all taxation rates the same. The aim is that individual governments will have no taxation powers and very little spending powers. It is the only way to stop another Greece happening. What they are insisting on for Greece is a taste of what is coming for the rest of the Eurozone.

GERMANYS plan to rule the EU is on track now they will try and destroy the UK
Cameron is weak and they know .
thank god we have BRAVE AND HONEST PEOPLE LIKE FARAGE .
GET US OUT OF THE STINKING ROTTEN CORRUPT EU
GIVE US THE VOTE NOW

THE NAZIS ARE BACK IN POWER AND STILL WANT TO RULE EUROPE

Well worth a read imo.


Yanis Varoufakis full transcript: our battle to save Greece


The full transcript of the former Greek Finance Minister's first interview since resigning.


by Harry Lambert Published 13 July, 2015 - 09:54



http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/07/yanis-varoufakis-full-transcript-our-battle-save-greece

How is the ordinary man in the street supposed to decide what's right/wrong about all this . Personally I want out of the EU and any other sane person should too . It's looking very scary .

The New Statesman article is interested but not unexpected. I think he was naive in his approach and expectations. He was taking a very ideological approach to what was a simple problem of discussing money owed to creditors.

It would be interesting to take a stance based on ideology when communicating with a credit card company or over a Bank loan. He seemed to think that because his party had won an election and their politics was different to the previous government that it gave them special treatment. In fact he seemed quite shocked that the response was to pay back the money.

The negotiations went badly and a very bad deal for Greece has been done. It was almost entirely due to the lack of experience of the members of the government.

My take on that is very different to yours Haystack.

I don't think he was naïve in his intentions, he simply expected a level playing field, without the game's results having already been decided.


Of course, he may have been naïve in expecting a fair hearing.

I agree with Haystack's take on things.

All through, the Greek's have felt that 'ideology' was of prime importance and 'ideological considerations' should take precedence of simple stuff like 'Hey! You have to pay back that which you borrow - and with a bit of interest too.'

"But because of austerity and poverty, we are deservant," they cry. "It's not politically fair."

The 'Greek lefties' have an economy which is 23% 'black' and where around 90% of taxation isn't collected anyway from the other 77% (which isn't black, but actually is -because of under-declaration).

"But we have no money!"

"Well look under your bloody mattresses then."

Oh, hang on. We haven't mentioned anything about brown envelopes, bribery and corruption. All of which are rife in Greece. Indeed, the Greeks are famous for it.

He was expecting negotiations because that is what Greece wanted. The Eurozone did not want negotiations. They just wanted to know how Greece were going to pay up. I would have liked them to have been even tougher with Greece. The country had never fulfilled the necessary conditions to save their economy. The new government reversed many of the policies of the previous one. They rehired civil servants that they could not afford to pay. They reversed pension reforms and lots of other requirements accepted when they received the previous bailout. The result was that a crisis was coming and it did. They promised anti austerity and that got them elected even though they could never deliver it. Other countries in the Eurozone had similar problems and austerity has got them out of it and they are now expanding. Greece steadfastly refused to take the medicine. They didn't collect the taxes in a country where tax is almost optional. Incomes are self declared with the result that no one apparently earns much at all including people in areas where all the houses are £1m plus. Greece lived it up after they joined the Euro. They spent cheap money on things they didn't need. They want to stay in the Euro because they want the gravy train to start again.

You need to have visited Greece before the Euro and their hosting the Olympics (another disaster for them). They were a borderline 3rd world country. Even now, with shortages and unemployment, they have no where near returned to their pre Euro level. They took the money, won't do what is necessary and really don't want to pay back the money at all.

Throw them out as it will all blow up asgain. I think the Eurozone has postponed their expulsion because Europe is not booming again yet.

You have to remember that the article above was in the New Statesman, which is the voice of the Labour Party. It is a very left wing interview of a very left wing politician.

Oh, hang on. We haven't mentioned anything about brown envelopes, bribery and corruption.<

I thought that was the disease of the English tory party!

By email:



A deal for Greece?

"In short, if you give up your currency, you give up your sovereignty"

Europe has reached a deal on Greece, we hear. As per usual, this deal was reached by forcing everyone to stay up all night until they were too sleep-deprived and gasping for a pint to give a flying monkey’s about what was on the piece of paper.

We’ll get a better idea of where we stand as the day goes on. But it sounds as though Greece has capitulated, basically, in return for the promise of another bailout package.

Part of this involves Greece creating a €50bn asset fund through privatisation, half of which will be used to recapitalise the banking system.

Later today, the European Central Bank (ECB) will decide on whether to expand its emergency loans – if it does, the Greek banks could reopen for limited service.

The tricky thing, of course, is going to be getting all this past the national parliaments. Greece’s in particular, given that the people essentially voted against this deal just a weekend ago.

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has to pass six reforms through the Greek parliament by Wednesday. These include, says Reuters, “spending cuts, tax hikes and pension reforms”. That sounds like all the things the people just voted to throw out. Tsipras’ labour minister has already gone on telly to object to them, arguing that they will lead to new elections later this year.

So it’s not at all inconceivable that we’ll be revisiting this for a whole new series of Greek deadlines at some point in the near future, though I do hope not.

The eurozone is a folly of breathtaking arrogance

Various factions are trying to portray this as a ‘coup’ or some other such melodramatic nonsense. It’s not. This is simply the inevitable result of taking a group of countries into a currency union without being upfront with voters about the true implications.

This is what happens when you share a currency. You lose control of your monetary policy, and therefore a vast chunk of economic policy. It can only work if you all agree to abide by certain rules. These rules go way beyond simply using the same coinage.

This is all even more pertinent in today’s world. Our politicians have ceded a great deal of responsibility for the economy – responsibility that should remain in the hands of elected officials – to central bankers. As a result, we have unelected officials making decisions that redistribute wealth from one section of the population to another.

That’s bad enough when it’s the Bank of England, or the Federal Reserve, which are at least answerable to British or American politicians. It’s far, far worse when it’s the ECB, in which Greek politicians inevitably have very little say.

In short, if you give up your currency, you give up your sovereignty. And this goes for Germany just as much as Greece. If Germany wants the euro to work, then it needs to be willing to help out the likes of Greece, just as Greece, in exchange, needs to be willing to follow certain rules.

So the euro really only works if you create a United States of Europe. Preferably before you introduce the currency. But ask the average citizen of Europe if they want their country to be downgraded to a state within the USE and I suspect the answer will be a firm “no”.

No wonder the euro’s creators tried to avoid giving any of their citizens a vote on whether to join or not!

Given that Britain is struggling to hold together a 300-year-old currency union between only four countries, how much harder will it be to keep the eurozone together, even if Greece manages to stay in?

Europhiles often make the point that this project isn’t about economics. It’s about peace. My question to that would be: do you think the Greeks and Germans like each other more today than they did in 2000?

As German chancellor Angela Merkel put it: “The most important currency has been lost, and that is trust”. She was just complaining about the Greeks of course – but the destruction of trust was an inevitable consequence of the euro being foisted on European electorates. And it won’t have a happy ending.

For some of the most intelligent commentary on the eurozone, you should check out my colleague Merryn Somerset Webb’s interview with Bernard Connolly. It’s from a few years back – but it only becomes more pertinent with each and every Greek deadline that slouches by.

John Stepek
Editor, MoneyWeek