Straight to Hellas
With creditors at the door, Greece hovers on the brink of bankruptcy, is finally declared insolvent and then has to be bailed out by an international financial authority. No, not 2015, but 1893. I’ll refrain from saying the more things change, the more they stay the same, but you get my drift.
For a nation that was (as we are constantly reminded) the birthplace of democracy, Greece in its post-Ottoman incarnation – as of 1832 – has certainly experienced moments in which democracy has been in short supply. The Great European Powers of Britain, France and Russia declared the newly independent nation a monarchy and parachuted a Bavarian Prince into Greece to rule as its sovereign. King Otto reigned for thirty years, though he did somewhat test the patience of the ‘natives’ during his three decades in charge and was eventually forced to abdicate. Despite their dislike of a foreigner on the throne, the Greeks nevertheless requested one of Queen Victoria’s sons, Prince Alfred, to be shipped over to replace Otto. This request was vetoed by France and Russia, so a compromise candidate in the shape of a Danish Prince was selected.
In some senses, late-nineteenth century Greece was something of a British satellite state, with the self-styled King George I forging close ties with the UK and the country racking up debts with the prominent London banking houses. Greek politics were controlled by a small elite of wealthy families, and the gap between the few grown fat on the profits of shipping and the far greater peasantry was vast. Although the country’s eventual insolvency necessitated the intervention of the era’s equivalent of the IMF, it still managed to revive the Olympic Games in 1896. This link to Ancient Greece can be viewed as emblematic of a wider yearning for past glories, one that often looked upon Ancient Greek territories in the same way that Vladimir Putin today looks upon Crimea and Ukraine as belonging within the historical boundaries of Russia. Greek-speaking people in the likes of Crete and Macedonia were prone to rebellions encouraged and supported by Greece, and one such rebellion drew the mother country into a war against its old overlords, the Ottoman Turks, in 1897 – one that ended in humiliating defeat.
King George reigned for almost fifty years until his assassination by an anarchist in 1913. The pro-German leanings of George’s son, Constantine I (he was married to the Kaiser’s sister) made initial neutrality difficult for Greece at the outbreak of the First World War, especially since the King’s Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos favoured the cause of the Allies. The Great War and its messy aftermath played havoc with the Greek constitution, causing Constantine to twice abdicate before his short-lived successor was forced out and a republic declared in 1924. A pro-monarchist coup ended this arrangement eleven years later and royal rule was restored. In the 1930s, as the country’s government lurched towards Italian-style fascism, Greece nonetheless retained strong ties to Britain and could rely on British support at the outbreak of the Second World War. However, the country fell to the Nazis in 1941, something that led to a terrible famine the following winter that cost 100,000 lives.
It’s no wonder Greeks resent the current German domination of the EU and how their very survival seems to depend on the whims of Frau Merkel. Nazi atrocities during the German occupation of Greece were as appalling as anywhere in Europe, with a death toll of around 70,000 attributed to the occupiers and their axis colleagues, Italy and Bulgaria. Even when liberation was achieved in part by both a British-backed resistance movement and a parallel Communist one, peace didn’t come to Greece. A Greek Civil War between the two ideologically opposed resistance groups followed the close of WWII, one that didn’t end until 1949. But thanks to financial input courtesy of the Marshall Plan, post-Civil War Greece began to experience an economic resurgence that brought a degree of stability to the country. Fractious political differences were never far from the surface, however. A right-wing military junta seized power in a 1967 coup and introduced a repressive regime that gradually resulted in the final abolition of the monarchy and the proclamation of yet another republic.
The military junta finally collapsed in 1974 and democracy was restored, though a referendum saw the Greek people reject the return of the monarchy. Six years after the inauguration of the current democratic republic, Greece joined the EEC. This slowly spawned the most affluent era in modern Greek history, with huge profits derived from both shipping and the tourism industry and a standard of living unprecedented for the majority of the Greek population. It was no surprise when Greece embraced the Euro in 2001; the return of the Olympic Games to Athens in 2004 was taken as confirmation that Greece had emerged from Civil War and military juntas to become one of Europe’s great success stories. And then came 2008.
