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Truths and myths about Greece and the Greek crisis-Wikileaks: Greece becoming part of the dollar bloc is the bigger game played behind the scene
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Hello lads and gals.
With great personal sadness i have watched the past weeks in many threads regarding the Greek crisis, many fellow GLPers bashing the Greek people with claims that are false and are spread by the MSM for a good 3 years now. This is not the case with everyone. Some of you here can see this crisis for what it really is and i am very appreciative for the moral support and compassion you are showing to the Greek people. I would like it very much if we could have a sensible and rational discussion about these claims, without the typical lazy gypsies you deserve to starve stereotypes.
Now i don't want to convince you all with this thread to start preaching that all Greeks are saints in this situation, coz we are clearly not. We messed up big time. We know for a fact that the politicians and the elite are corrupt here and probably everywhere else. An interesting fact is that the Greek politicians passed a law a few years back which states that they cannot personally held legally accountable for any of their actions because they do what they do for the public good. Now that is a gem of a law i say. The biggest mistake of the ordinary people in Greece is that they voted again and again for 38 years the same corrupt politicians and waited until TSHTF to change this. Probably its too late now because the damage is already done, but as they say better late than freaking ever.
I would like to chat with you now about the basis of these claims that are wide spread and debunk them once and for all.
Claim no.1 : Greeks are lazy
That is a myth. In fact most of the Greeks work more than anyone else in the EU and have been working that hard before Greece got into the eurozone.
[link to stats.oecd.org]
Even the amount of paid holidays is 23 compared to the EU average, and significantly lower than the minimum of 28 days in the UK and 30 days in Germany.
Claim no.2: Greeks retire at 50
Myth. The only ones who retire at such age are the cops, the people working in the army and the security forces in general. In some cases people working in heavy industry and unhealthy environments, can also retire before the average retirement age.
Here you can download the excel from OECD with statistics on average retirement age per country: [link to www.oecd.org]
If you are bored to do that, here is link to a chart which shows that only in Ireland and Portugal the average retirement age is bigger than Greece within the eurozone. [link to paul.kedrosky.com]
Claim no.3: Greeks don't pay taxes and state is overspending in the public sector
Myth with a fair amount of truth. The real problem is not the tax collection from the low and middle class, but the lack of tax collection from the rich. From 2001 to 2007, Greece collected only an average of 39.4% of GDP in taxes, compared to the EU 44.4% average. As i 've stated many times before, the elite in Greece is corrupt to the bone. The rich and the corporations are the ones that are not paying their fair share in taxes and this has an impact on the whole Greek economy. Here is an article with useful info about this claim. [link to www.americanprogress.org]
The real plan here is to discredit completely the Greek public sector and then buy it for pennies. An excellent example of this tactic is the plan of privatization of the public electricity provider (DEI) which is a profitable public company. A new power plant was introduced 2 years ago which costed around 1,5 BN euro. DEI have 15 such power plants and they now want to sell them all for a total amount of 400 million euros. It is absurd and it is not the only privatization in plan. They want the lottery, the water, the railroad, the education system etc. You get the picture. They try to steal the labor of decades of the Greek taxpayer. It is a vulture party. A sellout.
I ve' posted some days ago in a relative thread, a post about where in my humble opinion these money were spent and how these deals were done. You can find it here (last post in the page) Thread: Greece's Stock Market Carshes 4.5% In A Matter Of Seconds Following Collapse Of Government Talks. Run on Banks Underway! (Page 4)
Claim no.4: Bailout money helping the Greek people
Myth. The bailout money is not a handout. It is a loan with interest and a forced one that is. It's money going straight to the banks,to avoid the whole eurozone financial sector from collapsing. Many of you would think that this is not possible to occur with such a small economy and country, but the EU financial institutions are so intermingled and connected to each other that is a fact that when the first domino falls the crash for the whole banking system will be inevitable. Many European banks facing problems in Greece, have also great exposure in other countries that are under pressure now from the speculators. The Greek people don't see a cent from these money and is not affecting our society and daily life in any positive way. Even the Austrian finance minister Maria Fekter admitted last summer that so far the Austrian state made profits of 19 million euros in interest from the Greek bailout. An interesting twist and obligation in the last Memorandum signed in March, was that the Greek state cannot borrow money from any other source or country in the world, amid reports that Russia was ready to help out with the debt and offer a loan with minimum interest. Greece can only borrow the forced bailout money from the EU and if that is not unconstitutional i don't know what it is.
Claim no.5: There would be no money for pensions and salaries if...
Myth. This particular claim (or should i say blackmail?) is reported daily in the Greek media and by Greek politicians for over a year now, just to terrorize the people that if they do not come to their senses and accept austerity and don't vote the pro-bailout forces, they state will have no money for their salaries. Here is an interesting chart in Greek that i 'll help you out to read the important parts. It is the state budget of 2011 with the estimated budget of 2012.
