Financial Crisis in Greece

[Voltron]

Stojacanec, lets leave him be. He thinks like there was 10 million people in Greece 2000+ years ago, just as of today and all these towns, cities were supposedly existed with greekish names in antiquity and we bad mongols&skopians came laters, and changed it all. They are happy to "restore" it all after 2000 years, right Voltron???

And you want us to believe you walked into empty space.
There is nothing original regarding Turkish toponyms in the Balkans. You are an anomaly to the area. The only reason why your lot made it out to us was because the Chinese had the smarts to build a wall to keep you out.

[Zarni]

Common Voltron it is widely known Greeks inter married with Turkish people out of Choice and all levels of Greek Society again out of choice worked and lived with the Saltans army

Greeks didn’t fight anyone everyone else thought for their own movement only Greeks present everyone else as Greek heroes fighting for Greek Freedom the only ones who fought for Greek Independence were the German and British romantics

There is no such thing as an ethnic Greek only Hellenism meaning...founding a Greek Nation

Next time get as close as you can to the Greek Parliament building take a peek at the Greek worship wall and note the Macedonian Village place names that still remain unchanged on that little Graffiti wall check it here
ttp://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=4584

[Brian]

Don't worry Voltron, soon maybe you will have another of your old things back - the Drachma.

Taboo Broken: Door Opened for Greece to Quit Eurozone

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/19513/46/

Thursday, 03 November 2011

It may well be remembered as the day the euro zone began to break apart.

At a late night news conference in Cannes on Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy shattered the bloc's most sacred taboo, conceding openly for the first time that Greece might end up having to leave the tight-knit currency club it joined a decade ago.

The admission, after an intense two-hour meeting with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on the eve of a G20 summit, sets the euro zone on a perilous course that could reverberate in Europe and beyond for decades.

Were Greece to leave the euro zone, a step that until now European officials have said is technically and legally impossible, the consequences would be devastating even though the country represents a mere 2.5 percent of the 17-nation currency area's gross domestic product (GDP).

Just how devastating is difficult to say because the move would take Europe and the global financial system into uncharted territory.

But what does seem clear is that an exit would spark contagion to other peripheral countries as foreign investors pulled out en masse. This in turn would hammer financial institutions across the bloc, leading to bank runs and forcing the European Central Bank (ECB) to respond with massive liquidity provisions and government bond purchases.

The central bank and all private and official sector creditors would have to write off their claims on Greece in one fell swoop. The resulting credit crunch, economists say, would make the freeze-up that followed the 2008 bankruptcy of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers seem mild.

"If Greece left the euro, the market pressures on the countries perceived as the next most vulnerable would rapidly become overwhelming," the Economist Intelligence Unit said in a recent report entitled "After Eurogeddon."

"As the chain reaction spread across Europe, we think contagion would be rapid, dramatic and uncontrollable at times."

Beyond the harrowing financial consequences, the move would also be a crushing symbolic setback for Europe. After more than half a century of closer integration, it would open the door to a new era of disintegration.

Merkel herself has said an exit would lead to a devastating "domino effect" across the euro zone.

"Not a single person would put their money in Europe anymore," she said in late September. The German chancellor has been excellent at stating the obvious.

[Brian]

To Euro, or not to Euro? That is the question.
It's the beginning of the end!! Yeah!
Thankfully Macedonia did not get in the Euro.

France & Germany to Form Own Currency

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/19578/1/

Friday, 11 November 2011
Ministers are understood to be deeply concerned that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel are secretly plotting to build a new, slimmed down eurozone without Greece, Italy and other debt-ridden southern Euro- pean nations.

Well-placed Brussels sources say Germany and France have already held private discussions on preparing for the disintegration of the eurozone.

At the same time, City insiders yesterday speculated that the “death warrant” for the euro had already been written, with a new economic bloc dominated by Germany and France almost certain to emerge in its place.

Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at BGC Partners, said the single currency experiment had failed.

“Undoubtedly it has failed. We know the concept of a single currency was flawed right from the start. There were too many big differences, in language, in culture and in the economies. There is absolutely no chance of the euro surviving in its current form. It cannot happen.

“There are limits to what the markets, the people and the voters will accept. That doesn’t mean the euro won’t carry on with fewer members, but it has been a failure.”

Stephen Lewis, of Monument Securities, said the search for some sort of Grand Plan or mega-fund to save the euro was corroding the whole project.