This past week, on the orders of the Greek Government, the banks closed their doors, with a limited trickle of money available to be withdrawn from cash machines; they only reopened to enable pensioners without cash cards to get what little they’re entitled to over the counter. A couple of days ago, a former Greek Finance Minister suggested the banks currently have perhaps no more than a week left before their reserves run out. Large public gatherings in the centre of Athens mean there are many empty houses probably containing mattresses stuffed with savings. A chemist interviewed on TV earlier in the week claimed Syriza is only interested in public sector workers and aired her fears that her shop’s contents would be a prime target for burglary if the situation deteriorates any further. At the weekend, a rushed referendum that could determine the future of this troubled nation will be held and Angela Merkel has hinted she won’t enter into any further talks with Greece until the outcome is announced.
What has struck me as perhaps symptomatic of the dignity of the Greek people is that the huge anti and pro-EU demonstrations to have swamped Athens all week have been largely trouble-free. The familiar and tiresome infiltration of anarchist groups that have a habit of disrupting such get-togethers hasn’t really occurred. Police have been present in riot gear, but they’ve been passive observers. Whilst the Greek Government has been striving for eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth hour solutions to avoid defaulting on debt repayments, the people have waited and waited. Yes, they’ve debated amongst themselves in that animated Mediterranean manner, but large-scale brawling hasn’t broken out. Perhaps the people are just so tired after everything they’ve endured over the past half-decade and simply don’t have the energy or inclination to engage in ultimately futile fisticuffs with either each other or their institutions.
We’ve had it hard over here for the last five years, but compared to some of our continental neighbours – Spain and Portugal as well as Greece – we’ve had it pretty easy. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the financial recklessness that led Greece into this dire situation, it would take a mean-minded soul not to hope they can drag themselves out of it – not for the sake of the bloated, lumbering leviathan that is the European Union, but for the sake of a nation that has already suffered enough from being a member of an organisation that bears little resemblance to the one it joined as a newly reborn democratic country with such high hopes in 1981. I for one wish them well. Europe owes more to Greece than Greece owes to Europe.
Petunia Winegum
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July 3, 2015 at 9:27 am -
As I understand it the troubled history of Greece goes back to at least before the Roman Empire, when it was a collection of “city states”. What we are witnessing now is certainly a Greek tragedy. I think the best solution would be for the debts to be written off, the EU not to lend any more money and for Greece to leave the euro and go back to the drachma. That way they’ll either sink or swim. As we’ve seen time and time again in Africa, lending more and more money is not the answer. I read elsewhere that apparently the Greeks are sitting on a vast fortune in minerals, well, if that’s so then let them get off their arses and start mining them.
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July 3, 2015 at 10:08 am -
I still listen occasionally to the BBC World service because when the BBC Commisars are off duty, supping champagne, an occasional truthful piece of journalism slips past them. This one was a piece about Greece and how, once outside the urban centre (Athens basically) things are going rather well for the locals. They had a reporter in some country spot where there was an Apricot Festival going on. The folk there were rather happy. They said that since the economic crisis many of their young people had come back from the cities and the area was being reinvigorated as they found work and the slow death of the area as everyone got old and decrepit had stopped. Of course there was little suggestion that anyone could afford a Mercedes Cayenne on the sale of apricots, but there was no doubt they would all have plenty to eat and drink and next year, the apricots would grow again.
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July 3, 2015 at 10:10 am -
If the Greek’s were indeed sitting on a vast fortune in minerals, they would be fine. Unfortunately that is not the case. That particular myth seems linked to the “Greeks are lazy” meme that we are all expected to swallow hook, line and sinker.
http://www.countriesquest.com/europe/greece/land_and_resources/natural_resources.htmGreece’s problem wasn’t the debt per se, it was the massive increase in energy costs from 2008 that had the most impact on crippling its economy.
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July 3, 2015 at 10:12 am -
Them Cayennes sure use the gas.
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July 3, 2015 at 11:31 am -
Will they then be accused of making a Drachma out of a Crisis?
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July 3, 2015 at 11:42 am -
Euro-ho-ho
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July 3, 2015 at 1:22 pm -
“A Greek tragedy” may become the most overused phrase of the year….in both English and German.
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July 3, 2015 at 2:09 pm -
Followed by “A British farce” hopefully…
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July 3, 2015 at 2:36 pm -
Yes, there was a brief moment lasting around half-a-second when that phrase occurred to me as a potential title. But ‘The Bleedin’ Obvious’ would have been more apt if I’d used it. Besides, there’s a proud tradition to live up to on here.
