Financial Crisis in Greece

[George S.]

With so many diseases going around how cheap can it get?People are forced to do crazy things for sex,The govt should stamp out as it will spread disiases.

[Amphipolis]

Originally Posted by George S.

With so many diseases going around how cheap can it get?People are forced to do crazy things for sex,The govt should stamp out as it will spread disiases.

Two years ago, there was a scandal (that's the European mentality) because the pictures of HIV-positive prostitutes were given to publicity by police. In Greece and Europe, unlike USA, photos of criminals are never publicized; it is considered inhuman and unnecessary. In this case it was to alarm their previous and future customers. Look at these 11 pictures (9 Greeks, one Polish, one Bulgarian).

The men who paid for sex with these women were really... brave and I don't refer to AIDS. Well, No 4 looks fine. Also, maybe it was dark. This is a specific category of prostitutes that are drug-addicts.

http://www.newsbomb.gr/ellada/news/s...doylon-me-aids

[George S.]

The mentality of those that take a risk and they get the aids.Would you beleive that the pope is in afrika and he still hasnt approved the use of condoms that will stem the aids epidemic.I ts plain common sense.

[Risto the Great]

Originally Posted by Philosopher

A terrible tragedy in a Orthodox country.

Is it a tragedy because of the price they are charging?
Perhaps you know an Orthodox country that doesn't have prostitution.

[George S.]

Prostitution is supposed to be the oldest profession.Not that I go to it but others say that it is cheap with the economic situation of high unemployment.

[Stojacanec]

Better than being screwed by the greek cabbies.

[Dejan]

On a semi serious note, I'm thinking the English word 'prostitute' may have it's roots in the Macedonian language.

Прости - Forgive

Luke 7:44-50

44 Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” 48 And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” 49 Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” 50 And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

What say you?

[Soldier of Macedon]

Originally Posted by Dejan

On a semi serious note, I'm thinking the English word 'prostitute' may have it's roots in the Macedonian language.

It derives from Latin, rough meaning is to be 'offered'.

Back to the financial crisis in Greece, here is what's currently happening.

PHP Code:

http://www.ekathimerini.com/216248/article/ekathimerini/business/greece-says-not-a-euro-more-in-cuts-as-eu-officials-call-for-speedy-deal 


Greece says 'not a euro more' in cuts as EU officials call for speedy deal

16.02.2017

European Union officials urged Greece and its lenders on Thursday to conclude a long-overdue bailout review quickly to safeguard economic recovery but Athens said it wouldn't ask "a euro more" from its austerity-wracked citizens. Inconclusive talks between Greece and its international creditors on economic reforms and debt relief are in danger of retriggering the crisis that almost ended in Greece being pushed out of the euro zone two years ago. Failure to agree on various aspects of what must be done has cast doubt over the future of Greece's 86 billion euro (73 billion pound) bailout programme, with new aid withheld while the stalemate persists. On Thursday, EU officials were urging speed to avoid catastrophe and one German politician close to Chancellor Angela Merkel hinted that one bone of contention - the participation of the International Monetary Fund - may be got around. But Greece remained firm that is would not imposed more austerity than already agreed on is population, which has been living with deep recession, deflation and a roughly one-in-four jobless rate. European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici, who had visited Athens on Wednesday, said he was "hopeful" for a political agreement before a meeting of euro zone finance ministers next Monday. "An agreement on the way forward for the Greek program is absolutely necessary .... With (a) little effort from all stakeholders, (it) seems to me doable," Moscovici told reporters in Vienna.

But with just four days to go there was little public sign of compromise. "The Greek government is negotiating with responsibility and resolve ... but all of that must, however, be without any additional burden, and without additional costs for Greek society," Greek government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos told a news briefing. "Our aim continues to be an agreement with not even a euro more of additional measures." The Greek government has resisted the imposition of more austerity by the lenders, particularly on groups such as pensioners who have already seen 11 cuts to their income. In Brussels, the European Commission's vice president responsible for the euro, Valdis Dombrovskis, said there are costs in delaying agreement on Greece's bailout review, and a solution needs to be found swiftly. "There is a common understanding that time lost in reaching an agreement will have a cost for everyone," Dombrovskis told Greek news portal Euro2day. Dombrovskis said the situation in Greece could not be compared with to the situation in early 2015 when the country narrowly avoided default and toppling out of the euro zone. Greece has about 7.5 billion euros of debt falling due by July, which it is unable to pay without more loans from lenders.

