Financial Crisis in Greece

[Brian]

Greeks Moving Abroad to Escape Financial Crisis

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/19487/61/

Monday, 31 October 2011

Greek website designer Thanos Sioris sees only one way out of his country's severe debt crisis: board a plane and never look back.

Full article in Link.


Sad thing is he is just 1 Greek going to Hong Kong and 10,000 are comming to Australia.

[Onur]

Something fishy is going on in Greece;

OH CRAP: Huge Shakeup At The Top Of The Greek Military
In a move that confounds us, Greek defense minister Panos Beglitis just proposed a huge shakeup in military personnell, according to Athens News.

Surprisingly, he announced the replacements of the chiefs of staff of four military branches with lieutenant generals.

The shakeup comes on the heels of PM George Papandreou's proposal to hold a popular referendum on the terms of the second Greek bailout announced by EU leaders last week.

It is the newest sign that political instability is pushing Greece even closer to the edge of default.

That referendum is looking increasingly unlikely. Indeed, it looks like the ruling party will choose new elections over a popular vote on austerity.

Regardless, we could be seeing a turning point in Greece. More to come as we figure out what this military shakeup means.

Speculation abounds that Defense Minister Beglitis could have been trying to break up what could have been a military coup, according to the Telegraph.

Evidently, army officers ransacked the Ministry of Defense last month in protest of pension cuts. That provoked anger from Beglitis, who called the military a "state within a state." Evidently, heat has been escalating within the military about a possible backlash to austerity.

Nov. 1, 2011

http://www.businessinsider.com/wild-...litary-2011-11

[DedoAleko]

This whole referendum thing is nothing but a charede. The "greeks" don't even fart without the germans and french blessing.

[makedonche]

I agree to you Makedonche.

I do not believe for a second that Papandreu took this decision all by himself. Greece was already always under the command of EU officials and after the crisis, they are fully under the enslavement of them. So, this is probably a plan of EU leaders, to prepare psychologically, both Greek and European public for the inevitable end. They are also gaining more time with this way.

They are just trying to share the burden of failure as you said.

Onur
Yes I can see where your'e coming from, on first impressions it reminded me of drug dealers(EU) creating a demand for their product(debt) getting as many hooked on it as possible(PIIGS) so that they can then manipulate supply and demand(drugs) as they please and subsequently control all their customers(PIIGS).

[makedonche]

Germans finally realize they can't trust Greece

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/19495/46/

Tuesday, 01 November 2011
You'd think the Germans after 150 years of managing Greece would have learnt by now who are they dealing with, but no...

Germans expressed lightning fury and frustration at Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's shock decision to call a referendum on the latest aid package, with some saying the gamble would push Greece out of the euro zone (this is after EU Banks wrote off 100+ Billion Euros owed to them by Athens).

"You can't help thinking that they should be grateful as Europe is trying to help," said Konstanze Pilge, a 26-year old student, walking near the Brandenburg Gate in central Berlin. "Now it looks like they are going to mess things up."

Papandreou dropped his bombshell on Monday evening, less than a week after European leaders agreed the outlines of a second bailout for Athens.

"It just goes to show once again what a massive mistake it was not to throw Greece out of the euro zone at the start," said Wolfgang Gerke, a banking professor and president of the Bavarian Financial Centre think tank.

Full article in Link.



About time they kick Greece out. The old "Veto, Veto" song is starting to sound like, "Dracma, Dracma" with a donkey farting for musicl accompaniment.

Brian
Those Germans are complete idiots, why didn't they just ask the Macedonians whether the Greeks can be trusted or not, given our extensive experience with the liars and thieves!

[makedonche]

The end for Greece is near.

Greek Citizens putting their money in Macedonian Banks

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/19478/45/

Friday, 28 October 2011

The number of Greek nationals saving their money in Macedonian banks has doubled, reports Macedonian web portal Kapital. They are attracted by alluring interest rates, which are a lot higher than the ones in Greece, and by stability of Macedonian banks.

Although many of the Greek nationals putting their money in Macedonia are ethnic Macedonians, there has been an increased number of Greeks who chose Macedonian over their local banks.

Greeks can often be seen in bank offices in Gevgelija and Bitola. The law allows them to tie EUR 10,000 a month in Macedonia. No data about the exact amount of Greek savings in Macedonia is available for the time being.

