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Theater Of The Absurd: Greece Has Already Missed Its June Budget Target
The 5th Greek bailout tranche has not been delivered yet, under the very, very strict condition that the country adhere to the terms of its pillaging by European banks, and already Greece, which has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that a country that refuses to do work, and conducts full day strikes on a whim actually does not grow, has just fallen behind a critical monthly Troica benchmark. From Dow Jones: "Greece is at risk of missing a key budget target in June, European Union experts said in a report, a sign of the uphill struggle the country faces as it tries to get its deficit reduction plans back on track. The report, prepared by European Commission budget experts with input from European Central Bank officials and published over the weekend, says that Greece could miss its June target for its primary budget balance, a measure of the government deficit that excludes interest payments on outstanding debt." And here is why the last thing anyone in Europe cares about is actual Greek growth: "Government revenue faces "significant" shortfalls that have only partially been offset by lower spending and delayed payments, the report says. "As a result, the quarterly performance criterion on the primary balance could be missed already in June." June. As in before the disbursement of cash contingent on the primary balance being met...
More:
The EU and the International Monetary Fund expect Greece's primary deficit to be 0.8% of gross domestic product at the end of this year. The Greek government hopes that austerity measures approved by the Greek parliament last week can put the country back on track to hitting that target.
So with Greece already more bankrupt than a short month ago, next up is the super-duper strict, and extremely credible, European stress test round 2 which will find that all European banks, especially those about to fail, are more solvent than they have ever been.
Which brings up the next question: in a bankrupt world in which the official newsflow is one farcical lie after another, why even bother any more.
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More austerity! Maybe cut out one meal a day and stop having kids?
Or more Kids and sell them to the Africans?
Did Greece read the fine print on the conditions of the "bailout loan"?
Massive forced sterilization.
And no "free Tata Nano" as in India.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13982031
That has to the weirdest India story in a while. Become half a man, get a free four wheel motorcycle, feel like a full man again.
Firing blanks, India style.
ORI
this is a fantastic idea...they need to implement that in africa and in the USA as well, everywhere in the 3rd world. I love the idea of incentivizing the teeming masses not to have more children.
We should give high IQ people a free car to have kids
You obviously haven't been to a MENSA meeting. Either that, or you're one of the dweebs who are always there?
At least the weather is nice here in the Hamptons
No, sell them to European pedophiles......you get better price. Contact the Vatican first, Catholic priests are always interested in such deal.
Africans already can't feed their own kids without massive continual western food aid. If that aid ever stops, tens or hundreds of millions will die
They don't really need western food aid, but have become dependent on it because it's there. Producing food is just about the only thing they know how to do, but when you get free food why bother?
The other choice is for the greeks to start working and making products and services that other people want. That's how the rest of the world survives. Nobody forced them to borrow money to take bailouts. They can simply default and live within their means. That means they either consume less or produce more.
Opa!
The pace of events is becoming to be so unreal, it gets more and more difficult for us folks to come up with a rational post of some sort. Reallity doesn't help indeed.
The "pace" is key. Paying attention to the general acceleration is a huge tell tell in terms of where we are headed.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/a-year-and-a-day-later/
If that's the case, they better get on the phone with the IMF and ECB ASAP and tell them to raise the bailout ceiling pronto.
LMAO
IMF (verb)
definition: I 'M' Fucked
Usage: "I tried my best and now I M Fucked.
+1
Brilliant.
IMF=It's My Funding...and i'll cry if I want to...(you would cry too if it happened to you)
:)
It's My Funding, and YOU can Cry if YOU want to but we won't give a shit.
Lending people absurd amounts of money is only slightly less stupid than asking people with an obviously infinite credit line, to live frugally.
This is already comical.
Were you talking about the endless line of free money to the investment firms e.g. Goldman and their subsequent irresponsible issuance of record bonuses?? Just curious..
How about everyone
Party on before the credit line gets shut down. Drinks for everyone!
Can't they just value the country at $500B, cut off 1/3rd of it, and call it a day?
Maybe they can hand over the rest of the country to Libyan rebels and let them have at it.
those still come without sawdust, right?
No sawdust but a healthy dose of genuine simulated beef.
OK. Greece is a country in Southern Europe. It was where the Empire of Greece began over three thousand years ago, and where there are still still ruins such as the Parthenon and Acropolis. There are many gods that are from this period, and some of them have as much legitmacy as many western gods today. Thankyou and have a nice day.
