Perspectives on the global economic changes

[TSJones]

http://www.foundalis.com/soc/Why_Greeks ... other.html

A lot of blather in this article but it is an attempt to establish a neutral viewpoint about why the Greeks hate the Turks and in my view also the failure of the modern Greek state. Kinda off topic but you get the idea of why the Greeks think the world owes them and they are not responsible. Sound familiar?

[TSJones]

some more interesting news......

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-sto ... 32951.html

On Wednesday evening, China's two major stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen said they will cut transaction fees effective Aug. 1. China stocks had tumbled some 5 percent earlier in the day, taking losses since mid-June to more than 20 percent.

Bernard Aw, market strategist for IG in Singapore, said that the most significant move was the China Securities Regulatory Commission's (CSRC) decision to allow "reasonable rollover" of margin trading positions.

"The margin rollover will likely help reduce the pace of margin calls, and also cushion the decline of outstanding margin debt," he said.

But the moves appeared to have done little to inspire an immediate turnaround in sentiment, with primary indexes slipping again in morning trade.

At 0517 GMT, the CSI300 index had erased much of its earlier losses, but was still down 1.1 percent. The Shanghai Composite Index, off more than 3 percent earlier, was down 2.1 percent.

China CSI300 stock index futures for also July, pointing to further losses.

NEEDED: A STABLE MARKET

The People's Daily, official mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, said in an editorial that China needs a stable, transparent stock market.

Domestic investors have seen the sharp correction of Chinese markets as an embarrassment for the country and the government, and many have blamed foreign "ghosts", including the U.S. government, for trying to engineer the collapse by shorting shares in state-controlled train maker CRRC Corp.

"Who is gonna win? It must be China, we cannot lose!" wrote one anonymous poster in a widely recirculated comment on domestic social media.

"If we lose, the global media will report that the Chinese stock market collapsed on the day that the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was established ... Where is our prestige?"

The rumors have been widespread enough that regulators saw fit to publicly deny that foreign investors including Goldman Sachs were shorting the market.

Chinese markets, which had risen as much as 150 percent from November to a peak in June, have collapsed at an incredibly rapid pace in since June 12, losing more than 20 percent in jaw-dropping volatility as money as surged in and out of the market.

it's them trouble making Americanos.

[panduranghari]

Question is when.....

My understanding on why gold HAS to drop to 200$/oz or less is there will be a eventual separation between the paper market in gold (as suggested by the COMEX price) and the physical market (denominated by the man in the street market on a small scale to the institutions like Shanghai Gold Exchange in bigger scale). The paper market has to find physical when there is a demand for settlement. The settlement at the moment is back stopped by G7 central banks. But how long can they remain primary suppliers? Either the gold runs out or the price rises making acquiring more gold a bit harder.

I am quite confident that the price will fall way below what people are hoping. And people like Schiff et al will be wondering why gold has not gone to 50000$/oz.

I ask you this- What will the world look like when gold is 50000$/oz? Many things we consider near and dear will have a different valuation. I hence believe its in the interests of many national governments, to prevent this rise in the price of gold. Some will do it because they do not care either way. Some will do it because they have no other choice. The world will have changed. The best bet for the powers that be is to see it fall. And when it starts falling, they will cheer. But perhaps not understand the dynamics of this fall. My 2 p.

[panduranghari]

http://www.foundalis.com/soc/Why_Greeks ... other.html

A lot of blather in this article but it is an attempt to establish a neutral viewpoint about why the Greeks hate the Turks and in my view also the failure of the modern Greek state. Kinda off topic but you get the idea of why the Greeks think the world owes them and they are not responsible. Sound familiar?

http://www.gata.org/node/8284

Eric King: I want to ask you about Greece. Because the Greek situation seems over-hyped as a way to talk down the euro. What are your thoughts on that, Jim? Because I know in another interview you pointed out that the Greeks have a lot of gold and could just sell some if they had to.

