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Greece Gambles On "Catastrophic Armageddon" For Europe, Warns It "Only Has Weeks Of Cash Left"
One of the bigger problems facing the new, upstart Greek government, which has set before itself the lofty goal of overturning 6 years of oppressive European policies and countless generations of Greek cronyism, corruption and tax-evasion is not so much the concern about deposit outflows and bank runs - even though it most certainly will be in the next few days unless the Tsipras government finds some resolution to the dramatic standoff with Merkel and the ECB - but something far more trivial: running out of money.
Recall that two weeks into the Greek elections, Greece was rocked by a dire, if entirely underappreciated development, when its already "tax-paying challenged" population decided to completely hold off paying any taxes in advance hopes that the Tsipras government will "overturn" austerity. We wrote:
... while there will be no official confirmation whether Greece did or did not have a bank run for months, unless of course some bank keels over and dies in the interim, one thing is certain: with an increasing probability they may not have a "continuity-promoting" government in less than two weeks, Greeks tax remittances to the government, which were almost non-existent to begin with, have ground to a halt!
According to a second Kathimerini report, budget revenues have slumped over the last few days as a result of the upcoming elections and taxpayers’ uncertainty about the future: "Most taxpayers have chosen to delay their payments, given that the positions of the two main parties leading the election polls are diametrically opposite: Poll leader SYRIZA promises to cancel the ENFIA and even write off bad loans, while ruling New Democracy acknowledges the difficulties but is avoiding raising issues that would generate problems and fiscal consequences.
The dwindling state revenues will not only hamper the next government’s fiscal moves, but, given that the fiscal gap will expand, also negotiations with the country’s creditors.
The tax collection mechanism appears to be largely out of action while expired debts are swelling due to taxpayers’ wait-and-see tactics and the reduction in inspections.
So for battered, depressed Europe "austerity" really meant "taxation" - it is no surprise then why so many in peripheral Europe, who for the past 7 years have not seen any benefits from Germany's delay in reintroducing the Deutsche Mark (and keeping its export industry humming, and Deutsche Bank solvent, courtesy of the much lower Euro), hate "austerity" so much: after all there really should be no "austerity" without representation and most European voices hardly matter in a monetary "Union" where only bankers and unelected eurocrats are heard.
But going back to the main topic, namely the Greek liquidity situation, it was none other than the Eurogroup which late on Friday gave Greece a 10 day ultimatum to cede all demands and resume work under the Bailout program, or face a liquidity collapse and effective expulsion from the Eurozone. Which means suddenly Europe is engaged in the biggest bluff since 2012, as Greece and Europe both desperately try to outbluff each other that the "adversary" need it more than vice versa.
The problem is that Greece may not even have 10 days. As the WSJ reports, "Greece warned it was on course to run out of money within weeks if it doesn’t gain access to additional funds, effectively daring Germany and its other European creditors to let it fail and stumble out of the euro."
Greek Economy Minister George Stathakis said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that a recent drop in tax revenue and other government income had pushed the country’s finances to the brink of collapse.
“We will have liquidity problems in March if taxes don’t improve,” Mr. Stathakis said. “Then we’ll see how harsh Europe is.”
As we reported last month, "Government revenue has declined sharply in recent weeks, as Greeks with unpaid tax bills hold back from settling arrears, hoping the new leftist government will cut them a better deal. Many also aren’t paying an unpopular property tax that their new leaders campaigned against. Tax revenue dropped 7%, or about €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion), in December from November and likely fell by a similar percentage in January, the minister said. Other senior Greek officials said the country would have trouble paying pensions and other charges beyond February."
Said otherwise, when Yanis Varoufakis responded to Europe that "Greece already is bankrupt" he knew exactly what he was talking about.
And as the WSJ further details, this means that the infamous ultimatum on Greece may have been set by none other than Greece itself!
Greece has made no secret of its precarious financial position, but the minister’s comments suggest the country has even less time than many policy makers thought to resolve its standoff with Europe.
Eurozone officials have asked Greece to come up with a specific funding plan by Wednesday, when finance ministers have called a special meeting to discuss the country’s financial situation.
The country needs €4 billion to €5 billion to tide it over until June, by which time it hopes to negotiate a broader deal with creditors, Mr. Stathakis said, adding that he believes “logic will prevail.” If it doesn’t, he warned, Greece “will be the first country to go bankrupt over €5 billion.”
What happens then: "If the Greek government runs out of cash, the country would be forced to default on its debts and reintroduce its own currency, thus abandoning the euro. Most of the €240 billion in aid that Europe and the International Monetary Fund have pumped into the country would be lost."
Of course, Greece knows all this. The bigger question is what does a Grexit mean for Europe. Recall it was in May 2012, just around the time of the second Greek bailout, that Charles Dallara, who as head of the International Institute of Finance (IIF) spent months in Athens negotiating the largest ever sovereign debt restructuring, said that "the damage to the rest of Europe from Greece leaving the euro would be "somewhere between catastrophic and Armageddon."
"I think that it (a Greek exit) is possible, but I wouldn't call it inevitable and I wouldn't even call it likely because the costs for Greece, for Europe and for the global economy are likely each in their own way to be immense."
"The pressures on Spain, Portugal, even Italy and conceivably Ireland could be immense and the need for Europe to step up with much greater support for the banking systems would be substantial."
If that isn't enough here is what Willem Buiter predicted:
As soon as Greece has exited, we expect the markets will focus on the country or countries most likely to exit next from the euro area. Any non-captive/financially sophisticated owner of a deposit account in that country (or in those countries) will withdraw his deposits from banks in countries deemed at risk - even a small risk - of exit. Any non-captive depositor who fears a non-zero risk of the future introduction of a New Escudo, a New Punt, a New Peseta or a New Lira (to name but the most obvious candidates) would withdraw his deposits from the countries involved at the drop of a hat and deposit them in the handful of countries likely to remain in the euro area no matter what - Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland.