To borrow Voltron's sentiments regarding cultural differences, and since the Southern States were so fond of old names for currencies, the Drachma, Dinar, Lira, and Peseta, ect, all stemming from the times when peasants were around, maybe they can form their own currency - the Liar Peasant...aham...mmm...I mean Lira Paseta?


If Macedonia plays it smart (I know, using Macedonia and smart in the same sentence - really?) they should abandon their dreams (nightmare?) of the Euro and tear up the Interim Accord and tell Greece to shove their suvlaki and their vito where the sun don't shine!

[Brian]

Now, if the European Union were really smart they could have years ago just done what the IDU just did and saddled Macedonia with massive debts.

IDU Changes Statute, accepts Macedonia despite Greece's objections

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/19574/1/

Friday, 11 November 2011

The International Democratic Union changed its statute today where the votes of every single member to achieve a consensus were no longer required. Everyone voted "yes" for the change, except Greece.

The Macedonian ruling government formed by VMRO-DPMNE was a 'guest' before, however due to the statute change it was admitted as a member.
Greek political parties have blocked the membership of Macedonian political parties for 20+ years.

The IDU was formed in 1983 by former British PM Margaret Thatcher. Other IDU presidents were George Bush Sr, Jacque Shirak and Helmut Kohl. The IDU is very influential conservative organization, numbering 80+ members from all over the world.

This statute of the IDU was changed after PM Gruevski held talks first with British PM David Cameron and later with other PMs present a last night's gala.

The Macedonian PM is accompanied at the IDU by Martin Protoger, Vladimir Gjorcev, Kirili Bozinovski and Hristina Runceva.

Notice the two big sucks standing next together (I know, they're all sucks, but I meant Gruevski and Howard) - don't you just want to knock their heads together?

[Onur]

Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at BGC Partners, said the single currency experiment had failed.

“Undoubtedly it has failed. We know the concept of a single currency was flawed right from the start. There were too many big differences, in language, in culture and in the economies. There is absolutely no chance of the euro surviving in its current form. It cannot happen.

“There are limits to what the markets, the people and the voters will accept. That doesn’t mean the euro won’t carry on with fewer members, but it has been a failure.”

This is the fundamental mistake of EU project. The eurocrats under the command of the secret elites, are forcing various European people to adopt a new identity called "European citizens" and a new anthem ith new flag, in short a new nationality for everyone. But this is impossible because people are rejecting this idea regardless how much propaganda they do and how much money&resources they spend to achieve that goal.

Eurocrats tried to eliminate differences between people by trying to eradicate nation states in Europe but the difference is so huge between them, which makes any form of unity as impossible. Different languages, different culture, different cuisine, different mentalities. I mean, whats the common point between a Bulgarian in Plovdiv and a Finn from Helsinki??? There isn't any. So, why should an ordinary Finn or a Slovak feel any reason to pay the debt of a Greek from Athens??

For example, after communism ended, western Germans contributed insane amount of money to the development of the eastern side even tough they didn't even see or spoke with each other for ~40 years. Why? because they speak same language, they share same culture despite ~40 years of split-up, in short, they belong to the same society. Now, eurocrats demands from Finns, Slovaks, Germans to do same for Greeks and Italians because supposedly they are "European citizens" but it doesn't work and will never work in the future.


This is also the prime reason why federalists strongly rejected Turkey`s EU admission while others like England, Finland, Hungary, Estonia supported Turkey, because in a federal Europe where everyone considered as "European citizens", Turkish people has no place and even if they would accept us, it doesn't work, because we never change our 1000+ year old identity&culture in favor of recently invented, plastic "European identity". For their mentality, the one who refuses to accept new Euro nationality, has no place in EU.

[George S.]

italy is definitely next as a country that would need bailout 1.3 trillion eu dollars.

[Onur]

Greece lost most of their oil trade partners and supplying oil by buying from Iran anymore. Their previous oil trade partners like Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan refused to trade with Greece last month because of the high risk of not getting any money from Greeks. Russia alone was providing 46% of oil used in Greece

Greece turns to Iranian oil as default fears deter trade Greece is relying on Iran for most of its oil as traders pull the plug on supplies and banks refuse to provide financing for fear that Athens will default on its debt.