Jim Rickards: Yeah, the Greek gold position is not the whole story and it's not the whole answer, but it is significant. What's interesting is that people talk about the PIIGS, you know, with two I's. And of course that stands for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain. And these are considered to be the weak members, if you will, of the euro system... of the Eurozone. And they all have different fiscal problems in various ways. But the amount of gold they have varies widely from a high which is Italy which has over 2,000 tonnes. Actually about 2,400 tonnes according to the World Gold Council.

Greece is less than that but still has a significant amount at over 100 tonnes, and then you have Ireland which only has 5 tonnes. So the amount of gold they have to back up their reserve positions, to, in effect, back up their central banks varies widely. And I've actually read the S&P and the Moody's, the ratings agency reports on these countries and they don't even mention gold!

[FOFOA: The PIIGS combined gold hoard is 3,233.8 tonnes, more than three times that of China. And their combined population is only 133 million. So the PIIGS actually have about the same amount of gold per capita as the US. And they have 34 times as much gold per citizen as China. In fact, Greece alone has 14 times as much gold per capita as China. China has 0.7 tonnes per million citizens. Greece has 10 tonnes per million and the PIIGS as a whole have 24 tonnes per million!]

I'm not saying it's the whole story. It isn't. And they don't have enough gold [at today's price] to retire their national debt. And I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that it's more dry powder. And it's another foundation for your monetary system. And to completely ignore it or disregard it, which the rating agencies do, is a little bit of a mistake.

So Greece does have a little backstop there and what you could do, for example, is that the Greek central bank could, with a phone call and a couple book entries, swap out their gold for euros and again, it wouldn't be enough to retire their debt, but it would be 3 or 4 billion euros at current market rates and that's not an insignificant amount of money. So it does give them a little bit of a lifeline.

But it's impossible to think about Greece without thinking about the euro system as a whole, because, of course, Greece is a member of that. I mean, does it have its fiscal house in order? No, not completely, but its debt to GDP ratio is only about one half of Japan's. Its deficit to GDP ratio is not that much worse than the United States. So they look bad compared to Germany, but they don't look that bad compared to other members of the G7 for that matter! So it's not as if they've been reckless, or it's not as if they're that different from all these other countries, but they have become the eye of the storm. For a while the Greek stock market was going down. Their interest rates were going up. Credit default swaps spreads were widening out. You know, maybe that was a good opportunity for day traders, but I wasn't really worried about Greece defaulting. I'm quite sure Greece will not default at the end of the day. They seem to be moving in the right direction.

But because their debts are denominated in euro, and because they're a member of the euro system, at the end of the day they are going to be backstopped by the ECB which ultimately is controlled by Germany. And the reason I say that is if you're Germany, and you're the ECB, and you're Trichet, and you start throwing members under the bus, where does that end? I mean if you allow Greece to default and, in effect, impugn the value of sovereign bonds denominated in euros, who's next? I mean it probably will be Ireland, and it will be Spain, and then it will be Portugal. And if you start losing four or five members, there goes the whole euro system. The whole thing falls apart and there's a flight from that currency.

Now the history of this is very significant. The euro system, and Greece in particular, those are not Wall Street piñata. I know traders like to bang them around, you know the spreads widen and then the spreads come in. There are trading opportunities there. But this is taken much more seriously by the Europeans. I mean you go all the way back to the Counter-Reformation in the late 16th century which was extremely bloody. And then the Thirty Years' War which was devastating. And then the Seven Years' War and the Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, World War One, World War Two... this is one catastrophe after another! And Europe literally destroyed itself and exhausted itself in fighting all these wars. And finally after WWII they said enough! We're going to pursue unification. It's the only way to keep from fighting each other.

Now, political unification has had modest success. Military and foreign policy unification has really had no success at all. But the crown jewel of European unification is their monetary system, the euro and the European Central Bank. So that's the pinnacle of their world historical efforts to unify the continent. They're not going to give that away lightly. I mean, they view it in a much broader historical context than Wall Street and Americans. And so it's of the utmost importance to them. And they're going to do everything they can to preserve it. And that's one reason, along with the gold, why I have confidence that Greece will not default.