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July 3, 2015 at 3:17 pm -
Well if you don’t like Greek tragedy, how about “the Greek shall inherit the Earth”, as I believe somenone once said? Or is that also too obvious?
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July 3, 2015 at 3:24 pm -
July 3, 2015 at 3:24 pm -
Is that another reference to their mineral wealth?…
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July 3, 2015 at 10:27 pm -
“Did anyone catch his name?”
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July 4, 2015 at 1:56 am
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July 3, 2015 at 9:51 am -
The IMF are banking on the debt to get their hands on said minerals.
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July 3, 2015 at 11:27 am -
Wot! There is a … a conspiracy? But a post directly above says that the ‘mineral wealth’ meme is a fallacy … Whom should I believe? The conspiracy theorist? Or the person who signposts evidence? Hmmm, … tough one, that.
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July 3, 2015 at 3:21 pm -
Well this site seems to provide some evidence that there is some mineral wealth in Greece;
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July 3, 2015 at 3:28 pm -
It’s all a matter of spin:
“Greece has many mineral deposits. These are marble, clay, nickel, coal, bauxite, ore, and chromate. The country only has one major petroleum deposit in the Aegean Sea near Thasos. These minerals have been used throughout history as is well witnessed in the structure of the acropolis and other ancient monuments. Some were even exported to other countries. ”
http://projects.cbe.ab.ca/senatorpatrickburns/agriculture.html
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July 3, 2015 at 9:59 am -
The Greeks were only ever in it for what they could get out of it.
Blame the Germans… Makes a change from blaming the Jews I suppose.1996
“At first fiercely opposed to the European Union, Mr Papandreou kept Greece in the club, becoming adept at milking it of money which now accounts for 6% of Greece’s GDP. He threatened to veto Spain’s and Portugal’s membership of the EU unless poor countries got even more handouts from the rich. In NATO he stressed Greece’s strategic place as an outpost of democracy in the Balkans, although here again he was an awkward partner, blocking NATO decisions. His most constant weapon was a brilliant populism, occasionally larded—after the colonels’ era—with a virulent anti-Americanism and a fuzzy third-worldliness.”
http://www.economist.com/node/14581071
He perpetuated the tradition that politics is essentially a game of patronage, to be controlled by a strongman and a cabal of corrupt insiders, often underpinned by a dynasty. Mr Papandreou’s father had twice been prime minister (once running a party modestly called the George Papandreou Party). The name continues in Greek politics: Mr Papandreou put his own (rather decent) son in his cabinet. Rousfeti—a word of Turkish origin denoting the reciprocal dispensation of favours—has remained the norm. For Mr Papandreou, Greek voters were clients. -
July 3, 2015 at 10:03 am -
I would say Eldest Son Of The Dwarf lives in a ‘crack den’ but no Crackhead/Methhead/Smack head or SkagRat would want to live there without mainlining broad spectrum antibiotics . I get constant texts and emails from him “DAAAD, can u put tenner in my account cos got no lecky agin?”. That £10 to feed the electric meter he converts into Monster Energy drinks and Manga Porn and so a day later I’ll get another text telling me that he is staaarving and that his leg is about to drop off cos he hasn’t got enough electric to keep the fridge running and his insulin cool.
Yet he should, by rights, be getting around £700 a month, cash, and with his rent paid. I’m bloody sure there are working, productive 26 year olds who have to survive on a lot less…and still manage to be a father to their illegitimate,sired-on-underage-girls, kids. But because he can’t be arsed to get up and walk the 4 miles into town once a fortnight to sign on or to get a Doctor’s note extension, he is constantly on a ‘suspension’.
Alexis Tsipras makes my monster swilling, Lolicon devouring Eldest look like a bloody rank amateur sponger. If Greece really wanted to get it’s finances straight then they would have gotten out of bed before the crack of Noon, put down the glossy mags and hied their sorry arses down to the Job Centre one morning a fortnight.
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July 3, 2015 at 10:16 am -
If Tsipras is equivalent to Eldest Son Of, does that make Blocked Dwarf the equivalent of debt-pushing Germans? Constantly enabling the addiction then blaming the junkie for their inevitable problems?
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July 3, 2015 at 10:21 am -
If any country in Europe is anti-debt, it is the Germans. What complete tosh.
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July 3, 2015 at 10:27 am -
If Tsipras is equivalent to Eldest Son Of, does that make Blocked Dwarf the equivalent of debt-pushing Germans? Constantly enabling the addiction then blaming the junkie for their inevitable problems?
