Where Do You Stand On Greece?

By
Chris Trotter
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65
0

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ON THE QUESTION OF GREECE, the New Zealand population divides itself neatly into three groups.

By far the largest of the three, is the group that knows three-fifths of bugger-all about what’s going on in Greece and cares even less. The less said about them the better.

Then there’s the group that regards the unfolding Greek crisis as a simple morality tale. According to this view, the Greeks awarded themselves a lifestyle they had not earned and paid for it with other people’s money. When the music stopped and their creditors came a-calling, the Greeks were required to discover just how unpleasant life can become when excessive debt falls due. As far as this group is concerned, the Greeks are in the process of being taught some very valuable lessons. On no account, therefore, should the EU be encouraged to remove its knife from Greece’s throat.

The third group’s response to Greece is born out of natural human empathy. They see a whole people suffering tremendous hardship and their first response is to do everything humanly possible to end it. The notion that this mass suffering must be continued – even intensified – to satisfy the demands of international finance strikes them as obscene. Responding to the second group’s pitiless moralising, they undertake some basic research into the Greeks’ predicament. What they discover makes them even more appalled. Greece isn’t a morality tale, it’s a horror story. The only ethical course of action is to stand in solidarity with the Greek people and offer full support to their courageous left-wing government.

It is a measure of how strong the grip of the free-market philosophy has become in this country that the third group finds itself being pilloried for its “soft” approach to Greece. The second group prides itself on being “hard-nosed” about such matters. What the Greeks need is the sort of “tough love” that parents are encouraged to dispense to wayward offspring. Unlike the “bleeding hearts” of the third group, the second group knows that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

Those who recall the response of these hard-nosed New Zealanders to Campbell Live’s extraordinary broadcasts on child poverty in New Zealand will not have been in the least bit surprised by their reaction to the Greek Crisis. In almost every respect their reaction has been the same. We’ve heard how such deprivation that does exist is simply the result of poor personal choices. Like the spendthrift Greeks, irresponsible parents have contributed hugely to their own – and their children’s – poverty. To intervene with undeserved assistance would merely prolong an already interminable saga of material dependency and moral failure.

It’s been the same in this country for a very long time. On the one hand stand the people who judge the world according to a brittle set of inherited moral precepts – almost all of them thinly disguised justifications for selfishness and greed. While, on the other, stand the people who respond to the world as it presents itself to them. Where they see suffering they try to end it. Where they see injustice they try to fight it. Their moral code stipulates, simply, that they should do unto others as they would have others do unto them.

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It’s the same simple principle which the Greeks applied in 1953 when they voted, with many others, to forgive a huge percentage of Germany’s international debt. That the Germans have so signally failed to reciprocate says much more about their morals than it does about the Greeks’.

 

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65 COMMENTS

  1. Sometimes, probably most times, it all comes down to bad luck rather than bad lifestyles or even bad management.
    Just imagine………….
    Some natural disaster in the States or China forces them to call in all loans, resulting in a sudden spike in interest rates. Rates go up from 5 or 6% to 15 or 20% almost overnight. The more indebted countries with shaky commodity-based output are hit first, but even before them come their private sector, who have overextended themselves on the property market.
    This country can’t pay the massive interest bill we owe on our national debt. Fortunately, richer and more fortunate countries and corporations stand ready to make short term money available at, admittedly punitive rates. This crisis can’t go on forever, we think. Surely things will come right soon. No need to panic!
    You see where I am going with this…..
    Only 10 years ago Greece owed very little. A bit of bad luck on the monetary front and, well here we are.

  2. It just shows how up themselves the Germans really are that when they caused an economic and feudal war on the world which cost trillions.

    Then the wanted a global bail out from all those countries now in heavy debt that were ether raped or over run by Germany during the war they created.
    But now Greece being one of those Germany over run and raped wants to see Greece suffer more than they did after the war.

    Never trust a German is the message to the EU member states from this week like Greece obviously is now aware of when being on the receiving end of the German wanton loathe & pretence of high morality or more like hypocrisy.

    Good article Chris.