Traders said Greece has turned to Iran as the supplier of last resort despite rising pressure from Washington and Brussels to stifle trade as part of a campaign against Tehran's nuclear programme. The near paralysis of oil dealings with Greece, which has four refineries, shows how trade in Europe could stall due to a breakdown in trust caused by the euro zone debt crisis, which is threatening to spread to further countries.

"Companies like us cannot deal with them. There is too much risk. Maybe independent traders are more geared up for that," said a trader with a major international oil company.

"Our finance department just refuses to deal with them. Not that they didn't pay. It is just a precaution," said a trader with a major trading house.

"We couldn't find any bank willing to finance us. No bank wants to finance a deal for them. We missed some good opportunities there," said a third trader.

More than two dozen European traders contacted by Reuters at oil majors and trading houses said the lack of bank financing has forced Greece to stop purchasing crude from Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in recent months.

Greece, with no domestic production, relies on oil imports and in 2010 imported 46 percent of its crude from Russia and 16 percent from Iran. Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan provided 10 percent each, Libya 9 percent and Iraq 7 percent, according to data from the European Union.

"They are really making no secret when you speak to them and say they are surviving on Iranian stuff because others will simply not sell to them in the current environment," one trader in the Mediterranean said.

Shipping data obtained by Reuters showed four cargoes taking crude from the Middle East outlet of Sidi Kerir on the Egyptian Mediterranean to Greece in September. Three sailed in October. Traders said all carried Iranian Heavy crude and more was coming in November.

"Iran is the only one who might be working on an "open credit" basis right now, given its own difficulty in selling crude," one trader said.
Imports of Iranian oil to the United States are subject to sanctions but are still fully legal to Europe and Asia. The European Union said this week it may consider oil sanctions against Iran within weeks, after a U.N. agency said Tehran had worked to design nuclear bombs.

Iran denies trying to build atom bombs and an Iranian official, who declined to be named, said Tehran has no difficulty in selling its oil.

However, shipping sources said that interest in Iranian crude, which is cheaper than competing Russian grades but politically sensitive, has prompted the country to continue storing crude in the Red Sea, to make it available for swift delivery.

Iran is storing crude in four very large crude carriers in the Red Sea.

http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/1/50322

What would happen if western world extends their embargo to Iranian oil sale in the near future???

[lavce pelagonski]

Fuck You Papandreou (ΧΥΔΑΙΟ ΒΙ�ΤΕΟ του LuckyTV ) - YouTube

[Brian]

Mario Monti - the new Italian Prime Minister. Some have called him 'Super Mario'. By not being an elected leader, he is tauted as not being beholden to any sector of the electorate and so will be able to push through the 'necessary' reforms "fairly". Yet, the former EU Commissioner, as an appointed leader, and former adviser to Goldman Sachs, one can ask, is he less 'Super Mario' and more 'Monty (Monti) Python', as members of Parliament joke that they have a "bankers coup" and a "Goldman Sachs government"(1).

Likewise in Greece, we now have the caretaker government of Lucas Papademos, who was the former Vice President of the European Central Bank.

Does anyone kind of see a pattern - former banking elite now heading appointed government?

Do you remember a while back the Dutch calling for some kind of guarantee/collateral before further funds are advanced to tiny Greece? If we go a little in the grey area, can we say what's the bet they will ask it of Italy, considering the hugely greater sums involved?

Italy is the Euro Zone's third largest economy and has 2400 tons of gold and and $2.2 tn in debt. Already a fire-sale of her assets is part of the reforms, yet, "Barclays Capital said in a gloomy report this week. "While reform may be necessary, we doubt that Italian economic reforms alone will be sufficient to rehabilitate the Italian credit and eliminate the possibility of a debilitating confidence crisis that could overwhelm the positive effects of a reform agenda, however well conceived and implemented", and, "At this point, Italy may be beyond the point of no return"(2). So, in other words, lets sell off your assets in a fire-sale (we want to make sure we get them all), push through austerity measures which stagnate further an already stagnating economy forcing the bond yield, and Italy's borrowing costs, through the roof, and take your gold when you have no assets and can't repay your debts. Business, the Goldman Sachs way - like in "The Godfather", "It's nothing personal, it's just business."

(1). "Time World" - 11 Nov 2011, "Regime Change in Europe: Do Greece and Italy Amount to a Bankers' Coup?