[Theo_Fidel]

http://www.foundalis.com/soc/Why_Greeks ... other.html

A lot of blather in this article but it is an attempt to establish a neutral viewpoint about why the Greeks hate the Turks and in my view also the failure of the modern Greek state. Kinda off topic but you get the idea of why the Greeks think the world owes them and they are not responsible. Sound familiar?

TSJ,

I find it bizarre that the Greeks blame the Turks for missing the enlightenment and for offering baksheesh or seeking govt. jobs or pursuing connections over skills. What the… ..do they know how crazy this sounds to third parties?

Do they understand what a structural deficit is. It doesn’t matter how much they get bailed out if they continue spending way over what their income is.

[TSJones]

gold demand weak in India.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/gold-pric ... 52783.html

[TSJones]

http://www.foundalis.com/soc/Why_Greeks ... other.html

A lot of blather in this article but it is an attempt to establish a neutral viewpoint about why the Greeks hate the Turks and in my view also the failure of the modern Greek state. Kinda off topic but you get the idea of why the Greeks think the world owes them and they are not responsible. Sound familiar?

TSJ,

I find it bizarre that the Greeks blame the Turks for missing the enlightenment and for offering baksheesh or seeking govt. jobs or pursuing connections over skills. What the… ..do they know how crazy this sounds to third parties?

Do they understand what a structural deficit is. It doesn’t matter how much they get bailed out if they continue spending way over what their income is.

I think they don't really care. They are suffering because their country's economy and their cultural mode of entitlements has failed them. Right now they are having a big pity party and demanding debt forgiveness.

[Neshant]

duplicate post below

[Neshant]

Interesting story of a gold miner in Siberia, Russia

Petropavlovsk's Hambro just can't figure out gold's fall -- or so he says

http://gata.org/node/15516

[Satya_anveshi]

Greek crisis is a tussle between political power(of Greece) vs economic power (of EU). Unfortunately, a bunch of small countries were tied into a union that disproportionately benefit larger countries with more economy power. The smaller countries are left in lurch shorn of their critical pillars of economic and financial sovereignty. Germany in-turn acquired the mojo in international affairs and even shamelessly masquerades itself as P5+1. It poked into the affairs of not directly related to itself based on this acquired demographic and economic might of the EU.

This crisis is well deserved by both Germany and Greece and other countries that are part of this union. I wish to see all these countries suffer a severe economic depression and get whole lot busy between themselves and leave the rest of the world in peace for sometime.

Fortunately, there are few countries like ours that have ability to safeguard and defend from this uncertainty; in fact we should be able to benefit from such crisis.

Godspeed to Greece in voting "No" and wish they can do another one quickly to get out of EU as well.

Godspeed to Germany in either bailing out greeks (kicking the can down by an year) or expediting the euro breakup.

[Satya_anveshi]

Having said that, probability is small but not above Greek peoples' masochistic capability to do a Delhi/pAAP/Kejri and vote for lying down and enjoying the years long r@pe.

[UlanBatori]

Pee All See stock malket is frying like F-35!

[Satya_anveshi]

Time to keep power dry...was just out of school and total phatichar in Feb-Mar 2009 and so could not benefit from it. Now waiting for things to come crashing down but looks like all US banks and big companies are well capitalized with QE1-4 cheap credit. So, it gotta be euro-peons but if cheen wants to pitch in with good offer, why not. FXI (cheeni large cap financials heavy etf) didn't catch up with '30%' fall yet.