    • Cleangreen
      Have you ever met any Germans? Do you speak their language? Have you lived there? I think not.
      I do and have, They are just like us, you know. I despise people who like to vilify Germans: it is just the same as the way the Nazis vilified Jews. Make yourself feel good by vilifying someone else.
      I really hope that you do not believe that we are inherently superior to Germans in any way at all. Don’t forget Bach and Beethoven. And don’t align all Germans with the evil Banksters, who rule our country also, but because we are so small nobody notices.

      • Having read further down the posts, I would agree that Goldman Sachs is the real poison. Just lay off the anti-German stuff a bit until you can show how we brave NZers stand up to and thwart Goldman Sachs. I can assure you that there is a frustrated left-wing element in Germany just as there is here. Until we do better here than they do there, lay off.

        • Well – there’s one German a lot of us support that was victimised in this country by the right wing and that’s Kim Dotcom.

          So I think what CLEANGREEN meant was those hypocrites in the German neo liberal right wing parliament and their historic predecessors.

          I E : those who formed the Bilderburgers were basically adherents to Nazism.

      • Some people need to get over WW2.

        Since WW2 the Greeks have made a series of poor decisions and the supposed birthplace of democracy has been more like a Greek Tragedy than a beacon of democratic hope.

        There will be a few Greeks who weren’t involved in the mass burglary of the states coffers during the last decade or so – a few peasants in the hills I suppose. They definitely don’t deserved what’s coming and neither do the youth who parents committed this vast, popular fraud.

        Now however, it matters not who is at fault – this is a slow moving train wreck which, as is normally the case, injure both the guilty and the innocent.

      • No they’re not. The German record speaks for itself. For all the UKs faults, fascism never had a chance there, nor would it here. Germany has a history of vile authoritarianism. It’s a toxic country.

        It’s easy to be nice if you had no relatives who were victims of German war crimes. It should never have been permitted to reunify.

      • And the bad news is – neither Bach nor Beethoven was a German, as such.

        Germany was not unified until 1871 and each of them was dead long before.

  3. Interestingly, Greece was asked to maintain its contribution to NATO whichever way the referendum went (I mean really! With what?). To understand the economic difficulties of today one has to go back to the original agreements set up when the Common Market was established. Greece has had a ball and chain around its leg from the beginning.

    My hope is that Italy, Spain and Portugal will rally along with Greece and that everyone will get up off their knees and challenge the master manipulators.

    My hope is that New Zealanders will do the same. We pay a lot in return for very little.

    • One of the news channels tonight had some interviews with Spanish and Italian people who, it was claimed, are sympathetic to the Greek cause. They feel that their own austerity has harmed their country and the people. I think the EU financiers are right to be worried about Greek infection. Good.

    • Yes;
      Greg Palast is a particularly good investigative reporter-freelance.
      Noted the defence of Goldman’s by the hosts.
      http://www.gregpalast.com/

      Relevant interview on Greece in clip from RT’s ‘The Big Picture.’
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81BD8GkwblA#t=524

      Expose’ of the 4 point plan from Ex Chief Economist that has implications for NZ’s leaders both past and present.
      http://www.gregpalast.com/the-globalizer-who-came-in-from-the-cold/
      “The World Bank’s former Chief Economist’s accusations are eye-popping – including how the IMF and US Treasury fixed the Russian elections.
      In 1999 the World Bank fired Stiglitz. He was not allowed quiet retirement; US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, I’m told, demanded a public excommunication for Stiglitz’ having expressed his first mild dissent from globalization World Bank style.”

      “Stiglitz is no conspiracy nutter ranting about Black Helicopters. The man was inside the game, a member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet as Chairman of the President’s council of economic advisors.”

      “Each nation’s economy is individually analyzed, then, says Stiglitz, the Bank hands every minister the same exact four-step program.

      Step One is Privatization – which Stiglitz said could more accurately be called, ‘Briberization.’ Rather than object to the sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders – using the World Bank’s demands to silence local critics – happily flogged their electricity and water companies. “You could see their eyes widen” at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets.”

      “After briberization, Step Two of the IMF/World Bank one-size-fits-all rescue-your-economy plan is ‘Capital Market Liberalization.’ In theory, capital market deregulation allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply flowed out and out. Stiglitz calls this the “Hot Money” cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation’s reserves can drain in days, hours.”