So far it has received some 31.7 billion from the latest bailout accord, its third since 2010. Disagreements over labour and energy market reforms lenders want Greece to adopt have been complicated by broader misgivings from the IMF, which will not participate in the most recent bailout because of concerns Athens will never be able to extricate itself from debt. European policymakers have said that the bailout programme cannot continue without IMF input, although a Manfred Weber, a German who heads the conservative bloc in the European Parliament, said on Thursday IMF participation is no longer crucial. The fundamentals of the Greek economy have been strengthened, Dombrovskis said, but that strong growth potential was contingent on reforms being implemented. "So policy makers are faced with this choice – work hard to reach an agreement that will build on progress made or slip back into uncertainty. I think the choice is obvious," he said. Recent Greek economic data has shown how tenuous the recovery is, with inflation rising and economic growth contracting again.

http://www.economist.com/news/leader...-over-bail-out

Creditors fight creditors over the bail-out of Greece

Feb 16th 2017

SISYPHUS was condemned to push a boulder uphill only to watch it roll down again. Yet an eternity of boulder-shoving seems purposeful next to the unending labour of keeping Greece in the euro zone and out of default. It is nearly seven years since the first Greek bail-out. A second rescue package soon followed. In 2015 Greece came close to dropping out of the euro before its newish prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, buckled down to the task of pruning the budget as part of a third bail-out. Now a Greek disaster is looming all over again. This time the source of the trouble is a row among the two main creditors over how to assess Greece’s public debt (see article). The stand-off threatens a payment to Greece from the euro zone’s bail-out fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which would redeem €6.3bn ($6.7bn) of bonds that are due in July. If the money is withheld, Greece will be in default. Sooner or later, Grexit would be hard to avoid.

Hopes of an agreement before a meeting of euro-zone finance ministers on February 20th have evaporated. A deal is in everyone’s interest, and the Greek crisis has a history of last-minute fixes. Sadly, there are reasons to fear that brinkmanship and politics will get in the way. Before this new impasse, Greece’s economy was improving. Deposits had trickled back to the banks, letting the European Central Bank (ECB) cut its emergency lending. GDP has risen fitfully after years of persistent decline. Unemployment is still woefully high, at 23%, but is down from a peak of 28%. And Greece comfortably surpassed a crucial target by recording a primary budget surplus (which excludes debt-interest costs) above 0.5% of GDP in 2016. Still, the economy is too weak to withstand a fresh bout of austerity. Almost half of bank loans are non-performing. Investment is feeble. Credit to small firms, the backbone of the economy, is scarce. Business rules and tax codes are unfriendly and changeable. In addition, Greece’s primary surplus is the result of policies that are inefficient and unfair. Marginal tax rates have been increased while exemptions proliferate, a recipe for Greeks to exercise their mastery of tax avoidance. More than half of wage earners in Greece are still exempt from income tax. Essential spending has been cut even as pensions remain generous. A newly retired Greek receives 81% of average wages, compared with 43% for a German.

Against this backdrop, a row between Greece’s creditors has been brewing. At issue is the IMF’s role in the bail-out. Germany and the Netherlands do not trust the European Commission to police Greece, and have made the fund’s involvement a condition of their support. The fund is reluctant. Its officials reckon that the programme’s target of a sustained 3.5% primary budget surplus might push the Greek economy into recession. They would prefer to delay further austerity and to insist on more tenable fiscal measures that would do less harm. Europe thinks the IMF is too gloomy about Greece’s prospects. These are not the only sticking-points. By the IMF’s own rules, it cannot take part unless it believes that the bail-out will leave a debt burden that is “sustainable”—one that is steadily falling and easily financed. For the Greek bail-out to pass muster would require a commitment to debt relief from the euro-zone partners. But an explicit pledge to let Greece off its debts would be politically poisonous, because it might increase support for anti-EU parties ahead of elections in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Instead Klaus Regling, the ESM’s boss, argues that the euro zone’s evident “solidarity” with Greece (the ESM holds two-thirds of its debt, much of it at long maturities and low rates) is enough to make the sums add up.