[nandakumar]

A lot has been written on the Greek crisis. The preponderance of opinion is that that the IMF loan and the ECB emergency loan to Greece in 2010 was meant to bailout the German and French banks for their exposure to Greek loans (private sector) and Greek Government bonds. Well here is a contrary opinion which holds that those banks and other European investors took a hit on theor exposure. This is by way of a response to a blogpost on the lines indicated earlier. Don't know which account to believe. Posting it for what it is worth.
Quote:
In 2010, the EU, ECB, and IMF laundered a bailout of mostly French and German banks through the Greek fisc. Cash flowed into Greece only so it could flow out to rickety banks. Now, suddenly, the banks were absolved. There were very few bad loans left on the books of European lenders, everyone was clean, no bad actors at all…That is, Greece’s citizens are in precisely the place France’s citizens and Germany’s citizens were in 2010, at risk that personal savings maintained as bank deposits will not be repaid. Something was worked out for French and German citizens. Unquote.

I don’t see how this is even close to a fair representation of the 2010-2012 Greek debt restructuring. 199.2b EUR of Greek debt was exchanged for 29.7b notes and 62.4b new Greek bonds. This was a 52% write-down, only using par value, except the new bonds were not valued worth par, because the new coupon was way below market. After the exchange, the new bonds traded at ~25c of new par and 6c of original par. When the EFSF later repurchased bonds from private owners, it paid 11.3b to retire 31.9b of debt. That is, 34c of the new par value of the bonds, or 17c of original par. Including the haircut on the aforementioned notes (which were EFSF notes and worth new par), private creditors ended up with about 25c on the dollar of what they lent. This is not “cash flowing into Greece so it could flow out to rickety banks.” It is the exact opposite. A near complete sovereign wipeout borne by private lenders.Who took these writedowns?Paribas, Commerzbank, Dexia, SocGen, RBS, Unicredit, Groupama, HSBC, Metlife, Allianz, Axa, DB, ING, Generali and many more all wrote down and realized losses on between 60-80% of what they lent to Greece. It’s true that some of these banks got liquidity support during the Euro crisis, but the Greek write-downs were ultimately born by the stakeholders of these banks.In fact, the only banks that were directly bailed out with respect to the Greek debt restructuring were the Greek banks. The largest holders of Greek debt were Greek banks. They were the only institutions who were undoubtedly doomed as a result of losses in the value of Greece’s sovereign dooms, and the stakeholders in those banks, especially depositors were blatantly saved. National Bank of Greece held 13.7b. Piraeus held 9.4b. Alpha held 3.7b. The capital injections, initially 23b euros, meant that Greek depositors were protected from what would otherwise have been inevitable losses due to enormous domestic bank holdings in Greek debt. Foreign banks and private holders actually took losses.
The original article can be found here.
http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5965.html

[abhischekcc]

TSJ,

I find it bizarre that the Greeks blame the Turks for missing the enlightenment and for offering baksheesh or seeking govt. jobs or pursuing connections over skills. What the… ..do they know how crazy this sounds to third parties?

Do they understand what a structural deficit is. It doesn’t matter how much they get bailed out if they continue spending way over what their income is.

I think they don't really care. They are suffering because their country's economy and their cultural mode of entitlements has failed them. Right now they are having a big pity party and demanding debt forgiveness.

I would not have responded but I saw the bolded part.

Do you know that most Greeks are self employed? Self employed people do not harbor a sense of entitlement. It is big business, politicians, and government employees who have a sense of entitlement. You will find such people in places like IMF, WB, Wall Street, Delhi and Washington.

People who have a culture of self reliance always welcome the chance to be free to chart their own destiny.

[Austin]

[Austin]

FWIW ....Martin Armstrong an analyst and maker of movie Forecaster says he expects something on US Bond Bubble in October 2015

http://forecaster-movie.com/en/the-forecaster/

[JwalaMukhi]

The drama about Greece is mostly about the downfall of one of the inner circles of western cultural moores and hence it is very symbolic. With hardly 12 million population, the narrative is being created as if sky is going to fall down. Greece is an extremely tiny nation, in grand scheme of things and is hogging disproportionate limelight. Nobody went breast beating (western narratives) when Argentina with a population of 3 to 4 times that of Greece, went into a tizzy spin.
Population of Shanghai, is more than Greece and whatever happens there should have more impact for global economy. Getting too much on western narrative, will skew the perspective and squander the attention where focus needs to be.