Thanks for the history lesson. So what's your point?
Trade stocks, invest in entropy.
This wasn't a surprise at all... However the coming events will be entertaining to watch just like the band playing in the last moments as the Titanic sank.
"You can't really dust for vomit."
- Nigel Tufnel
Actually Tyler the correct question "in a farcical world...." is how to protect yourself. That really should be the discussion at this point forward. Please post articles about this. Obviously, we know that gold and silver is a solution. However, it would be nice to read an article that talks about a whole portfolio of things with a degree of subtlety that can be done to protect yourself. Faber and Rogers hint at it over and over.
Evidently short term bonds of countries deemed to big to fail (see Greece last week) appears to be a good risk free trade.
I put some money in the Pimco Total return fund hoping those guys got me covered in that regard.
+1
Top German Economist invests in Greek Bonds.
"Homburg: In recent days, I myself have invested a considerable sum in Greek bonds. They will mature in one year's time and, if all goes well, produce a 25 percent return on investment. I sleep very soundly at night because I believe in the boundless stupidity of the German government. They will pay up."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,770673,00.html
Perhaps they will be awarded the Giosmas discount.
The whole bailout thing is the European countries give money to big European banks, just like US fed reserve give money to TBTF banks. Greece is just a conduit for this to happen.
Who the fuck in the right mind will give a red cent to Greeks, expect them to pay back?
Exactly!! Crazy amigo !
They are not in their right mind. In fact, they are freaking. The whole thing is hanging by a thread due to the derivatives. They have no other choice. Again, the question is how to protect yourself. Gold, silver, store food, invest in foreign countries. It would be nice if we knew for instance what Bill Gross, Jamie Diamond and others etc are doing. They already know what will happen.
Theater of the absurd.
The EU is funding the Greek strikes.
What is so breathtaking about the EU machinations regarding Greece is how many more countries are equally on the verge of insolvency. It isn't even conceivable that the EU banking system could address multiple defaults occurring simultaneously or even sequentially when you look at the Keystone Cops approach they are making to this one very small country. And by the way, anyone laughing their ass off at 'those lazy Greeks' better look in the mirror - the Greeks are no more and no less addicted to the welfare state than most of the rest of the world. Coming soon to a theater near you - and I do mean you (and me too) - Meltdown.
The only reason the nations of the world haven't been spending their days invading and killing one another (as has historically been the case) has been due to the 'wealth effect' of credit creation.
Now that those days of credit expansion are over, we will shortly be resuming our regularly scheduled activities.
Agree 100%. Even though many may be on food stamps in your country, access to credit in multiple forms as here in Canada has artificially supported consumption and survivability. When people lose their capacity for an even meager survival, desperation kicks in, and yes regularly scheduled programming vis a vis war and chaos is the treat of the week.
Agree 100%. Even though many may be on food stamps in your country, access to credit in multiple forms as here in Canada has artificially supported consumption and survivability. When people lose their capacity for an even meager survival, desperation kicks in, and yes regularly scheduled programming vis a vis war and chaos is the treat of the week.
We have several going on
What nation isn't invading and killing people right now?
Bother with not being a media enterprise to begin with? It is said of Oracles that they themselves are a form of media so it may not be possible to ever turn off Zero Hedge whatever's one view of the site as it may simply engage in some form of tranferrence from one person to the next. What the USA bailouts represent to me is a fighting chance for a new beginning. What happens when Greece defaults as it now appears it was suppose to have today?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpSgK5mamAA&feature=player_detailpage
Greece can and should just keep taking more and more bailout money, and then when the payments come due tell everyone to fuck off. The way things are today, the EU/China/US will keep throwing good money after bad until the problem goes away, which it never will. I say keep spending more, missing your budget targets, lowering your GDP, and increasing your national debt, then ultimately defaulting. Maybe that will finally implode this fucked up system of fiat, endless bailouts, and warfare/welfare bullshit.
It's not like the normal citizens of Greece are seeing a dime of this bailout money, just like here in the US. I didn't see a fucking penny of the TARP or AIG bailouts, yet "we the taxpayers" were supposedly paid back in full. So I say let the governments of the world print, bailout, borrow, tax, and spend at an ever higher rate, so that the system simply collapses.