[link to www.tsantiri.gr]
So the state income for 2011 was approx. 85 BN. Approx. 19.5 BN of them goes for salaries in the public sector and 31.5 BN goes for pensions. In the bottom of this chart you can see that a further 15.8 BN goes to pay loan interest despite the wide-spread MSM lies that want us to believe otherwise.
So no bailout money are used for salaries and pensions, just a scare tactic so the people vote for the "right" cause.
Claim no.6: Greece can kicked out of the euro and the EU
For now a myth. There is no legal documents or EU legislation in the Treaty of Lisbon or anywhere else that an equal member country can just get kicked out. The only way for this to happen is to change the EU legislation or Greece to just take her toys and go. For both of these scenarios to occur though, there is going to be a meeting of all the Eu members, a voting and maybe a veto from some countries that face the same economic pressure. Even the president of Eurogroup Jean-Claude Juncker admitted a few days earlier, that this scenario cannot just happen. Do not fool yourselves by the claim, if they could do that they would have done it 2 years ago to minimize their losses and the infection to other eu members. This is probably the most widespread myth and for now it is just that. A myth.
Claim no.7: 80% of the Greeks still want the euro
Myth. I don't doubt that many Greeks still want the euro. The rich people that got more rich with it that is. Still many Greeks have also an emotional attachment with the euro, and this attachment stems from the vision of being part of the European dream. But this dream has turned to a nightmare for big parts of the population, who now is starting to realize that things were not that bad with drachma afterall. The fact is that the salaries basically remained the same but all the goods doubled and tripled in price overnight. Here is a chart that i will help go through it coz it's in Greek, that shows 1999 prices with drachma compared to 2012 prices with euro.
The 4 goods that this chart is showing us is:
1) basic minimum wage
2) one lt. of gas
3) one lt. of heating oil
4) one cheese-pie
[link to awakening.gr]
So more and more Greeks are realizing that their living standards are in free fall and i can reassure that this 80% number is a myth. Don't forget that is coming from polls from Greek MSM that the last day before the elections predicted that New Democracy will get 30% of the votes and Syriza will get only 8% and we all saw how these predictions panned out for them.
The whole point of starting this thread is that Greece now more than ever needs the support of the public opinion and the support of the average people around the world. Greece was chosen by TPTB to fight a battle that now is becoming a reality for many so called well developed countries. We are already toasted. Done. Done in reputation and pride and who knows what this month till the elections will bring to the table. We must all see beyond the curtain of lies, misleads and distractions. Don't show any complacency. They will not stop at Greece. This shite is spreading and it's spreading fast. The Greek elections messed their plans up. Do not let us fight this battle alone, when you know that you are next in line. You all after all have something Greek in your everyday life, from astronomy to trigonometry and thousands of words in your daily vocabulary. The banksters showed many times in recent history, particularly in Latin America and Africa their ruthlessness and how much they value human life. Lets all unite and teach em a lesson once and for all.
I thank everyone personally who bothered to read this post.
I will now close this gigantic post with an extract from chapter xv of Nietzsche’s first book that i recently read, The Birth of Tragedy, which was published in 1872, referring to the Greeks.
Almost every era and cultural stage has at some point sought in an profoundly ill-tempered frame of mind to free itself of the Greeks, because in comparison with the Greeks, all their own achievements, apparently fully original and admired in all sincerity, suddenly appeared to lose their colour and life and shrivelled to unsuccessful copies, in fact, to caricatures. And so a heartfelt inner anger always keeps breaking out again against that arrogant little nation which dared to designate for all time everything that was not produced in its own country as “barbaric.” Who were those Greeks, people asked themselves, who, although they had achieved only an ephemeral historical glitter, only ridiculously restricted institutions, only an ambiguous competence in morality, who could even be identified with hateful vices, yet who had nevertheless laid a claim to a dignity and a pre-eminent place among peoples, appropriate to a genius among the masses? Unfortunately people were not lucky enough to find the cup of hemlock which could easily do away with such a being, for all the poisons which envy, slander, and inner rage created were insufficient to destroy that self-satisfied magnificence. Hence, confronted by the Greeks, people have been ashamed and afraid, unless an individual values the truth above everything else and dares to propose this truth: the notion that the Greeks, as the charioteers of our culture and every other one, hold the reins, but that almost always the wagon and horses are inferior material and do not match the glory of their drivers, who then consider it amusing to whip such a team into the abyss, over which they themselves jump with the leap of Achilles.
PS Next post was meant to be a thread but for some mysterious reason got deleted. Wikileaks : Greece becoming part of the dollar bloc is the bigger game played out behind the scenes: Thread: Truths and myths about Greece and the Greek crisis-Wikileaks: Greece becoming part of the dollar bloc is the bigger game played behind the scene (Page 2)
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