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2099350,00.html

(2.) The UK "The Guardian" - 9 Nov 2011, "Italy's debt crisis: 10 reasons to be fearful"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/09/italys-debt-crisis-ten-reasons-to-be-fearful

[Brian]

Lucas Papademos is today's Greece's apointed Prime Minister. He was the former Vice President of the European Central Bank. But guess what, he has one more claim to fame - he was the head of Greece's Central bank who fiddled the figures to illegally get Greece in the EU! Does something Not sound right to you about these facts?

The plot thickens...'Know thy enemy'
see "Euro crisis, Italy next?" thread as the continuation is more of a Euro crisis thing then just a Greek thing.

http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=5708&page=3

[Brian]

Lucas Papademos is today's Greece's appointed Prime Minister. He was the former Vice President of the European Central Bank. But guess what, he has one more claim to fame - he was the head of Greece's Central bank who fiddled the figures to illegally get Greece in the EU! Does something Not sound right to you about these facts?

The plot thickens...'Know thy enemy'
And Macedonia wants to be in the EU because...???

The EU's architects never meant it to be a democracy
The rise of a "technocracy" was always part of the plan for Europe.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8886498/The-EUs-architects-never-meant-it-to-be-a-democracy.html

So, as headlines scream that vain bids to save the euro threaten us with “Armageddon”, the EU’s ruling elite has toppled two more elected prime ministers, to replace them with technocratic officials who can be trusted to do Brussels’s bidding.

The new Greek prime minister, Lucas Papademos, was the man who, as head of Greece’s central bank, fiddled the figures to enable Greece to get into the euro (against the rules) in the first place – before being rewarded with a senior post in the European Central Bank. He is no more democratically elected than Mario Monti, who will most likely be Italy’s new prime minister and had hurriedly to be made a “senator for life” to qualify him for the job. Monti’s main qualification is that, as a former senior EU Commissioner, he has long been a member of the Brussels elite himself.

One of the few pleasures of watching this self-inflicted shambles unfolding day by day has been to see the panjandrums of the Today programme, James Naughtie and John Humphrys, at last beginning to ask whether the EU is a democratic institution. Had they studied the history of the object of their admiration, they might long ago have realised that the “European project” was never intended to be a democratic institution.

The idea first conceived back in the 1920s by two senior officials of the League of Nations – Jean Monnet and Arthur Salter, a British civil servant – was a United States of Europe, ruled by a government of unelected technocrats like themselves. Two things were anathema to them: nation states with the power of veto (which they had seen destroy the League of Nations) and any need to consult the wishes of the people in elections.

As Richard North and I showed in our book The Great Deception, this was the idea that Monnet put at the heart of the “project” from 1950 onwards, modelling his “government of Europe” on precisely the same four institutions that made up the League of Nations – a commission, a council of ministers, a parliament and a court. Thus, step by step over decades, Monnet’s technocratic dream has come to pass.

The events of last week were by no means the first time that an elected prime minister has been toppled by the Euro-elite. The most dramatic example, as we also showed in our book, was in 1990, when Mrs Thatcher had emerged as the biggest obstacle to the next great leap forward in their slow-motion coup d’etat, the Maastricht Treaty, creating the European Union and the single currency. Following her ambushing at a European Council in October 1990, when she was outnumbered 11 to one, the trap was sprung. An alliance between the European elite, led by Jacques Delors, and our own Tory Europhiles, led by Geoffrey Howe and Michael Heseltine, brought her down within weeks.

They had disposed of the greatest political obstacle to the onward march of their project just as ruthlessly as they were later to brush aside all those referendums expressing the objections of the French, the Dutch and the Irish to their Constitution. The one thing for which there has never been any place in their grand design is democracy. What a pity the Today programme didn’t wake up to that years ago.

The BBC reveals how Blair’s 'multi-billion-pound gaffe’ may triple our electricity bills
I would not have wished it on anyone to sit through last Monday’s laborious Panorama, entitled “Who’s Fuelling the Rise in Your Fuel Bills?”, but two things about it were remarkable. One was that it was the first BBC programme, as far as I know, to admit that electricity from wind turbines is “eye-wateringly more expensive” than that from conventional power stations. According to one estimate cited by Panorama, Chris Huhne’s wish for us to spend £200 billion on renewable energy in the next nine years could triple our electricity bills, pushing millions more households into “fuel poverty”.