This is getting really crazy. Whenever the fundamental weaknesses of the neofunctionalist Eurofantasy manifest themselves, the EU kicks the can some more, and the Euro goes higher with each new "solution." I can't wait until S&P says that they were just joking, and that the Greek debt restructuring is actually not a default. That should be good for another 400 pips on the EUR/USD
Indignants are against the bailout and pro analysing the debt in odious-nonodious and adopting a national currency.
Greeks are aware of the fact that it's impossible to fight debt with debt, to pay off a loan with loan.
The majority of the "union-fathers" are pasok.
Typical for such kind of unions, in USA the story of the unions was approximately the same.
These "regime-owned" unions do not represent the majority of the Greek people.
They've lost their "legitimation".
unions on "company-level" are weak in Greece.
The private sector lacks mobilization and organization in unions.
Large private companies do not have unions of their employees.
Despite what is generally said, lots of large private companies have already "integrated" the unions strategies into their internal procedures, in order to absorb possible vibrations and controversies.
Salaries, kindergardens, bonuses, medical care, etc.
B.c of course (before crisis) the above, but this is still enough to retent the private sector from organizing at company level.
you couldn't sell this script to hollywood...no one would believe it is plausible...yet its the world we live in
Do not confuse the greek regime and its supporters/voters with all Greeks.
A faulty election system grants the first party with a bonus of dozens of electors.
This is not a real representative system.
I do hope that the higher german institutional courth decides tomorrow against the bail out.
Are they doing Greece a favor if default would mean they can kiss the midterm austerity plan bye-bye?
absolutely!
“Confusion continues to reign…”
Actually, the developments in the Greek crisis are not confusing if you remember that the bankers become increasingly obscenely rich while the citizens who are required to follow the rules become increasingly destitute.
Banker rules come with a vague and constantly changing vocabulary of conditions, requirements, types of rollovers, voluntary contributions, and 9-pt-type banker obfuscations; and they all, of course, generally direct that public money, public resources and public infrastructure, small business resources and individual tax money is to be added to the accounts of the big banks.
And should a member of the public begin to understand the financial lawyerese and actually decipher the true meaning of the gobbledygook in these one-sided banker contracts, then the oligarch front (the satanic IMF) quickly changes the terminology.
The only things I have to understand is who wins and who loses and who was responsible and who was irresponsible . This basic formula gets me through the “confusion.”
We were warned earlier through Zero Hedge that any changes in the loan structure became a basis for default. Sarkozy and Merkel, for example, were spectacularly vocal in saying that any bank private money used would be absolutely voluntary - the voluntary provision apparently necessary to keep Greece, in their opinion, from a technical default.
Obviously, the Greek debt and the Greek economy is too small for the bankers to seriously worry about; their primary fear would be the world’s interpretation that Greece is defaulting – because Greek DEFAULT is the first rock in the avalanche known as the breakup of the euro. After Greece, the big economies, including Spain, will take the banks to insolvency.
A banker-run government means a banker-owned country. Jefferson warned us that giving banks control “will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
He lamented: “I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution – taking from the Federal government their power of borrowing.”
Here you go, 120 billion dollar for you to spend. But you promise that you'll save money and pay me back this time Okay? Because I won't say it again for the 20th time.
This really is maybe the last time!u
The key to successful stock trading is to watch the tape and ignore the news.
All the Greece news is for entertainment purposes only.
Do you have a magic tape that tells you what happens tomorrow?
The only one I know about tells me what happened yesterday.
Tomorrow will be light to moderate selling, followed by a day or two of sideways motion or light selling, then like magic, the Greek Gov. will sprinkle some shit over the terms of the rescue package and the rating agencies will give it a thumbs up, then the S&P will touch 1363, bounce down, then punch a whole right through 1363 on "better than expected" news. All the while Treasurys will rally, and Gold, Silver, and other Commodities will stagnate or sell off a bit. If it's not exactly like this, it will be close.
I wonder how European politicians can live with themselves,
knowing themselves all too well what kind of continuous lies they are spouting on a daily basis.
How can one even aspire to become a politician under these circumstances.
You have to have the mindset of a whore.
Two of my sisters are whores. They both have an understading of the word ethics.
I haver encountered a politician who had ethics.
Indeed FS....But these are masochistic whores full of the big hurt only in reverse.