[Satya_anveshi]

in Greek 'Nai' means 'Yes'. With so close to english "No", we don't know how many people are voting "Yes" when they actually mean 'No'

[RoyG]

Eh, Greece won't leave the Euro. Germany will blink and help them out. Euro is unsustainable and we're beginning to see the cracks. Germans can't keep it going forever. A new order is arising to Germany's East centered around Poland and Romania. Ango-Saxons will begin pumping money into them and prop them up against the Russians.

[RoyG]

Eh, Greece won't leave the Euro. Germany will blink and help them out. Euro is unsustainable and we're beginning to see the cracks. Germans can't keep it going forever. A new order is arising to Germany's East centered around Poland and Romania. Ango-Saxons will begin pumping money into them and prop them up against the Russians.

[TSJones]

It's official, Greece voted no. Therefor, the Greek Finance Minister who also urged a no vote, now feels confident that the vote gives him the power to better negotiate a settlement with the EU. He feels that with a "No" vote in his back pocket, the EU will back down in fear of a Greek exit. He wants debt forgiveness and the Greeks in general don't want austerity. It's just all so very unfair, you see? The EU made them borrow all that money. Bad EU, bad, bad, bad. Now forgive the debt and keep the cash coming you rich bast**ds. Or Greece will become the next province of the Rodina!

[Neshant]

Lagarde seems awfully quiet after handing out all those IMF "loans" that Greece used to pay German & French banks.

[UlanBatori]

What is the connection between the Greek default and the Chinese crash? Seems like ppl are having fits over something that is barely visible in the noise level, compared to the huge explosion in China?

[Satya_anveshi]

My initial CT (for which I have not much basis that I can spell) is that it is chinese equivalent of 26/11 before the 2008 crash. One is conventional terrorism and this one is financial terrorism for obvious reason of ease of implementation in different geographies/diff systems. Primary perpetrator of both events is one and the same IMO.

[Satya_anveshi]

It's official, Greece voted no. Therefor, the Greek Finance Minister who also urged a no vote, now feels confident that the vote gives him the power to better negotiate a settlement with the EU. He feels that with a "No" vote in his back pocket, the EU will back down in fear of a Greek exit. He wants debt forgiveness and the Greeks in general don't want austerity. It's just all so very unfair, you see? The EU made them borrow all that money. Bad EU, bad, bad, bad. Now forgive the debt and keep the cash coming you rich bast**ds. Or Greece will become the next province of the Rodina!

Your folks generously helped precipitate this crisis

in another report:

Back in 2010 when German Chancellor Angela Merkel first heard of these derivative deals <added: Wallstreet's doing> to hide sovereign debt among European Union partners, she had this to say: “It’s a scandal if it turned out that the same banks that brought us to the brink of the abyss helped to fake the statistics.”

[ArmenT]

From the Atlantic Magazine:
http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... se/397724/

China's Unsettling Stock Market Collapse
As the world frets over Greece, a separate crisis looms in China.

This summer has not been calm for the global economy. In Europe, a Greek referendum this Sunday may determine whether the country will remain in the eurozone. In North America, meanwhile, the governor of Puerto Rico claimed last week that the island would be unable to pay off its debts, raising unsettling questions about the health of American municipal bonds.

But the season’s biggest economic crisis may be occurring in Asia, where shares in China’s two major stock exchanges have nosedived in the past three weeks. Since June 12, the Shanghai stock exchange has lost 24 percent of its value, while the damage in the southern city of Shenzhen has been even greater at 30 percent. The tumble has already wiped out more than $2.4 trillion in wealth—a figure roughly 10 times the size of Greece’s economy.
...

