My pleasure!Originally Posted by Moses
The EU has deliberately and systematically impoverished the people of Greece. It's truly unforgivable.
My pleasure!
It depends on point of view: some experts say Greece has very liberal pension system with high payment, filled from European sources.
Surfcrest (June 30th, 2016)
I dont claim copyright on the words, but I made the image
Brexit2.jpg
arsenal (June 28th, 2016), fountainhall (June 28th, 2016), Moses (June 28th, 2016)
I don't disagree, but I'm differentiating between the Greek government and the people. I personally didn't have a clue that Blair and Brown were emptying the coffers of the UK treasury at the time they had their fingers in the till. The EU knew that Greece didn't qualify to join, everyone from the IMF downwards believes that debt relief is the only way forward, but in the meantime old people and children are using soup kitchens and rummaging through mountains of rubbish looking for food. This is a member state of the oh, so fabulous EU, which has decided to protect the banks and punish the people. Ugh.
And where, pray tell, did you get that nugget of innuendo and downright lies? Greece was only able to join the EU because its own government/s had been lying through their teeth - for years! They had been cooking their own books and hiding the results. And that is fact! As the former ECB Chief Economist advised way back in 2011,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-05-26/greece-cheated-to-join-euro-sanctions-since-were-too-soft-issing-saysGreece was only able to join the euro through deception . . . former European Central Bank Chief Economist Otmar Issing said . . . “Greece cheated to get in, and it’s difficult to know how we should deal with cheaters.”
And how did Greece cheat its way into the euro zone? There's an excellent BBC article from 2012 titled "How 'Magic' made the Greek Debt Disappear before it joined the Euro"
How did this 'magic' work? "Take the Greek state railway. It was losing a billion euros a year," (Greek economist Miranda) Xafa remembers. "The Greek railway had more employees than passengers. A former minister, Stefanos Manos, had said publicly at the time that it would be cheaper to send everyone by taxi."
The authorities used a neat conjuring trick to make the problem vanish. "The (railway) company would issue shares that the government would buy. So it was counted not as expenditure, but as a financial transaction." And it did not appear on the budget balance sheet.
So Greece fulfilled the Maastricht criteria and was admitted to the eurozone on January 1, 2001 - but by 2004 the deception was becoming transparent.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16834815
I sympathise with the people of Greece who have clearly been through economic hell. But it is ridiculous to blame the EU for that when their own governments had been the liars and cheats for many years, maybe decades, and then used the access to cheap credit afforded them by being members of the EU to borrow to the hilt - when they knew they were so much in debt repayment was well nigh impossible.
It says a lot about the Brussels elite's ability to do any due diligence that they now claim they didn't know Greece didn't qualify when Goldman Sachs certainly knew!!
Again, I agree, but I'm differentiating between the Greek government and the people. The EU have imposed a level of austerity that even the IMF says it can never recover from. I'm estimating that we'll probably lose 10-20% of our company's business, but I still voted leave, simply because I don't need or want some bloated bureaucracy spanking the people who don't deserve it. I'll leave that to Latin.
Last edited by Tobi; June 28th, 2016 at 18:22.
Smiles (June 28th, 2016)
Again your facts seem to be somewhat askew. Greece joined the EU in January 2001 after years of EU examination of its books. Goldman Sachs certainly played a major role thereafter, but there is no proof whatever that it was complicit in assisting Greece hide its debts beforehand. Indeed, a New York Times article on July 13 last year has the headline "Plenty Deserve Blame for Greece's Woes, but Maybe Not Goldman Sachs". It stresses that this Goldman Sachs participation/knowledge is a myth perpetuated by Clinton's Labour Secretary. As the article points out, this -
Goldman Sachs certainly made a bundle AFTER the entry into the EU. But as journalist Nick Dunbar wrote in Risk Magazine,is such a distortion of what took place in 2000 and 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/bu...achs.html?_r=0“There is no doubt that Goldman Sachs’s deal with Greece was a completely legitimate transaction under Eurostat rules,” he wrote. “Moreover, both Goldman Sachs and Greece’s public debt division are following a path well trodden by other European sovereigns and derivatives dealers.”
You can't differentiate between a government and the people who voted it in! The Greek governments were out-and-out crooks Their people voted them in. Can you expect these same people NOT to suffer when their government's criminal activity is discovered and things go belly-up? You can't! It was't the EU's fault the Greeks chose to lie and cheat their way into the EU. Even if they had not gone into the EU, the Greek people would have had to bear the same austerity because, as a result of what happened in the first decade of this century, the cookie jar was bound to end up empty and no-one would have bailed them out. If you and I overspend, we pay the consequences. The same is true of nations. If people vote in crooks, they pay in the end. If Brexit ends up a disaster for ordinary folks with increased taxes, no access to EU markets without freedom of movement, no bonus for the health service as PROMISED and now claimed as a MISTAKE by that right-wing self-serving ass Farage - note I merely say "if" - then that is the fault of the people who voted Out, not of Farage, the clown Johnson and their cohorts. The Greek austerity measures are a direct result of its own government's failings - not the EU!
PS: I did not vote only because I was stripped of my vote some 17 years ago under some idiotic UK rules!
Last edited by fountainhall; June 28th, 2016 at 18:53.
fountainhall (June 28th, 2016)
I think the Scottish MPs both in Brussels and in Holyrrood are in danger of becoming political and financial beggars such is their supine behaviour. And I.m not just saying that to wind Scottish up. Although that is a bonus.
Well, different people have different ways of making their point - but if you're bemoaning a lack of robustness, try this:
Faranglaw (June 29th, 2016)
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