      “At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: Market-Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls, “The IMF riot.”

      “The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, “down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,”
      You’d almost get the impression that the riot is written into the plan.
      And it is.
      The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas) cause new panicked flights of capital and government bankruptcies. This economic arson has it’s bright side – for foreign corporations, who can then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining concession or port, at fire sale prices.”

      “Now we arrive at Step Four of what the IMF and World Bank call their “poverty reduction strategy”: Free Trade.
      Stiglitz is particularly emotional over the WTO’s intellectual property rights treaty (it goes by the acronym TRIPS, more on that in the next chapters). It is here, says the economist, that the new global order has “condemned people to death” by imposing impossible tariffs and tributes to pay to pharmaceutical companies for branded medicines. “They don’t care,” said the professor of the corporations and bank loans he worked with, “if people live or die.”

      “By the way, don’t be confused by the mix in this discussion of the IMF, World Bank and WTO. They are interchangeable masks of a single governance system.”
      “It’s a little like the Middle Ages,” the insider told me, “When the patient died they would say, “well, he stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.”

      “I took away from my talks with the professor that the solution to world poverty and crisis is simple: remove the bloodsuckers.”

      At what stage is NZ in this program?
      Step 4 with the TPP?
      Without the riots because the Trade Unions/CTU stood down?
      Or are they still to come?

      And then, there is that 10% commission.

      Cheers.

  5. Goldman Sachs is poison to the world folks as Greece found out and we now know why the Greek Minister of Finance resigned because he knew what happened, some years ago GS Loaned Greece money for a Ponzi scheme and GS lost a shitload and left Greece full of debt so there is your reason why the EU and the creditors wanted the minister to walk because he would have known about this and threatened them behind closed doors right?

    Proof here.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_b0xAxdxDI

    • You know who the auditors of the Greek “books” were when Greece was entering the Eurozone? Yeah – you guessed it- Goldman Sachs.

      Serious questions are now being asked as to whether GS engaged in deliberate “fraud” around this – all though as the decision to have Greece in the Euro was a political one as much as an economic one it was probably with the open contrivance of the incumbent Greek government of the time AND the other Euro countries as well.

      • GregJ 1000% right on the button grieg, a contrived racket to destabilise a country by weckening the government and taking over the assets of the country.

        Bilderberg does this with impunity it’s in their agenda to weaken any Government for their members own benefit in other words a racket.

        Key goes to Bilderberg and no doubt was sent here to overthrow Clark Government and offer this country to Bilderberg’s Members like they wanted to do to Greece but they are more spirited than us dumb assed kiwis today.

        GS ex President was interviewed on RT a few days ago and said they don’t care about people and only interested in making money from weakened economies and assets’ they can reap cheaply.

        How bloody crass is that.

        GS are criminals and members of Bilderberg Groups steering committee as is Rockefellers and Rothschild’s.

        Why did John Key not inform the citizens of this Country in 2011 when he attended a NAZI founded organisation called the Bilderberg group, in Europe?

        This group is well known as one of the most secretive clandestine organisations globally, that specialises in weakening Governments with Black Ops special forces.
        Below he was in attendance as John Key Prime Minister of New Zealand.

        Attended by most the biggest industrial and richest elite globally their aim is to dominate the globe and control all activities.

        http://twochurchesonly.com/supmat/03/most_influential/bilderberg_group/
        list_of_bilderberg_attendees.pdf

        List of Bilderberg participants 4
        New Zealand
        • John Key (2011-2012), Prime Minister of New Zealand
        http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bilderberg

        No Bilderberg meeting agenda has ever been made public. “It is the epitome of low-profile dark ops, a shadow government hidden in a doorway.” According to critics and close observers, it’s agenda is to weaken all world leadership but their own. It is also, according to a U.S. law called the Logan Act, [15] illegal:

        • And Kissenger – that deranged paranoid schizo who still thinks he’s in the cold war is right in there with them, has been since it was set up in 1953 by the European monarchs but now is a corporate cesspit of overthrow, and he is right in Obama’s ear. I just hope Goldman’s losses a truckload of dosh over the course of this orchestrated crash – but then again Rothchild’s has 375 trillion so it’s not going to make much of a difference.