Yes indeed.
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July 3, 2015 at 10:32 am -
@Blocked Dwarf
Did you tell him when you baled him out that it was only a loan and he had to pay you back sometime?
I think you’re confusing Welfare with Business.-
July 3, 2015 at 10:46 am -
We have long since gotten past the stage of Eldest even pretending to want a loan…again very much like Tsipras.
These days Eldest extorts money from us, or rather from me via his Mom by playing on her heart strings…Tsiprasesque emotional blackmail.
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July 3, 2015 at 3:04 pm -
That’s what kids do:- because they are astute enough to know that underneath everything else, we care. And they exploit it like mad!
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July 3, 2015 at 10:30 am -
Both parties are to blame. But at least the Germans are not closing their banks or taking all liquidity from their economy.
Tsipras has handled the whole negotiations very bad. He had political capital which he could spend for a better deal (and debt relief), but he wasted it. And I am disgusted by his two-faced approach where he shakes hand with Merkel and then goes to Greece and blame the Germans.
And they have showed no effort to actually restructure their economy.If they dont have enough sense to save their economy, why should the other 18 nations do so? Hope the votes is yes and this party resigns. The last thing they need now is a Chavez running their economy.
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July 3, 2015 at 11:12 am -
Maybe Eldest Son of Dwarf has the right idea (not the living in a crackhouse bit), but staying resolutely “outside the system”. It is your parental choice whether to cut him off, financially, or not. But I am sure he was worked out that the system has morphed from one which meant to help to one which is now meant to deter and expects all claimants to become supplicants, to prostrate themselves at the feet of JCP, DWP, Maximus assessors. It is revolting the way people are handled (I have witnessed this first hand). The only help that is given is to the private contractors carrying out the Government’s work. Funny, that.
And there maybe the comparison with Tsipras comes in. Maybe he too has realised it is pointless prostrating the Greek people in front of the IMF/EU/ECB because their system of bailouts has not been meant to help (except French and German banks who held Greek debt), but is intended to deter – watch out Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, France – you want this mess?
If his game plan all along was to allow the Greek people to see what a corrupt stinking corporatist pile of crap the EU has morphed into, then maybe he has achieved his object. Notice how all members of the Greek establishment are piling on to the “Yes” side for the referendum – they sure don’t want to be kicked off the Gravy Train.
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July 3, 2015 at 11:15 am -
Let’s hope he really is that clever. The sooner Greece get out the better for everyone. The Irish are well pissed off with them.
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July 3, 2015 at 12:15 pm -
but staying resolutely “outside the system”.
I wish he was . He was raised to believe that ‘going off the grid’ or ‘Bleeding The Beast’ are both acceptable lifestyles…indeed I taught him everything I know about screwing money out of banks and governments. If he openly and honestly felt that way -wasn’t there a youtube of a younger Tsipras giving the EU the finger?- then we’d support him far more financially than we do now if it were needed.
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July 3, 2015 at 10:33 am -
Greece has a long and less than honourable history of Sovereign default. In total it has spent over 90 years in a state of default, as a result of five separate ‘failures to pay’, to wit: 1826, 1843, 1860, 1894 and 1932. So, almost half its modern history, she has let someone down. Indeed, the first default occurred in the 4th century BC when 13 city states took a loan from the affluent Temple of Delos, which itself took an 80% haircut on the principal.
So, moving on, between 1932 and 2015 is q. a long time; actuarially, such a long gap is remarkable.
But perhaps this is not a default on Sovereign debt per se, as Europhiles might think that this is part of EU debt and therefore not their fault. I think they think differently…
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July 3, 2015 at 10:41 am -
“Income taxation in Greece is progressive. ”
Explains much….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Greece
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July 3, 2015 at 10:59 am -
Petunia, what an excellent and accurate article. I lived in Greece for ten years until 2014 and am currently back here for a month.
You mention Tsipras’ popularity. I wrote elsewhere a few days ago: One thing I can add ‘from the front line’ is just how extraordinarily popular Tsipras has become across every demographic and previous political affiliation. He’s seen not only as ‘katharos’ (clean, uncorrupt) but as a true leader and now almost reaching hero level. As a small example, it’s noted with admiration and approval that he and members of his cabinet walk about freely in public without bodyguards and without showing fear.