[chetak]

{quote="Theo_Fidel"}TSJ,

I find it bizarre that the Greeks blame the Turks for missing the enlightenment and for offering baksheesh or seeking govt. jobs or pursuing connections over skills. What the… ..do they know how crazy this sounds to third parties?

Do they understand what a structural deficit is. It doesn’t matter how much they get bailed out if they continue spending way over what their income is.{/quote}

I think they don't really care. They are suffering because their country's economy and their cultural mode of entitlements has failed them. Right now they are having a big pity party and demanding debt forgiveness.

I would not have responded but I saw the bolded part.

Do you know that most Greeks are self employed? Self employed people do not harbor a sense of entitlement. It is big business, politicians, and government employees who have a sense of entitlement. You will find such people in places like IMF, WB, Wall Street, Delhi and Washington.

People who have a culture of self reliance always welcome the chance to be free to chart their own destiny.

Sirji, in entitled greece, even the self employed folks retire around their mid fifties with full state pension and all benefits including complete health care, whereas, for eg, the germans retire at 69 IIRC.

Hairdressers, (obviously self employed) as members of a " hazardous profession", retire with full state pension and benefits at the age of 50.

Obviously, it is only a very cultured and ancient society like greece that requires folks in other countries to work hard so that the cultivated greeks can put their genteel feet up from age 50 to mid fifties and loll around in cafes at the expense of the hard work of the others.

Nice bloody racket and a shameful human rights scam.

[Singha]

wow..i didnt think it was this bad.

EU should let the greeks go and fund their own lifestyle as they see fit.

as it stands, greece is a tiny population vs EU and contributes nothing much that rest of EU cannot provide. there are plenty of other tourist places in the adriatic sea for people to flock to.

[amit]

wow..i didnt think it was this bad.

EU should let the greeks go and fund their own lifestyle as they see fit.

as it stands, greece is a tiny population vs EU and contributes nothing much that rest of EU cannot provide. there are plenty of other tourist places in the adriatic sea for people to flock to.

I agree with you, EU should let the Greeks go their own way and smell the coffee.

Greece is basically a poor third world country masquerading as a TFTA developed nation under the EU/Euro umbrella. In 2014 it had a nominal GDP of 174 billion euro which is lower than Pakistan's GDP. Against that it had an accumulated debt of 322 billion euro! Heck 10 years ago, in 2004 it had a higher GDP of 193 billion euros and a debt of 182 billion euros.

That's the year they held the Olympics and since then it's been a downward journey.

For a country whose major export is olives and major revenue earner is tourism, it has been living a unsustainable lifestyle on the backs of the Germans. I think Merkel has every reason to be mad. The EU has given 95 billion euros since February to keep the Greek banks afloat! And they still want more money?

If the Greek debt is unsustainable as the IMF just seemed to have found out, let them try to figure out how to solve the problem, they can revive the drachma and pay the government staff with it. I just fear that it may go the way of the Zimbabwean currency!

Cutting Greek out of the Eurozone will entail short term pain for everyone else but keeping them inside will result in periodic crisis. The vote IMO was a blindman's bluff, if the Euro zone blinks then that set a precedent which will be hard to control.

Here's a chart that should make it clear how unsustainable it is:

[Arjun]

Greeks are among the smartest people anywhere, but unfortunately they've allowed an entitlement culture to take root. Kinda stupid of EU to go in for a monetary union without agreeing on common standards for pensions etc...hopefully this will be the trigger to make that happen.

Only wish India could kick Delhi out of the Indian Union in similar fashion, if Kejriwal continues with his antics.

[amit]

Assuming Greece goes out of the Euro zone, it will be interesting to see how Portugal and Italy fare. Portugal's debt to GDP ratio is 130.2 per cent and Italy's is 132.1 per cent (both 2014 numbers). Generally, a figure around or above 130 per cent is considered unsustainable.

However, to Portugal's credit, it has taken quite a big haircut and may be on the verge of a turnaround. Italy is one of the big boys of the Euro zone and it will be interesting to see how things go.