Yes, all politicians I know have it
The only way Greece will survive is to collect more tax money from the popoulace.
Isnt that the biggest problem..no one wants to pay
taxes. So lets take the tax problem out of the burecracy
Eliminate their tax system altogether..implement a tax on goods purchased ONLY.
This will stimulate their economy by the populace getting to keep all the money they earn
and elimanating the problem of tax collection. A win..Win
PASOK IS A SOVIET REGIME
THEY ADORE TAXES
40% and 45% taxes on higher incomes.
My suggestion is tax of 20% on incomes and "social" servicing for the country, for example 1 or 2 days a month social servicing in hospitals, in municipalities, in the army, with no payment, in order to help the state restore the imbalance.
How about just spending the equivalent amount of time...on the actual job instead of retiring early?
Not all Greeks retire early, do not buy that government crap, public servants serve 35 years, most people are forced to work almost 40 years to get the pension
(18-53 makes 35 years for the men)
I do not know how many years do the Americans work
One of the six Media Myths regarding Greece exposed by Sturdyblog:
Greeks retire early: "The figure of 53 years old as an average retirement age is begin bandied about. So much, in fact, that it is being seen as fact. The figure actually originates from a lazy comment on the NY Times website. It was then repeated by Fox News and printed in other publications. Greek civil servants have the option to retire after 17.5 years of service, but this is on half benefits. The figure of 53 is a misinformed conflation of the number of people who choose to do this (in most cases to go on to different careers) and those who stay in public service until their full entitlement becomes available. Looking at Eurostat’s data from 2005 the average age of exit from the labour force in Greece was 61.7; higher than Germany, France or Italy and higher than the EU27 average. Since then Greece has had to raise the minimum age of retirement under bail-out conditions and so this figure is likely to rise further.”
http://sturdyblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/democracy-vs-mythology-the-battle-in-syntagma-square/
thanx, this is a great article, probably, I'm not sure from the famous greek article :
THERE HIDES THE MONEY!!!
Maybe the Greeks do work longer hours. I don't know since the article is obviously biased with a Greek writer seeking to defend Greece. How productive are they?
If a Greek is not qualifed to defend the Greeks, who is?
Public servants are about 750.000 in a labour force of about 5 millions
20% of these public servants, do enjoy favours, and this should be fixed, ok, but the majority work out the whole "working life".
But all the above do not make the fortune and wealth and privileges of the political clan and the top 5 families' clan (which in turn control the political clan of the 300 electors in the parliament)
The only way Greece will survive is to collect more tax money from the popoulace.
Isnt that the biggest problem..no one wants to pay
taxes. So lets take the tax problem out of the burecracy
Eliminate their tax system altogether..implement a tax on goods purchased ONLY.
This will stimulate their economy by the populace getting to keep all the money they earn
and elimanating the problem of tax collection. A win..Win
And suddenly most transactions become cash transactions.
The only sure way to collect taxes is to tax use of land based on how much it is worth. Land can't disappear and can't be moved off-shore.
Suddenly the remaining businesses relocate to Italy, Germany, Romania etc.
What difference does it make if they use cash? Sales taxes are levied on venders who price them into the goods sold. Why is it that sales taxes work everywhere else but not in greece??
The Greeks need to get Goldman-"Sacks" to doctor
their balance sheets to show that they are
surpassing all the criteria and on their way back
to prosperity. Isn't that how they got into the
European Union in the first place. That would
take the heat off everyone involved and allow
"the big lie" to go on until the banks could unload
their worthless loans on taxpayers.
No doubt, the 2 most overused words of this decade will be "forgive" and "debt."
dont forget about "austerity" and "bailout"
Not only Greece has missed June's target
The whole eurozone has lesser tax revenues the first semester of 2011.
austerity greek word, meaning αυστηροτητα, strict
The bailout of Greece does not go to Greece but the bankers.
We have reached a "one world" society of bankers.
There is short curcuit in the flow of capital and interest. It no longer goes thru the economy.
The solution is simple, obviously more bailouts will fix it.
Yes...and bigger! Quadrillion is just a number, (or billiard if it make people feel better).
Austerity for them, free mortgage writedowns for us. woohoo!
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/07/banks-shocking-borrowers...