          But Greece has now brought it’s 3,000 year history into the present day, and that history is far longer than Germany or GS or the Rothchild’s. Democracy and human rights will win out in the end. May take a while but the candle was lit by two Greek Gods last Sunday with the NO vote.

  6. Well frankly I’m somewhere between groups 2 and 3. Yes, the Greeks demanded more from successive government’s than they were prepared for with their taxes (thus creating monstrous deficits), but they also don’t deserve to become some sort of EU pariah as a consequence – most people don’t give due diligence to potential repercussions of their voting decisions. The ECB/IMF behaved effectively as drug dealers by extending credit to the Greeks who were long known by everyone to be credit addicts. Both should share the blame and cost to some degree. That said, imo the Greeks must be allowed to solve the hangover from their credit addiction themselves; the ECB/IMF prescriptions (i.e austerity) were very clearly doing more harm than good.
    Humanitarian considerations from the international community should be a priority at this point to ensure there is no wide-scale poverty/looting/lawlessness/social unrest in the Greece as they navigate themselves through this crisis.

    • Greg Palast sums up the lead up quite nicely….

      “In 2002, Goldman Sachs secretly bought up €2.3 billion in Greek government debt, converted it all into yen and dollars, then immediately sold it back to Greece.

      Goldman took a huge loss on the trade.

      Is Goldman that stupid?

      Goldman is stupid—like a fox. The deal was a con, with Goldman making up a phony-baloney exchange rate for the transaction. Why?

      Goldman had cut a secret deal with the Greek government in power then. Their game: to conceal a massive budget deficit. Goldman’s fake loss was the Greek government’s fake gain.

      Goldman would get repayment of its “loss” from the government at loan-shark rates.

      The point is, through this crazy and costly legerdemain, Greece’s right-wing free-market government was able to pretend its deficits never exceeded 3 percent of GDP.

      Cool. Fraudulent but cool.

      But flim-flam isn’t cheap these days: On top of murderous interest payments, Goldman charged the Greeks over a quarter billion dollars in fees.

      When the new Socialist government of George Papandreou came into office, they opened up the books and Goldman’s bats flew out. Investors’ went berserk, demanding monster interest rates to lend more money to roll over this debt.

      Greece’s panicked bondholders rushed to buy insurance against the nation going bankrupt. The price of the bond-bust insurance, called a credit default swap (or CDS), also shot through the roof. Who made a big pile selling the CDS insurance? Goldman.

      And those rotting bags of CDS’s sold by Goldman and others? Didn’t they know they were handing their customers gold-painted turds?

      That’s Goldman’s specialty. In 2007, at the same time banks were selling suspect CDS’s and CDOs (packaged sub-prime mortgage securities), Goldman held a “net short” position against these securities. That is, Goldman was betting their financial “products” would end up in the toilet. Goldman picked up another half a billion dollars on their “net short” scam.

      But, instead of cuffing Goldman’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein and parading him in a cage through the streets of Athens, we have the victims of the frauds, the Greek people, blamed. Blamed and soaked for the cost of it. The “spread” on Greek bonds (the term used for the risk premium paid on Greece’s corrupted debt) has now risen to — $14,000 per family per year.”

  7. Watching the drama unfold is compelling stuff, especially given the historical significance of this. The Greeks are trying to change the neo-liberal narrative. Of course we need to support them. Sadly, I think the dominant view is still that of cartoonist Tremain;
    “What’s a grecian urn?”
    “He doesn’t, he borrows”.
    Uninformed, and prejudiced.

  8. People , whether they are religious or not , just need to remember this one line….
    ‘There by the grace of God go I.’
    A fine line always exists between success and failure.
    It’s hard to imagine one when you are experiencing the other.
    From my experience at dinner parties over the last couple of years or so, neo liberalism has created a breed in NZ the like of which I have never before experienced.
    Unsympathetic , myopic, hard, shortsighted, short tempered and greedy…. They may know how to do their daily jobs , but fundamentally they are bland and stupid.
    Experiential learning is the only answer for these people.
    It may be coming to a theatre near them soon !!