The interest of Greek citizens in saving in Macedonian banks has been confirmed to reporters of Kapital by bank offices in Bitola, Gevgelija and Strumica.

Brian
Good article - now lets see if the Macedonian govenment has some balls and says "no thanks" and closes the border, letting in only other Macedonians? It would be nice for a bit of Karma - then we could see how long they want to argue about the fabricated "name dispute" before we allowed any Greeks over the border!

[makedonche]

Greeks Moving Abroad to Escape Financial Crisis

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/19487/61/

Monday, 31 October 2011

Greek website designer Thanos Sioris sees only one way out of his country's severe debt crisis: board a plane and never look back.

Full article in Link.


Sad thing is he is just 1 Greek going to Hong Kong and 10,000 are comming to Australia.

Brian
Typical isn't it - make a mess then go and live somewhere else while someone else has to clean it up! I'm not blamingf this individual in particular, but if he had an ounce of honour or patriotism he would't be bailing out, he'd try to stay and help wherever he could!

[makedonche]

I have said it a million times. The deal was mostly done for the European banks.
I also said a default would be more favorable than this charade.
Papandreou probably managed to find a crowbar and pry his head out of his ass and realise that in 10 years we would be in the same situation with the IMF whereas with a default we can manage to build up the country in more favorable way without foreign intervention. The latter is not something European banks like to hear. Well...

Voltron
So who borrowed their money? Who spent their money? Who hasn't paid it back yet? Who is trying to get out of paying it back then?

[makedonche]

We dont need a team of economists to figure this out. Just common sense.
Here is a good article for those interested.

Viewpoint: Greece should default and abandon the euro
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15452180

Voltron
What common sense? Is there any in Greece? What were the people doing when the government was out borrowing all this money they can't pay back? Where did all this money go? Was there any one in Greece keeping an eye on the government and opposition parties? The Greek people need to take a good ahrd look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they played in this debacle! Once they do that then they can go and demand answers from their lying thieving politicians, either way they only have themselves to blame, let's see if they have the integrity to face it and do something honourable about it!

[makedonche]

Something fishy is going on in Greece;

Onur
Something fishy has been going on in Greece for a long time now!
So it appears the military is unhappy about their pension cuts, welcome to the demonstration to them as well! Is anybody in Greece thinking about how to pay this debt off collectively? It doesn't seem so to me, all I see are Greeks objecting to the reduction in their standard of living or the aviodance of having to face these austerity cuts. The sooner they accept reality and stop living in lavish denial, the sooner they can address their problems and put a plan in place to deal with the problems! I'm sure us Macedonians would be happy to help by paying them a token gesture for the improvements they did to our land, after stealing it, as long as they give it back to the rightfull owners!

[Onur]

Well, trust me Makedonche, you wouldn't want some kind of military reign in Greece. The last time they ruled by their military junta between 1967-1974, they organized a terrorist organization in Cyprus, named EOKA. They were responsible from the death of 100s of British and 1000s of Turkish people. They also sent 20.000 Greek soldiers to Cyprus to annex it and ultimately hellenize it by murdering the remaining Turkish Cypriots in there.

Macedonia was part of Yugoslavia back then but this time they can direct their hate to you. In 1974, Turkish army kicked their junta soldiers out of Cyprus in 48h and thats how the seven year old junta regime collapsed in Greece. So, i can say that the Turkish army restored democracy in Greece in 1974 but i have no idea what can happen now if their military does coup again. We know what kind of people they are from their parades.

[Brian]

Brian
Good article - now lets see if the Macedonian govenment has some balls and says "no thanks" and closes the border, letting in only other Macedonians? It would be nice for a bit of Karma - then we could see how long they want to argue about the fabricated "name dispute" before we allowed any Greeks over the border!

Ha ha. Good one! Maybe the Macedonian border guards can demand everyone entering Macedonia to say in Macedonian, "Here is Macedonia. I am a Macedonian, let me in." If they can't say it then they don't get in. Just so to remind them it's not nice what they are doing with the name dispute and for throwing some Macedonian's passports on the ground.


It's a bit of 'cut your nose off to spite your face' because it would be useful to get all those Euros to be pumped into the Maco banks, but after being on the receiving end for so long, it would feel so good for a little 'up yours'.