So i guess the next dosage of "help and outside expertise" offered by the fraudulent Troica overlords will be France's main export product, democracy by warplanes. Jun(c)ker already said out loud they will massively restrict Greece's soverignty so good old fashioned bombings are natural next step to enhance the unity in the "European family". Expecting ponzimaster Rehn soon to hit wires to express his CONfidence on this.
In my opinion, this is another ingredient in the start of some war.
Yea! History has shown us.... I the event of major financial reset in History, war always fallowed! Shifting for nationalism was always the answer given by failed States! God help us! I may gona move to Brazil as the "favelados" will be better off option than a nuclear war of some kind...
And don't forget the south east Asia scenario between China and US... As the dollar goes to the abyss, that could be the perfect excurse... BAD CHINESE INVADERS!
If you're going to quote Jefferson then quote Jefferson and not some made up crap. Not that it really matters, since made up crap is the new reality anyway.
Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, Monticello, 28 May 1816. Ford 11:533
"...made up crap is the new reality anyway." - astute and to the point...
Imagine anybody nowadays seriously believing: "...to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity..." as a motivator for governance. That quote was accurate way back when, no more.
The banker owned Greek government voted for the bailout, but the people by their actions are clearly voting against any bailout. After all the money is not for the people, it's for the banks that own the government.
Only the armoured limousines and the privileges of the political clan (300 political oligarchs-electors) cost billions to the state.
Free call-center equipment, free computer-equipment, free laptops, free cellular phones, free travelling, free coffies in the VIP rooms of the airports, free, free, free everything for them.
And anybody else in the private sector had to purchase everything in order to settle a small free lancer business, and they call him a thief, a tax evaser, a tax thief.
It's the political CLANS who pillage Greeks in order to maintain their privileges and in favour of the ultra-wealth of the super rich top 5 greek families WHO OWN THE MEDIA, WHO OWN THE BIG CONSTRUCTING PROJECTS, WHO CONTROL THE IMPORTS, with the help of the Banksters.
And not vice-versa.
These are desperate times. As goes Greece, I fear, goes America. To quote again from Sturdyblog who is “desperate to explain” that “the protests in Greece concern all of you directly”:
“What is going on in Athens at the moment is resistance against an invasion; an invasion as brutal as that against Poland in 1939. The invading army wears suits instead of uniforms and holds laptops instead of guns, but make no mistake – the attack on our sovereignty is as violent and thorough. Private wealth interests are dictating policy to a sovereign nation, which is expressly and directly against its national interest. Ignore it at your peril. Say to yourselves, if you wish, that perhaps it will stop there. That perhaps the bailiffs will not go after Portugal and Ireland next. And then Spain and the UK. But it is already beginning to happen. This is why you cannot afford to ignore these events.
“The powers that be have suggested that there is plenty to sell. Josef Schlarmann, a senior member of Angela Merkel’s party, recently made the helpful suggestion that we should sell some of our islands to private buyers in order to pay the interest on these loans, which have been forced on us to stabilize financial institutions and a failed currency experiment. (Of course, it is not a coincidence that recent studies have shown immense reserves of natural gas under the Aegean sea).
As for the deliberate portrayal of all Greeks as lazy welfare sycophants, writes Sturdyblog: "OECD data among its members show that in 2008, Greeks worked on average 2120 hours a year – 690 hours more than the average German, 467 more than the average Brit and 366 more than the OECD average. Paid leave in Greece is on average 23 days, lower than most EU countries…"
As for the myth that the first bail-out was designed to help Greek people, but unfortunately failed: “It was not, the first bail-out was designed to stabilize and buy time for the Eurozone,” to avoid another Lehman “at a time when financial institutions were too weak to withstand it,” i.e., buying time for the Eurozone, “but it just hasn’t been working out so well for Greece…"
Demonize with myths that justify the pillage of the village.
http://sturdyblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/democracy-vs-mythology-the-ba...
What a total crock of SHIT.
Greece is NOT the victim here. They fuckin SPENT far beyond what they produced for years!
They "work" that much?? Then howcome they don't PRODUCE shit? Because they all fucking "work" for government!
Nobody forced Greece to borrow nor accede to the Eurozone.
And who exactly was responsible for the spending Trav??? I'll tell you who....the fucking Cleptocrat controlled politicians did the spending and borrowing....just like they are doing in the US and the rest of the world. Wake the fuck up Trav....the Oligarchs control those that "do the spending" in every country - that will ultimately result in the privatisation of all sovereign wealth. Gee...I wonder if those who controlled the spending decisions may have seen this coming??? Don't blame "the Greeks".