  9. Yes Nitrium I respect your point there. this is my last post on this string thanks for that Chris,

    I feel for Greece as a fellow human.

    At least Goldman Sachs should be punished also for setting Greece up for the massive 80% loss on that 2001 money transfer they planned and forced Greece to initiate that massive loss Greece sustained over that transaction currency swap.

    Is that what John Key always did and working for Merrill Lynch, and perhaps still does today with our crown account?

    Greece got done by another Bilderberg Groupie that FJK mixes with at Bilderberg.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-03-06/goldman-secret-greece-loan-shows-two-sinners-as-client-unravels

    March 6 2012 (Bloomberg) — Greece’s secret loan from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was a costly mistake from the start.

    On the day the 2001 deal was struck, the government owed the bank about 600 million euros ($793 million) more than the 2.8 billion euros it borrowed, said Spyros Papanicolaou, who took over the country’s debt-management agency in 2005. By then, the price of the transaction, a derivative that disguised the loan and that Goldman Sachs persuaded Greece not to test with competitors, had almost doubled to 5.1 billion euros, he said.

    Papanicolaou and his predecessor, Christoforos Sardelis, revealing details for the first time of a contract that helped Greece mask its growing sovereign debt to meet European Union requirements, said the country didn’t understand what it was buying and was ill-equipped to judge the risks or costs.

    “The Goldman Sachs deal is a very sexy story between two sinners,” Sardelis, who oversaw the swap as head of Greece’s Public Debt Management Agency from 1999 through 2004, said in an interview.

    Goldman Sachs’s instant gain on the transaction illustrates the dangers to clients who engage in complex, tailored trades that lack comparable market prices and whose fees aren’t disclosed. Harvard University, Alabama’s Jefferson County and the German city of Pforzheim all have found themselves on the losing end of the one-of-a-kind private deals typically pitched to them by securities firms as means to improve their finances.

    Goldman Sachs DNA

    “Like the municipalities, Greece is just another example of a poorly governed client that got taken apart,” Satyajit Das, a risk consultant and author of “Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk,” said in a phone interview. “These trades are structured not to be unwound, and Goldman is ruthless about ensuring that its interests aren’t compromised — it’s part of the DNA of that organization.”

  10. Well we should send them McCully at least. He’ll stimulate their corruption sector, and make the EU seem calm, generous and rational by comparison. And after that he can go to the Ukraine – I understand Malaysian airlines have great package deals.

  11. There’s an excellent account of the Greek debt crisis in the article “An Economic Hit Man Speaks Out: John Perkins on How Greece Has Fallen Victim to “Economic Hit Men”
    Thursday, 11 September 2014 By Michael Nevradakis, Truthout | Interview.”

    Sorry I can’t post the actual link – I’m workin on a Chinese Windows computer and i can’t read Chinese.

    But if you Google some of the above it should turn up. I’d be grateful if someone could post the link.

    Its a truly insightful article.

    • TO; Murray Simmonds compliments.

      http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016102417

      An Economic Hit Man Speaks Out: John Perkins on How Greece Has Fallen Victim to “Economic Hit Men”

      An Economic Hit Man Speaks Out: John Perkins on How Greece Has Fallen Victim to “Economic Hit Men”
      Thursday, 11 September 2014 00:00
      By Michael Nevradakis, Truthout | Interview

      John Perkins is no stranger to making confessions. His well-known book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, revealed how international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, while publicly professing to “save” suffering countries and economies, instead pull a bait-and-switch on their governments: promising startling growth, gleaming new infrastructure projects and a future of economic prosperity – all of which would occur if those countries borrow huge loans from those organizations. Far from achieving runaway economic growth and success, however, these countries instead fall victim to a crippling and unsustainable debt burden.

      That’s where the “economic hit men” come in: seemingly ordinary men, with ordinary backgrounds, who travel to these countries and impose the harsh austerity policies prescribed by the IMF and World Bank as “solutions” to the economic hardship they are now experiencing. Men like Perkins were trained to squeeze every last drop of wealth and resources from these sputtering economies, and continue to do so to this day. In this interview, which aired on Dialogos Radio, Perkins talks about how Greece and the eurozone have become the new victims of such “economic hit men.”