[The LION will ROAR]

Plan to Leave Euro for Drachma Gains Support in Greece
LANDON THOMAS Jr.

Published: Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 9:03 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 9:03 p.m.
Page 1 of 5

The political upheaval in Athens has suddenly made the once unspeakable — Greek debt default — a distinct possibility.

So now it’s time to ponder the once unthinkable: that Greece might end its 10-year use of the euro and return to its former currency, the drachma.

Such a move is still officially anathema in Athens. But a growing body of economists argues that it would be the best course, whatever the near-term financial and economic implications. And now, with a referendum on the European-led bailout facing Greek voters, a vocal minority that has long called for a return to the drachma might find itself with a growing group of listeners.

A return to the drachma is unlikely to offer a quick cure for Greece’s ills. Default on the nation’s $500 billion in public debt would become a certainty, depositors would take their money out of local banks and, with a sharp devaluation of as much as 50 percent, inflation would loom. A return to the international credit markets would take years.

But drachma defenders contend that these worst fears are overdone. Yes, there would be disruption and panic initially. But, they say, pointing to Argentina’s case when it broke its peg with the dollar in 2002, the export boom ignited by a cheaper currency and the ability to control the drachma would eventually work in Greece’s favor.

“The real problem is that we are operating under a foreign currency,” Vasilis Serafeimakis, a senior executive at Avinoil, one of Greece’s largest oil and gas distribution companies, said of the euro. In the last year, he has been banging the bring-back-the-drachma drum.

“If we had our own currency, we could at least print money,” Mr. Serafeimakis said, referring to the ability to revalue the drachma. “And what is the worst thing that happens if we do this? I don’t get a Christmas gift from one of my bankers.”

His voice is still a lonely one.

According to a recent poll in the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, 66 percent of Greeks believe that returning to the drachma would be bad. But proponents of a euro exit say that beneath the surface, more Greeks are beginning to question the euro.

“The view that Greece should exit the euro is more widespread than you would think,” said Costas Lapavitsas, a Greek economist at the University of London who has long pressed for a return to the drachma. “It is just that the opposing view is so dominant.”

Until now, many Greeks have been wedded to a European identity forged by a national embrace of the euro and the wealth that, for a time, came along with it. Talk of returning to the drachma had mainly been held up as an apocalyptic vision rather than a viable policy option.

But for a growing number of Greeks, the collapse of their economy is apocalypse enough.

Prime Minister George A. Papandreou threw down the gauntlet to the Greek people Monday when he surprised the world by announcing a referendum on the latest bailout plan. But it was his finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, who that same day put a finer point on the question.

“Are we for Europe, the euro zone and the euro?” he asked. Or, he continued, does Greece return to the drachma?

Under the latest bailout plan from Europe, Greek debt held by private institutions would be written down by 50 percent. In return, as long as Greece stayed on track carrying out painful austerity measures through 2015, Athens would continue to receive more bailout money to finance its remaining debt.

When Mr. Papandreou brought that tentative deal back from Brussels last week, the escalated protests and rioting on Greek streets were a sign that it was not something his people would easily stand for.

Supporters of a return to the drachma note that the severe budget cuts of the last two years have had the result of almost closing the budget deficit — as long as interest payments on its debt are not counted.

Stripping out interest payments, Greece is expected to register a budget surplus next year of 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product (compared with a budget deficit of 8 percent of G.D.P., when interest is counted), and that, in effect, would give it the freedom to stop paying its debts.

It is an argument for defaulting on the debt and starting over, in other words. That sense of reborn autonomy is what lies behind the drachma movement that Mr. Serafeimakis is promoting.

For more than a year, he has been educating himself about the euro. He has pestered economists and written passionate posts on obscure blogs, convinced that the benefits from a devaluation of Greek’s currency, while no doubt painful, would result in a return to growth more quickly than further wage cuts and layoffs.

Outside the country, meantime, many prominent voices have argued for more than a year that it is impossible for Greece to regain competitiveness while clinging to the euro currency. They include prominent economists like Nouriel Roubini, Kenneth S. Rogoff and Martin Feldstein, as well as the investor George Soros.

Now, a small but growing band of Greek economists, none of them very well known, is beginning to ask the same question: namely, whether the benefit of having a cheap currency under Greek control would outweigh the costs of defaulting on its debt and abandoning the euro.