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July 3, 2015 at 11:10 am -
I’m pleased someone who obviously knows the country can authenticate my research! I’ve never been to Greece myself, but my grandma holidayed there in the 70s and brought me back a superb figurine of one of those ‘guards’ (not sure of their official job description), the ones dressed in what I’ll politely refer to as a ‘Greek Kilt’! I sincerely hope this mess is resolved soon.
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July 3, 2015 at 11:12 am -
Do Liverpool next maybe…
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July 3, 2015 at 11:18 am -
At least I have been there! And left again, rather hastily…
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July 3, 2015 at 11:49 am -
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July 3, 2015 at 2:46 pm -
Sad and scary stories.
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July 3, 2015 at 3:33 pm -
One of the good things about twitter is that it keeps all the nutters out of the way, so places like Quora can exist.
http://www.quora.com/When-Argentina-default-on-its-debts-in-2001-Is-their-welfare-better-now-And-if-so-is-it-best-for-Greece-to-default-and-fellow-the-Argentinian-example-
July 3, 2015 at 3:44 pm -
Yes, a good site that; and new to me. I suppose twitter is a bit like an online daycare centre for ‘special’ people. Good to have ’em all under one roof.
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July 3, 2015 at 3:52 pm -
A place where Nation can speak unto Nation… They possibly need to make a rule that postings must be of no less than 1,ooo characters to ensure it remains a place of sanity. Automatic spell-check could act as a filter to ensure that the letters actually do make words and sentences… Time for the robots to be on the side of the people for a change…
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July 3, 2015 at 7:37 pm -
I know it sounds like an old joke, but the only time I visited Liverpool (1975?) I was driving an old Mercedes which conked out. I went in search of an un-vandalised telephone with which to call the AA/RAC whoever, and when I returned, the hubcaps were missing…
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July 3, 2015 at 11:30 am -
He’s seen not only as ‘katharos’ (clean, uncorrupt) but as a true leader and now almost reaching hero level.
Not according to the News the other night, the (no doubt carefully selected ‘at random’ to promote the German Pro-Greek MSM) Greeks-On-The-Ambelokipi-Omnibusείο seemed to be less enamored. Very much “they are all politicians and tarred with the same brush”).
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July 3, 2015 at 6:05 pm -
Indeed. Lysistrata has the right of it. There has been a nepotistic hegemony in operation in Greek politics for a few generations which has operated like the plughole in a sink, down which most of the wealth of Greece spirals. Tsipras is not seen as a member of that political elite, and so brings something fresh into Greek politics.
That said, people here are really ambivalent about the impending referendum, not least because they have no idea what the future holds in store whichever way the vote goes. They find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Do they vote to stay in the Eurozone, with the prospect of economic penury for the foreseeable future? Or do they vote to get out, which will also result in misery for at least a couple of years. After which, it may improve. Or it may not, since they will have cast themselves as international pariahs as far as the moneylenders are concerned.
It all started to go pear-shaped when the vainglorious politicians decided they wanted to host the Olympic games in 2004. Naturally, with a mega-project like that, untold billions got lost down the back of the sofa en route to the contractors and left a massive hole in the national budget. When the shit hit the fan in 2008, I thought at the time that they should get out of the Euro and back to the Drachma pronto (even though it would have been detrimental to me personally, having most of my assets here). Naturally, the politicians wouldn’t countenance such a move. If you’re on a gravy train, you try to keep it rolling. So the regime of ‘austerity’ began. Not for the great and the good in government, you understand. They still had the chauffeur-driven Mercs taking their kids to the top private schools from the large detached villa in leafy Kifissia, and a rack full of Grand Cru vintages. No, the ‘austerity’ applied to the great unwashed.
So once again, we are in crisis. Personally, I truly believe that a return to the Drachma is the only chance that Greece has. The Greeks are both resilient and resourceful, and they can deal with short-term hardship. They know how to live off the land. I reckon in two to three years things would start to turn, and the economy would be on the up-and-up. But they need to reform the Byzantine bureaucracy that pertains. Starting a business here is a nightmare on stilts. Mainly to justify all the jobsworths in the public sector. Those people, of course, reject change because they see their sinecures evaporating, but in truth, if the system was simplified, those job losses in the public sector would be equalled by gains in the private sector to the benefit of all. With a simpler system, I reckon they could cull 60 – 70% of public servants.