      Michael Nevradakis: In your book, you write about how you were, for many years, a so-called “economic hit man.” Who are these economic hit men, and what do they do?

      John Perkins: Essentially, my job was to identify countries that had resources that our corporations want, and that could be things like oil – or it could be markets – it could be transportation systems. There’re so many different things. Once we identified these countries, we arranged huge loans to them, but the money would never actually go to the countries; instead it would go to our own corporations to build infrastructure projects in those countries, things like power plants and highways that benefitted a few wealthy people as well as our own corporations, but not the majority of people who couldn’t afford to buy into these things, and yet they were left holding a huge debt, very much like what Greece has today, a phenomenal debt.

      And once (they were) bound by that debt, we would go back, usually in the form of the IMF – and in the case of Greece today, it’s the IMF and the EU (European Union) – and make tremendous demands on the country: increase taxes, cut back on spending, sell public sector utilities to private companies, things like power companies and water systems, transportation systems, privatize those, and basically become a slave to us, to the corporations, to the IMF, in your case to the EU, and basically, organizations like the World Bank, the IMF, the EU, are tools of the big corporations, what I call the “corporatocracy.”

      More:

      http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26112-an-economic-hit-man-speaks-out-john-perkins-on-how-greece-has-fallen-victim-to-economic-hit-men

      • THIS is the sort of putrefying activities that Gosman , ANDREWO , DANIEL LANG , and a various few other neo liberal apologists wish to sing the praises of and proudly support.

        And , – when shown blatantly that it is corruption , and in fact economic and national treason ,…present any manner of straw man arguments in a typically weak defense …a defense that any rational person can see right through once armed with the facts.

        This is also the sort of thing Close Up , Sixty minutes and latterly – Cambell Live would have exposed ….

        You can see now why Cambell was shut down deliberately – and you can also see how this was never about mere ‘ money ‘ – but about power plays in edging out any govt that stands in the globalist’s way.

        Essentially …the world has been allotted a number of ‘trading blocs ‘ that while singular- are in fact interdependent and united under a unilateral European banking elite. This is basically what the TTPA is all about – its this part of the worlds version of what Europe and the USA have in the TTIP .

        And by ‘ globalists ‘ – that represents a plethora of different groups in a hierarchy of power groups that have in essence one goal – that of working towards a western one world govt .

        This is why they hate the BRIC country’s as these country’s are a real fly in the ointment to their colossal arrogance and dreams of global political hegemony .

        Greece was corrupted by quislings from within and enabled by the IMF and ECB.

        And …this also demonstrates why THIS COUNTRY has had such a long history of lies , corruption , and gradual impoverishment of the populace – 35 years of it in fact since the 1984 Labour govt under ‘ finance minister ‘ – ‘sir ‘ Roger Douglas the traitor.

        The dirty IMF was at it right back in the 1960’s in this country under the Holyoake govt – the time for repayment was 1984.

        Understand?

        Prior to the 1950s and 60’s – the IMF was in fact set up along with the World Bank as a way to ease the world out of the Great Depression – as part of the then Keynesian Economic recovery.

        It was then subverted by groups such as the Mont Pelerin Society among others – and the results are what we see now today in Greece.

        You are dealing with evil , ruthless and relentless people here – who have no qualms whatsoever in fomenting wars , economic disaster and other subversive activity in order to put their people in position.

        For a demonstration we only have to look to this country – and why were we spared?….because we’ve got something they want – and also because we are a very convenient outpost for the 5 eyes spy network.

        This is not about money – its about geopolitics – and the sooner people get a basic education on this …the more they will easily see what has been REALLY going on all this time.

      • Thanks Cleangreen, for posting the link and the quotes from this important article.

        Now we need to ask ourselves:

        Is the Key government setting up NZ for exactly the same scenario as that which is unfolding in Greece?

        After all, before key took over, NZ was running a surplus under the Clarke/Cullen gov’t. From the time key took over we started borrowing like ‘there’s no tomorrow’.

        Sounds familiar? Well if it doesn’t then read the bloody article.