In a recent paper, Stergios Skaperdas, a Greek economist at the University of California, Irvine, argued that a cheaper drachma would stem imports, bolster exports and, crucially, give Greece the flexibility to control its own monetary policy and ease the effects of fiscal retrenchment.

Mr. Skaperdas conceded that getting this view across remained a difficult one as many Greeks found it troubling to accept that their euro dream might be over.

“For most Greeks, including economists, adopting the euro was like marrying a dream spouse — beautiful, intelligent, caring, even rich,” he said. “And then, rather suddenly, the marriage turned into a nightmare.”

A euro divorce would carry substantial costs, most profoundly an immediate run on Greek banks. That is why mainstream Greek economists insist that there will be no such outcome.

“There is no way that Greece leaves the euro — this will take us back many years,” said Yannis Stournaras, an influential economist in Athens who has advised past governments. “We would have a disorderly default, the debt would double — it is out of the question.”

But in a recent study, Theodore Mariolis, an economist at Panteion University in Athens, argued that the No. 1 problem for Greece under the current system — ahead of debt sustainability, unemployment and the problems of a mismanaged public sector — was its international competitiveness, which he said had declined 30 percent since the country embraced the euro.

Mr. Mariolis estimated that a 50 percent devaluation of the new drachma would soon erase this competitiveness gap.

The views of Mr. Mariolis and Mr. Skaperdas have remained within the narrow confines of academia. Other economists, like Theodore Katsanevas, have taken a more aggressive approach by pushing their drachma solution on Greek television.

“A Greek hotel room is two times as expensive as one in Turkey,” he said, ridiculing the notion that the steep wage cuts and public sector firings that are being demanded by Europe and the International Monetary Fund would restore competitiveness. “We are almost dead now — what we need is a resurrection.”

In many ways, the drachma’s most passionate and well-known local proponent is also its most controversial.

For the last two years, the media magnate George Kouris has used his flagship tabloid, Avriani, to run a relentless campaign that argues Greece is best off leaving the euro for the drachma.

Mr. Kouris, owner of the country’s leading evening news channel, is a die-hard opponent of Mr. Papandreou, and he has been accused of pushing the drachma as a means to wipe out his group’s significant euro debts, a charge he denies.

But he is insistent that the only way forward is for Greece to return to an earlier time.

“The people who now support the euro are the people that put us into it and made us a sick country,” he said. “Before the euro, a bottle of water was 0.50 drachmas. Now it’s 1.70 euros. It is a tragedy.”

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20111101/ZNYT01/111013022/-1/news?p=1&tc=pg&tc=ar

[makedonche]

Well, trust me Makedonche, you wouldn't want some kind of military reign in Greece. The last time they ruled by their military junta between 1967-1974, they organized a terrorist organization in Cyprus, named EOKA. They were responsible from the death of 100s of British and 1000s of Turkish people. They also sent 20.000 Greek soldiers to Cyprus to annex it and ultimately hellenize it by murdering the remaining Turkish Cypriots in there.

Macedonia was part of Yugoslavia back then but this time they can direct their hate to you. In 1974, Turkish army kicked their junta soldiers out of Cyprus in 48h and thats how the seven year old junta regime collapsed in Greece. So, i can say that the Turkish army restored democracy in Greece in 1974 but i have no idea what can happen now if their military does coup again. We know what kind of people they are from their parades.

Onur
Yah we know what kinda people they are too! Let them try something, they forget we have close to 1m(probably more) Macedonians in Greece who won't just sit around while they try something, not to mention our good Turkish friends close by!

[makedonche]

Ha ha. Good one! Maybe the Macedonian border guards can demand everyone entering Macedonia to say in Macedonian, "Here is Macedonia. I am a Macedonian, let me in." If they can't say it then they don't get in. Just so to remind them it's not nice what they are doing with the name dispute and for throwing some Macedonian's passports on the ground.


It's a bit of 'cut your nose off to spite your face' because it would be useful to get all those Euros to be pumped into the Maco banks, but after being on the receiving end for so long, it would feel so good for a little 'up yours'.

Brian
Yeah true, that's why i reccommend we let the Macedonians through and keep out the Greeks, until we can pump up the prices on everything, then let them in on 8 hour visas, we wouldn't want them haning around like bad smells!