Perchance to dream! People can be remarkably stubborn when it comes to change…
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July 4, 2015 at 4:01 am -
Thank you for your report, in which a good deal of common sense is imparted (even to the detriment of your personal situation).
Once again we hear of failed socialist schemes, best described perhaps by Mark Steyn
http://www.steynonline.com/7030/big-fat-greeks-and-weddingsCivil servants barely working receiving 14 months salary (and then pension) per year, how could that not fail? His reporting on the demographic decline is also well worth absorbing, in the end the profligate and workshy will benefit at the expense of hard-working citizens.
In all this the bleeding hearts, wish Tsipras well perhaps not realizing that once again donor countries to the ECB and IMF will have to absorb any “haircut” as a loss.
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July 3, 2015 at 11:11 am -
* it’s noted with admiration and approval that he and members of his cabinet walk about freely in public without bodyguards and without showing fear. *
That’s probably because he’s got all the nutters on his side quite frankly… but it won’t last when reality bites his ass.
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July 3, 2015 at 12:37 pm -
The debt Greece owes is imaginary; it is money that has been created out of thin air to be repaid at compound interest ad infinitum. I wrote this 5 years ago: http://www.financialreform.info/f_r_greek_debt.html
it is just as valid today.
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July 3, 2015 at 5:36 pm -
Isn’t all money imaginary since it became digital ?
The current financial system is a collective hallucination.
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July 4, 2015 at 7:59 am -
“in 600 B.C., the Chinese moved from coins to paper money. By the time Marco Polo visited in 1,200 A.D., the emperor had a good handle on both money supply and various denominations. In the place of where the American bills say, “In God We Trust,” the Chinese inscription warned, “All counterfeiters will be decapitated.”
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/roots_of_money.asp#ixzz3eu4gz6vS
Europeans were still using coins all the way up to 1,600, helped along by acquisitions of precious metals from colonies to keep minting more and more cash. Eventually, the banks started using bank notes for depositors and borrowers to carry around instead of coins. These notes could be taken to the bank at any time and exchanged for their face values in silver or gold coins. This paper money could be used to buy goods and operated much like currency today, but it was issued by banks and private institutions, not the government, which is now responsible for issuing currency in most countries. The first paper currency issued by European governments was actually issued by colonial governments in North America. Because shipments between Europe and the colonies took so long, the colonists often ran out of cash as operations expanded. Instead of going back to a barter system, the colonial governments used IOUs that traded as a currency. The first instance was in Canada, then a French colony. In 1685, soldiers were issued playing cards denominated and signed by the governor to use as cash instead of coins from France.
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July 3, 2015 at 12:42 pm -
Whatever the history, you can’t run a reasonable state without getting reasonable tax revenue – end of.
The lower-order Greeks have watched for decades as all the wealthier ones (not just the very, very wealthy ones) evade taxes at an Olympic level, so it’s no surprise that hoi polloi follow the lead they have been given by their ‘betters’, so every lower-order Greek actively evades every tiny bit of tax he/she can, and who can blame them.
And then their ‘government’, if you can call it that and of whatever flavour, sets out to maintain its hold on the reins of endemic corruption by winning votes through granting benefits to the population out of all proportion to national or personal incomes.
That combination was always a financial accident waiting to happen – joining the EU and the Euro has simply been a delaying tactic, putting off the evil day when the bills will have to be paid, along with the cunning political side-calculation that the EU would value its ‘major project’ so much that it would underwrite whatever it took to paper over any Hellenic cracks in its fiscal facade.
That’s the dilemma now sitting so noisily on Frau Merkel’s doorstep, as there as similar cracks in other, much larger, member states which put at risk the whole EU house of cards.
There is no solution to the Greek situation until all reasonable taxes are being paid by all reasonable Greeks and a reasonable government operates on the principle of only spending reasonably within its ongoing revenues – the true meaning of austerity.
And that’s currently a fantasy worthy of their own mythology of old.-
July 3, 2015 at 6:55 pm -
” until all reasonable taxes are being paid by all reasonable Greeks”
And especially the unreasonable Greeks!
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July 3, 2015 at 12:47 pm -
Brilliant piece, Petunia
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July 3, 2015 at 1:20 pm -
We have Greek style austerity here in the UK. I have just discovered our local supermarket doesn’t stock Perrier! Dear God, life on benefits in Norfolk-like living in a war zone!