The programme’s other startling feature was an interview with Sir David King, formerly Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser. This confirmed that in March 2007, the prime minister had made “a multi-billion-pound gaffe” when he signed us up to the European Council’s historic commitment that, by 2020, the EU would derive 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources. What Blair did not realise, as he and the EU’s political leaders argued “until two or three in the morning” without their technical advisers, was that “energy” includes many things, such as gas for heating, which cannot be derived from renewables.

A Treasury official explained to Panorama that they had worked out that Britain could not hope to generate more than 15 per cent of its electricity from renewables. But Blair recklessly signed up to a target which meant that 32 per cent of our electricity would have to come from renewables, which would be fantastically expensive were it even feasible. By the time King and Blair’s other advisers learnt what he had let us in for, it was too late.

The programme ended with the ineffable Mr Huhne assuring us that “the overall effect of government policy will be to lower bills”. Even the BBC was clearly not convinced.

It's F'ing incredible. Everything is about how to increase everyone's cost of living to the point where you can't cope any more and collapse and give in to the banks who then 'legally' own everything. And the best part is we're so stupid, we actually want them to do it - help us fight global warming, otherwise it will be a global disaster, force us to spend more on renewables faster than we can afford, even if we go broke!

And Macedonia wants to join this rubbish, why???

[Brian]

Even more proof that the EU is the Evil Empire.

The Euro Titanic is sinking but there's no lifeboat for Britain

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8771217/The-Euro-Titanic-is-sinking-but-theres-no-lifeboat-for-Britain.html

As the battle for the euro spins out of control, it is clear that this is the biggest crisis the “European project” has ever brought on itself. Its implications for the world economy and for the EU’s own future are incalculable.
...
...plaintive voices are heard in Britain saying that we must look for a lifeboat. Some 120 “Eurosceptic” Tory MPs, we are told, are calling for a “redrawing of our relationship with Europe”. We must “repatriate powers”. William Hague says “Britain could benefit from loosening its ties with Europe”.

No one expressed this more vividly last week than Max Hastings, in a two-page “recantation”, headed “Sorry, I was wrong”. Having always been a fervent “pro-European”, he proclaimed, he now saw the EU as “a disaster which is blighting every aspect of British life”. The euro folly, crippling regulations, uncontrolled immigration – he chucked everything in to show how the EU has become a monster threatening catastrophe “unless its terms and powers are drastically recast”. And yet (as I recall from the days when I worked for him, and he could scarcely conceal his contempt for my criticisms of the EU), Sir Max has never grasped the real nature of this mighty project or the vision behind it, which is finally colliding with reality.

For 50 years, building itself up step by step into a form of supra-national government, the “European project” has only ever had one aim – to take away ever more powers of member states to govern their own affairs. It has had no more sacred principle than the acquis commmunautaire, which lays down that once powers have been handed to the centre they can never be given back.

No sentence in Hastings’s piece was more poignant than his observation that “in its early decades the Common Market was a benign institution, set up to liberalise trade”. He still cannot grasp that the Common Market was only ever intended as a first step towards the ultimate goal, the embryo of everything the EU has since become, – a vast overblown system of government reaching into almost every area of our lives, and symbolised above all by its hubristic desire for its own single currency.

See link for complete article

[Brian]

Is it Goldman Sachs or Goldman sacks as they raid every democracy and pillage everything they find...everywhere except maybe in Iceland.

Let the Banks Fail - F them. They created the debt in the first place out of thin air (ie derivatives) - it's not even real assets/costs/money.

Lesson from Iceland's 2008 Financial Crisis: Let Banks Fail

http://thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/9710-lesson-from-icelands-2008-financial-crisis-let-banks-fail

...
The lesson that could be learned from Iceland's way of handling its crisis is that it is important to shield taxpayers and government finances from bearing the cost of a financial crisis to the extent possible. Even if our way of dealing with the crisis was not by choice but due to the inability of the government to support the banks back in 2008 due to their size relative to the economy, this has turned out relatively well for us.
...
See link for full article.

[Bill77]

MP Angelika Beer, in comparison to Mr. Kolbo, was somewhat sharper and clearer in her reply to the Greek delegation: “You must decide how far you like to push your policies against the wishes of the Europeans. It would be best for you to decide whether you wish to stick to your policies or leave the European Union.”

Could you imagine how much money Europe would have saved if only back in 09, Greece was not given the first option (because it never was going to happen), and insisted on the second?