The difference between Greece and these two countries is that the later two have industrial knowhow which can potentially sustain their economies.

In other news British Conservatives are licking their chops on the news that Greek voted "NO". Will Britishistan be going to go out of the Euro zone?

[prahaar]

At least based on anecdotal evidence, Italy and Spain are in deep trouble. High paying jobs are disappearing, unemployment is rising, industry profitability is hit. I foresee a EU 12 club the way it was initially envisioned, not the expanded Europe, driven by US nudges. If US had had its way, Turkey would have been part of EU as well. Rapid expansion with political motives has brought EU to its knees.

[amit]

^^^^^

Actually Greece is a founding member of the EU just as Spain, Portugal and Italy are. The new members of the EU in Eastern Europe are doing relatively OK. Turkey's bid was of course a political nudge, nudge, wink, wink effort led by the US. Post ISIS I think that's a dream that's been given quiet burial, Europe doesn't want open borders with Turkey.

The problem I think is more cultural. The arc of states in Southern Europe - that's the ones that are in trouble - are profligate in spending. On the other hand Northern Europe, typified by Germany and even Finland are by nature conservative and frugal, maybe it has something to do with the climate!

As long as the EU was growing and the global economy was doing fine, northern frugality was able to control southern exuberance. But after Lehman things have started to unravel. Living beyond your means is no longer a long term option as the nations of Southern Europe are finding out.

Greece is a classic example. You cannot sustain first world benefits, salaries and an entitlement system in what is essentially a very mediocre Third World economy.

JMT and all that.

PS: Spain is not as bad a situation financially as Portugal and Italy, it's debt to GDP ratio is, if memory serves me right around 97 per cent in 2014. High but not alarmingly so.

[Arjun]

^Finland is in doo-doo actually....Nokia, Russia sanctions, paper industry all dragging it down.

[TSJones]

the Greek finance minister has resigned.

he promised he would get a better deal within 24 hours after a no vote. so what happened?

it seems during the vote campaign he called the EU "terrorists".

the EU has apparently told the Greek PM he is persona non grata at any future negotiations. So the marxist FM is out.

he could get a job with the Rodina I guess.

[prahaar]

^Finland is in doo-doo actually....Nokia, Russia sanctions, paper industry all dragging it down.

North Europe is equipped with high technology and HR but not able to compete with US and Asian economies. High number of pensioners is becoming a drag.

[chetak]

wow..i didnt think it was this bad.

EU should let the greeks go and fund their own lifestyle as they see fit.

as it stands, greece is a tiny population vs EU and contributes nothing much that rest of EU cannot provide. there are plenty of other tourist places in the adriatic sea for people to flock to.

The EU jokers should have, right from the beginning, clearly negotiated pensions, working hours and retirement age and the complete retirement package so that the operative terms and conditions were uniform across the EU.

This would have reduced / prevented freeloaders like the greeks from piling on to the gravy train much to the detriment of the others.

Commie ideas have no place in a setup like the EU. Work, earn and then spend or just get out and fend for yourself.

The greeks are imagining that they are in the old soviet union without the gulag and siberia. Eat, shit and loll around. everything else is someone else's problem. In the mean time, just keep the moolah coming.

A lot like laloo in bihar.

[habal]

^^^^^
Greece is a classic example. You cannot sustain first world benefits, salaries and an entitlement system in what is essentially a very mediocre Third World economy.

JMT o.

but you can still ask the question, how did a nation of mere 11 million rake up a debt of 325 billion $s. It is an amount equal to total reserves of countries such as India or continent sized countries such as Russia

Surely only profligate consumption, can't do it alone. Neither can just social spending alone, after all it's measly 11 million people they are spending upon.

[Neshant]

Greek "loans and bailouts" are nothing more than disguised European bank bailouts.

Lagarde was put in charge of the IMF by the EU so European banks could dump their bad Greek debt onto taxpayers of the world via the IMF.