        As a country we are being set up for a massive debt-fueled assett stripping by the Corporatocracy that John Perkins talks about.

        WAKE UP EVERYONE, BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!

  12. I am SPARTACUS. For goodness sake anyone would think that the situation in Greece is unique. Sorry, but there today here tomorrow. Does any body seriously believe that the people of that nation are truly responsible for this situation. If so then sad, because here it comes folks.
    I vote NO in solidarity with the Greek people to maintain their democracy in the face of international capital/corporate exploitation.
    WATCH THE FOUR HORSEMEN!! You will find it on you tube.

  13. What I dislike about articles like this is the sanctimoniousness. Argue that the other side of the argument is wrong on the facts, or wrong for economic or some other reasonable basis, but why make intense emotional and self-righteous points about being immoral, selfish, greedy, and uncaring about child poverty. It weakens your case that these are the arguments used.

    The comparison with post-war Germany is invalid – then the complete infrastructure of the country was destroyed and had no ability to pay, and it was necessary to prevent the rise of Stalin style Communism or a Nazi resurgence due to economic chaos.

    The real issue isn’t actually Greece – Germany could easily bail them out – the problem is that it will set a precedent for Italy, Portugal and Spain. They would demand the same treatment, which would be unaffordable.

    • Exactly – which is why your point about ‘ Nazi’s ‘ is so relevant here.

      The Bilderburgers were started by Prince Bernhard of Holland…who was , a Nazi party sympathizer and ideologue – as well as being a member until he left university in 1934.

      But – the point being – he was still an ideologue of Nazism long after the fall of the Third Reich – and , moreover undertook the establishment of that group the Bilderburgers not long after the close of WW2.

  14. Well, here comes the trigger for a second gfc, this time directly hitting European nation-state financial reserves. And right now, there is nothing left in the coffers of most nations that will enable another bailout of their ledgers or the banks.

    You can smell the System’s fear

  15. Do unto others as they would have others do unto them
    – its the golden rule.
    Show the world Greece, the fake money system we live in. Go Greece!

  16. Isn’t there a fourth group that says they probably should default, pull out of the Euro, print their own currency and – understanding they won’t be able to borrow for a very long time except perhaps from Russia – try to run a functional tourism industry and efficient tax system, combined with some spending cuts, so that they run a small budget surplus?

    • Yes, that’s the group that grows out of the 3rd group. They’re the ones who do some thorough research. But not many people have time for that.

        • Why are spending cuts necessary?
          Why not
          (I hope you’re sitting down Mathew)
          Increase taxes.

            • Tax evasion in Greece is a way of life for the 1%, just like anywhere else. The Greeks are now asked to pay an increased GST on food of 23%, too many haven’t got enough for food already, what’s the fooking point asking them to pay more? This article asks “Where Do You Stand On Greece?” Who gives a shit, the question is “when is it our turn?”
              The origin of the Greece situation was corruption and some paying no or little tax – happens here too
              Government was borrowing money to pay the bills – happens here too
              People can’t live of their wages – we got that here too
              Prime Minister smiling and looking irritatingly relaxed and promising that everything is under control – we got that here too
              Effects of crisis:
              Dilapidated infrastructure and buildings – we got that too
              People sleeping in the streets and relying on food banks and soup kitchens – we got that too.
              Rental accommodations substandard, people getting sick – we got that too.
              Empty shop – tick. The signs are here, just not that bad – yet.
              It took Communism 70 Years to make a mess of it, the private sector is so much more efficient, isn’t it?

        • Surplus is easily achieved by getting rid of liabilities, and some political “commentators” on RNZ are liabilities also, I suggest a “surplus” of positive and progressive commentators will easily be achieved by getting rid of other “commentator” liabilities, so the same may apply to Greece (getting rid of speculators, rating agencies, and the GFC resulting “vested interests”, all out to suck blood until the body runs dry)?

  17. Well of course this is exactly why Johnkey was enticed back here to set up a government which would be compliant with international interests and assisting the superwealthy to gain even more money. That’s what you get when you elect a money trader to head your government. Part of a plot which started undef the Bolger administration. We need to stand solid with the left round the world and reclaim our wealth for the workers. Otherwise not much has changed since the sermon on the mount recorded in the New Testament.