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July 4, 2015 at 7:54 am -
I briefly worked in Germany in the mid ’70’s for an American company. At the time I was based in Istanbul. I asked the American wife of the Finance Director how she liked living in Germany. She said it was all right but, and I quote, “You could not get Diet Coke in the local supermarket”!
At the time it was a topic of major celebration in Istanbul if you could buy locally made non-diet Coca Cola which had bubbles in it.
My God we knew how to suffer in those days!
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July 3, 2015 at 8:53 pm -
I have heard that the ECB (snork) is intervening to support banks in Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia where the Greek banks have a rather large footprint. The assumption, I suppose, is that by Monday the Greek banks will be tapped out and will ‘look elsewhere’ for liquidity…
Oh, dear… -
July 3, 2015 at 8:58 pm -
Epitaph to the EU – courtesy of George Seferis (the greatest modern and Greek poet)
The secrets of the sea are forgotten on the shores
the darkness of the depths is forgotten in the surf;
the corals of memory suddenly shine purple. . .
O do not stir. . . listen to hear its lightmotion. . . you touched the tree with the apples
the hand reached out, the thread points the way and guides you. . .
O dark shivering in the roots and the leaves
if it were but you who would bring the forgotten dawn!May lilies blossom again on the meadow of separation
may days open mature, the embrace of the heavens,
may those eyes alone shine in the glare
the pure soul be outlined like the song of a flute.Was it night that shut its eyes? Ashes remain,
as from the string of a bow a choked hum remains,
ash and dizziness on the black shore
and dense fluttering imprisoned in surmise.Rose of the wind, you knew but took us unknowing
at a time when thought was building bridges
so that fingers would knit and two fates pass by
and spill into the low and rested light. -
July 3, 2015 at 9:03 pm -
July 3, 2015 at 9:04 pm -
Thanks Pet for a most informative post.
I can’t see this turning out well, and I suppose there are no good guys.
Sure historically the Greeks have been corrupt , & have exploited the eu & the European banking system because they were allowed to; judging from more recent euro joiners, were encouraged to.
Then came the need to save the bag of pustulating warts called the euro.
Large economies have always had the power to dominate their neighbours, but what’s happened with Greece hardly seems to show a Community spirit; more like business as usual but we don’t use guns any more.Never been there so what do I know?
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July 3, 2015 at 10:55 pm -
“Go tell the EU, stranger passing by, that here in accordance with there laws we died.”
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July 4, 2015 at 6:32 pm -
Yes, but have the Greeks got two Spartans to rub together any more?
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July 4, 2015 at 12:19 am -
Good background that the mainstream media would do well to acknowledge. You forget to mention the post-Great War ethnic cleansing which created the still pertinent touchiness about ‘Macedonia’ and terrible relations with all neighbours (Orthodox Christians probably even worse than Muslim Turkey where there was at least a treaty agreeing ‘exchange of populations’ rather than informal pogroms).
I am also fairly certain that sometime about 1945 the Greeks freely voted in a Communist government but were told they couldn’t have it because that wasn’t agreed at Yalta. This was in an article (which I can’t find at the moment) which said the Romanians had similarly voted for a rightwing government at the same time but were similarly told Yalta did not permit this.
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July 5, 2015 at 12:48 pm -
“Opinion polls this week have shown a generation divide in the Greek referendum — with the “no” vote against more austerity measures far more popular among younger Greek voters than older ones. Retired school teacher Themis Hatziyannaki, 84, voted ‘yes’ Sunday at an Athens high school, saying she wants to continue enjoying the privileges of her Greek and European citizenship. But she also says she understands that many young people want to vote “no” to express their anger at Greece’s creditors. Unemployment in Greece for young people under 25 stands at a whopping 51.9 percent. Hatziyannaki says “I understand them, because when I was young I was a rebel.” But she said young people also have to consider what’s best for Greece’s future and look at what older generations have endured.”
http://www.newser.com/article/820758b07097405a9fe93e76847edeea/the-latest-german-foreign-minister-win-for-no-side-in-greece-wont-make-debt-talks-easier.htmlInteresting from that comment that to want to effectively leave the EU is viewed as an act of rebellion.
Softly Softly, they had long ago catched the monkey it seems. -
July 6, 2015 at 5:24 pm -
On the Telegraph vidiprinter:
16.02
German newspaper Speigel is reporting that Greece is running out of paper to print newspapers – and that stocks will run out on Sunday if they don’t get their hands on any more.Silver lining to every cloud to seems…
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