T.E.I.N. everyone
Bullshit.. Travis is correct. For the most part the productive Greeks left the country post WW2 for Australia, South Africa and the USA. Check out the success of the Greeks who left. They are entrepreneurial mother fuckers outside of Greece. The Greeks who stayed behind during the "brain drain" are for the most part very lazy who demand money for nothing from the government.
Greece was forced to destroy its agriculture and wooden fishing ships when it entered EU.
Tons of peaches and oranges were destroyed AND NOT ALLOWED TO GIVE IT TO THE PEOPLE when their amount exceeded the given by EU amount.
Greece gave up it's industrial production -it produced almost every product, even cars and cars parts- in favour of the MEGA-IMPORTERS OF THE GERMAN INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS, Siemens, German Automobile Industry etc, which in turn lend Greece with huge amounts to buy these products.
And in only 20 years Greece was transformed from a Country of Producers into a Country of Services.
The final stroke to Greece was given by the chinese products (lowest immitations of famous western brands).
The Olympic Games were over-charged at 20 billions instead of 4, or 5 billions, with useless static installations.
The greek wooden fishing ships are a piece of ART concerning their design and stability and endurance.
And the EU FORCED these famous shipyards to DESTROY the wooden ships.
And then, they had to destroy the SHIPYARD TOO!!
1. What cars did Greece produce?
2. Who forced Greece into the EU under those rules?
3. Who is keeping Greece from defaulting and withdrawing from the EU?
If the EU is screwing Greece over so badly, then GTFO
1. http://www.istorikathemata.com/2010/11/blog-post_11.html
2. it was the decision of the 2 biggest political parties
3. the 2 biggest political parties
4. revolution
@allenaki
Don't bother some people with truth. They just want to believe all Greeks are lazy motherfuckers and that's that. It fits their world view, you're not going to change it from a message board.
> Nobody forced Greece to borrow nor accede to the Eurozone.
Nobody forced the banks to lend to Greece. Why do their bidding? We would all be better served if Greece defaulted.
His point is that there are no victims. The Greeks borrowed that money and spent it on social services etc. They didn't lose any money. The bankers lost money and nobody is crying for them.
I'm dying for this MY way. 900+ underwater and EUR/USD sits at 1.4531.
I'll call bullshit. Stupid is right but I'm hanging on because everybody needs to pick a spot they call their own. I seriously don't even worry about it anymore (okay, I lied). I feel like the fish that just got hooked and I intend to keep fighting.
I'd rather lose than win if winning means joining this team.
I won't quit. I'll just die and let somebody else fight.
Ireland missing targets too
http://m.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0704/breaking54.html?via...
Τhe article of Prof. Mazower in NYT:
YESTERDAY, the whole world was watching Greece as its Parliament voted to pass a divisive package of austerity measures that could have critical ramifications for the global financial system. It may come as a surprise that this tiny tip of the Balkan Peninsula could command such attention. We usually think of Greece as the home of Plato and Pericles, its real importance lying deep in antiquity. But this is hardly the first time that to understand Europe’s future, you need to turn away from the big powers at the center of the continent and look closely at what is happening in Athens. For the past 200 years, Greece has been at the forefront of Europe’s evolution.
In the 1820s, as it waged a war of independence against the Ottoman Empire, Greece became an early symbol of escape from the prison house of empire. For philhellenes, its resurrection represented the noblest of causes. “In the great morning of the world,” Shelley wrote in “Hellas,” his poem about the country’s struggle for independence, “Freedom’s splendor burst and shone!” Victory would mean liberty’s triumph not only over the Turks but also over all those dynasts who had kept so many Europeans enslaved. Germans, Italians, Poles and Americans flocked to fight under the Greek blue and white for the sake of democracy. And within a decade, the country won its freedom.
Over the next century, the radically new combination of constitutional democracy and ethnic nationalism that Greece embodied spread across the continent, culminating in “the peace to end all peace” at the end of the First World War, when the Ottoman, Hapsburg and Russian empires disintegrated and were replaced by nation-states.