This is a farce. Most of the bonds due for redemption in July belong to the ECB. In essence, therefore, Greece’s creditors are arguing among themselves over whether to agree on a payment from one euro-zone institution to another. The shape of a compromise is plain. Greece will have to pass legislation that commits the government to reducing pensions and income-tax allowances after 2018. European creditors will need to pledge to finance Greece’s debts at today’s low interest rates. And the IMF will have to stomach a higher fiscal-surplus target for Greece than it would like. Yet everything could still go wrong. Mr Tsipras seems to think he can wait for the IMF, egged on by America under Donald Trump, to abandon its stewardship of the bail-out. The resulting uncertainty will set back Greece’s fragile economy. Growing political turmoil in Germany and France could also make a deal harder to reach. A long stand-off risks seeing Greece roll down to the bottom again. Nobody would benefit.

[Gocka]

It was obvious from the beginning of this debacle that by trying to "save" the Greek economy, that Europe would crush Greece under the weight of these loans.

To put this whole thing in simple terms, Greece had too much debt that it couldn't afford the payments on, so to help Greece Europe lent them money to pay off the original debt. They didn't just give Greece the money, they lent them the money. So all they did is exchange the original debt for new debt except the new debt is larger than the original.

The original debts were held be private banks throughout Europe, so the logic was to shield private banks from huge losses should Greece go bankrupt. So they lent Greece money to pay those debts, now the debt is held by European nations, or basically European tax payers. Then they claimed that by forcing Greece to be fiscally responsible they would eventually get their money back. Problem is by forcing them to be responsible they crushed the Greek economy, meaning Greece collects less money, meaning they still cant pay the debt which is constantly growing.

Here is the part that is just down right confusing, who were the geniuses in the EU who thought that this whole thing would work? The theory here is so blatantly flawed you have to ask if the EU ever really intended for Greece to actually get out of this mess, or is something else going altogether. These policy makers are supposed to be "experts", were they really so naive to think that they could lend their way out of a debt crisis?

What I believe is that the EU wanted to shield their banks from losses, because lets face it, big banks have a lot of pull everywhere int he world. They accomplished that, but they passed the buck on to their taxpayers instead, which is absurd. So because some German bank made a bad investment in Greece, a German citizen now needs to cough up his or her hard earned money to pay for the debts that Greece will default on eventually. The bank who made the bad investment still gets to take their profits. Its a direct transfer from tax payers to the banks. Obviously this looks bad and no politician wants to be at fault for doing that. So they put on this big show, playing hardball with Greece, to show their taxpayers that they are desperately trying to make this work, knowing full well that Greece will collapse as soon as they turn off the taps. I think the EU is just trying to push that collapse as far into the future as they can, first so that it give EU citizens time to forget how this all came to be in the first place, and secondly to give the EU economy time to strengthen.

As soon as they think the political fallout will be acceptable, and the EU economy is strong enough to take the shock, they will withdraw and let Greece collapse, knowing they will not get their money back. This can only end with Greece going into bankruptcy, their is no alternative. Had Greece ripped the band aid off from day one, they would have been worse off at first, but by now they would have bee working toward a recovery. All they did is take partial pain all these years and make the problem worse, thus the collapse will be deeper than it could have been.

What I want to know is what does that mean for Macedonia if they can get their shit together. Once Greece goes bankrupt and leaves the euro currency, they will be very weak and out of favor. Will Macedonia push to get into the EU, end the name negotiations? That's if Macedonia doesn't collapse before Greece goes bankrupt.

[Amphipolis]

Actually, the new alleged compromise (according to Deutsche Welle) is hugely ridiculous, politically (EU) and technically-scientifically (IMF). These politicians have no problem seeing a white wall when it’s black and signing anything in order to simply not deal with problems but just push them to the future for the next guys.

You can't blame people for choosing Trump, Le Pen or Brexit. As a foreign newspaper wrote, these governments deserve to be defeated more than anyone else before them.