  18. Europe was wise not to admit Turkey to the EEC and Euro and should have followed the same logic with Greece. Greece is a third world country without a functional tax collection system and has a legal system riddled with corruption. In the 21C context it isn’t really part of Europe even compared with Spain, Baltic nations and Poland. It’s true New Zealand troops, valiantly if not very effectively, attempted to defend the county in 1941, but the idea of Greece being the cockpit of European civilisation is rather irrelevant today.
    If Greece completely runs out of money and experienced starvation and deprivation there would obviously be the risk and probability of mass population movements and they certainly have ships.
    My partial solution, for Greece would be to leave the EEC and Europe and adopt the Kirchener solution, the Argentinian way of selling the debt as bonds, debt and some assets.

  19. I’d just like to know how many of the same people have their noses in the AIIB – the rival to the IMF. Granted the IMF is run through America so not against that going down, but if the same people are just shifting the money around the same will happen again.

  20. I am almost certainly apart of the third group… I did my research and found out the the IMF distribute loans that can never be paid back…

    The IMF desires to cut Greece apart and to own all of its assets… That is their main goal… To get more and more control and more and more money….

  21. Thanks George, the four horsemen is a must see. Does clarify things some what. They should play it on TV3. Yeah right.

  22. Today I asked myself the question: Where does money come from? Just love You Tube!!! I suggest you sit down with a cup of tea and watch:

    “Money as Debt – Where does money come from?”.

    Should be a must viewing in the schools.
    Our next leaders will be so clued up as opposed to keyed down!

  23. Good point that it seems unfair that the young Greeks (suffering 50% unemployment) pay for the sins of their parents. Someone has already linked to Michael Lewis who notes that:
    1. The average wage of a railway worker in Greece is 65,000 euro.
    2. Hairdressers get to retire at 55 on a generous pension.

    On the other side:
    1. The average doctor declares an income of 15,000 euro.
    2. There are more Porsches in Greece than people declaring an income of 50,000 euro.

    That level of income and expenditure cannot last.

    But there is plenty of blame to go round. Everyone is quick to judge Goldman Sachs but they are simply the drug dealer to Greece’s junkie mindset.

    Worse is the IMF (under Dominique Strauss Cahn) who, with the EUropean Central Bank, baled out Greece with third world contributions and set up a regime where that new cash went straight to the French and German banks. Every third world country protested but were outvoted. The money the IMF and ECB put in did not stay in Greece but was used to avoid the French and German taxpayers having to bail out their insolvent banks. Jeremy Warner at the Telegraph describes this better than I have.

    Can understand the Germans not wanting to keep working past 65 so that their government and pension funds can pay the Greeks to retire at 55 but the Greeks are broke and cannot afford to pay.

    Blame who you like but devaluation is the only long term solution. That can only happen if the Greeks leave the Euro. Anything else is, as they say, kicking the can down the road.

  24. Chris, are you lamenting the “free market” now, or the “free mackerel”, perhaps? Have you not “benefited” from the “free” broadcasting “market” like on “Radio Live(ing Dead)”?

    Time to fess up, and come back to the herd, perhaps?

  25. Meanwhile, in Brussels…

    Overpaid and underworked representatives from all over the EU.

    An urgent need to get out if the current punitive rut.

    A dearth of some imagination and practical vision.

    MEPs vacuously ignoring the vision of a united Europe that could influence with integrity, wisdom and the experience that comes from two thousand years’ worth of stupid expensive conflicts. Ducking away from demonstrating maturity and compassion – and the ability to engage with the massive problems turning up daily on the doorstep.

    Let’s start with Brussels.

    And remind them that as well as being a bit late with the dosh Greece is also fielding a huge stream of refugees and migrants plus an exodus of talent, and a lot of barely-together pensioners who had nothing to do with the games of political wannabes.

    And get them off their well-padded rumps to do what they were elected to do.

  26. On viewing the four horsemen doco – it seems the Greeks are actually doing the world a favour by putting a spotlight on our money / banking systems. I hope some hard question begin to get asked about the worlds financial systems.

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