In the aftermath of the First World War, Greece again paved the way for Europe’s future. Only now it was democracy’s dark side that came to the fore. In a world of nation-states, ethnic minorities like Greece’s Muslim population and the Orthodox Christians of Asia Minor were a recipe for international instability. In the early 1920s, Greek and Turkish leaders decided to swap their minority populations, expelling some two million Christians and Muslims in the interest of national homogeneity. The Greco-Turkish population exchange was the largest such organized refugee movement in history to that point and a model that the Nazis and others would point to later for displacing peoples in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and India.
It is ironic, then, that Greece was in the vanguard of resistance to the Nazis, too. In the winter of 1940-41, it was the first country to fight back effectively against the Axis powers, humiliating Mussolini in the Greco-Italian war while the rest of Europe cheered. And many cheered again a few months later when a young left-wing resistance fighter named Manolis Glezos climbed the Acropolis one night with a friend and pulled down a swastika flag that the Germans had recently unfurled. (Almost 70 years later, Mr. Glezos would be tear-gassed by the Greek police while protesting the austerity program.) Ultimately, however, Greece succumbed to German occupation. Nazi rule brought with it political disintegration, mass starvation and, after liberation, the descent of the country into outright civil war between Communist and anti-Communist forces.
Only a few years after Hitler’s defeat, Greece found itself in the center of history again, as a front line in the cold war. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman used the intensifying civil war there to galvanize Congress behind the Truman Doctrine and his sweeping peacetime commitment of American resources to fight Communism and rebuild Europe. Suddenly elevated into a trans-Atlantic cause, Greece now stood for a very different Europe — one that had crippled itself by tearing itself apart, whose only path out of the destitution of the mid-1940s was as a junior partner with Washington. As the dollars poured in, American advisers sat in Athens telling Greek policy makers what to do and American napalm scorched the Greek mountains as the Communists were put to flight.
European political and economic integration was supposed to end the weakness and dependency of the divided continent, and here, too, Greece was an emblem of a new phase in its history. The fall of its military dictatorship in 1974 not only brought the country full membership in what would become the European Union; it also (along with the transitions in Spain and Portugal at the same time) prefigured the global democratization wave of the 1980s and ’90s, first in South America and Southeast Asia and then in Eastern Europe. And it gave the European Union the taste for enlargement and the ambition to turn itself from a small club of wealthy Western European states into a voice for the newly democratic continent as a whole, extending far to the south and east.
And now today, after the euphoria of the ’90s has faded and a new modesty sets in among the Europeans, it falls again to Greece to challenge the mandarins of the European Union and to ask what lies ahead for the continent. The European Union was supposed to shore up a fragmented Europe, to consolidate its democratic potential and to transform the continent into a force capable of competing on the global stage. It is perhaps fitting that one of Europe’s oldest and most democratic nation-states should be on the new front line, throwing all these achievements into question. For
we are all small powers now, and once again Greece is in the forefront of the fight for the future.
Mark Mazower is a professor of history at Columbia University.
Greece has already partially defaulted. For the full default...it's coming. The government is flat broke, with fiscal black-holes everywhere. The IMF knows this and so does the ECB, thankfully the rating agencies will protect the 'other' banks that didn't buy up the junk.
On FX, EUR looks like breaking the 1.45 handle...anytakers?
Exactly. And their fucking politicians wouldnt let the people default, like the Icelandic people did.
Ok, it's becoming clear that Greece needs to call one of those debt consolidation services, they can get them back on track pronto, lower their monthly interest rates and lower their payments to something reasonable.
Well what a surprise. Of course the markets won't react to this since 1) it won't make the headlines 2) there is no uncertainty involved and 3)it won't impact the bailout. Everyone already knew the greeks wouldn't make it, it's as certain as the debt ceiling being reached and raised and people care just as much.
"and conducts full day strikes on a whim"
On a whim? - seriously I think you're underplaying the penalty of austerity.
Has anyone ever empowered an overspender? What happened? Did they appreciate your efforts and reluctantly get their spending under control? Or did it get worse? If cectral bankers around the world and enabler banks understood addictions they would act far differently in regards to all these bankrupt western world countries. Although I feel for the Greeks this problem was created by them (specifically their leaders making promises they could never fulfill) and now the bill has come due. It was preventable and it was predictable under most circumstances. However it does no good to point fingers. Declare insolvency, say you were a fool and get on with it.