The funding strike and deposit run out of the periphery euro area member states (defined very broadly), would create financial havoc and mostly like cause a financial crisis followed by a deep recession in the euro area broad periphery.
...
A banking crisis in the euro area and in the EU would most likely result from an exit by Greece from the euro area. The fundamental financial and real economy linkages from the rest of the world to the euro area and the rest of the EU are strong enough to make this a global concern.
And of course, there was Carmel's presentation from the summer of 2012, comparing the costs to Germany from a Euro staying together versus falling apart:
That is precisely the gambit the Greece is playing right now: in fact, that is the only gambit it has left - one final gamble that kicking Greece out of the Eurozone will have far more devastating consequences on the Eurozone, where not only is the ever-persistent threat of deposit bank run from the periphery one flashing red headline away, but where one after another anti-European party, from Spain's Podemos to Marine Le Pen's surge in France, are ascendent and may seek to recreate the Greek example unless Germany steps in in the last minute and concedes the Greek demands.
The problem is that as Merkel understands very well, should she concede to Greece, then she would be expected to concede to Italy, and Spain, and Portugal, and Ireland, and anyone else who came knocking at her door with a loaded gun and threatening to commit suicide. The WSJ picks up on this as well:
Europe wants Athens to commit to further labor-market and other reforms as a precondition for more money. The new government is refusing, arguing that it was elected to turn back many of the painful measures Europe and other creditors have demanded of it.
Berlin worries that the eurozone would lose leverage over Athens if it gives into its request for an interim loan. Without a binding agreement from Greece to continue its reform program, officials say Germany is unlikely to back down.
Berlin, which is counting on financial pressures to force the Greek government’s hand, believes time is on Germany’s side.
And for now, it is correct: "Those pressures are being felt across Greece’s economy. Its banks lost €8 billion to €10 billion in deposits in January alone, government officials say. The banking system’s woes were exacerbated by the ECB’s decision earlier in the week to no longer accept Greek government bonds as collateral from banks seeking funds."
As Zero Hedge pointed out several times last week, both the ECB, the Eurogroup and even S&P, are no longer concerned about starting a bank run in Greece, as this would be the surest way to crush support for the new Greek government and force it to the negotiating table with its tale between its legs. Furthermore, in order to avoid giving the Greeks the satisfaction that their strong-arm policy is working, the central banks have done everything in their power to keep stock markets afloat and levitating this week, to avoid giving the impression that anyone in the world is concerned about contagion side-effects should Greece in fact exit the Eurozone. Or as we put it:
ECB leverage measured in Greek ATM lines;
Greek leverage measured inversely in the level of the Stoxx 50
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 5, 2015
This strategy may, however, backfire and result in even more support for the government which unlike its predecessors who were perceived merely as Europe's lackey muppets, refuses to concede to Merkel, which is a distinct risk for the German chancellor:
Germany’s strong-arm strategy carries substantial risk. In addition to possibly triggering Greece’s exit from the euro, it carries political overtones.
Many Europeans already view Germany as the continent’s unyielding paymaster. Refusing to compromise with Greece’s new government over a few billion euros would further cement that image and open Berlin to accusations that it is ignoring Greece’s plight and riding roughshod over the democratic process.
Such resentments could fuel Europe’s other ascendant anti-austerity movements, particularly in Spain, where the Podemos party, modeled on Greece’s governing leftists, has recently surged in the polls.
And that's the gamble in a nutshell: Greece has already bluffed with everything it has (even raising the specter that it will cooperate with Russia if Europe kicks it out, giving Putin a foothold on the continent) while Europe desperately pretends that Charles Dallara's warning from less than three years ago is no longer relevant and that a Grexit is not only neither "catastrophic" nor "Armageddon", but instead is welcome and perfectly normal.
We should know who will crack first as soon as this week, just before or during the Eurogroup emergency meeting on February 11, although Greece already appears to be regretting its liquidity shortfall threat, as Reuters reported earlier today it "will not face any cash crunch while negotiations with its euro zone partners on a new programme to roll back austerity take place, its deputy finance minister said on Saturday. "During the time span of the negotiations there is no problem (of liquidity). This does not mean that there will be a problem afterwards," Deputy Finance Minister Dimitris Mardas said on Mega TV. "Asked whether state coffers may encounter a cash crunch if talks drag on until May, the minister said he did not expect the negotiations over a new deal to last that long."
Indeed, if Greek negotiations fail, read if the bluff does not succeed, by May Greek state coffers will likely be getting funding from Beijing and or Moscow. Which then begs the question: has Greece indeed lost everything, allowing it to be finally free to do anything?
Additional reading: Game theory and euro breakup risk premium
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Aother scarey Greek story. 7 days and counting. Will it be the end of the world??? Get me a ticket for Space X. NOW!!!!!!
Oh yeah! This will make Y2K look like a breeze.
Listen, think of the birds and the bees. Will they be affected by this? No. They will not.
Who is going to be suffering more, the old ladies in Ukraine who just had their houses bombed and their pensions cut by the greedy pigs OR the Greeks who flip-off the bankers.
Yes, it will be terrible, how terrible, only time will tell...But, liquidity and expulsion, should be a must.
i'll be cheering for you greece...we here in america fare no better
matter of time
to me there's only one way out, Germany exit eu. before Greece.
agreed!
So Germany shoots the hostages before the hostages commit suicide?
Well that's kinda dark. I can see why the Germans would warm up to that idea.
no, germany re-assumes it rights to pay its own way, same as greece should, and avoid having its taxes spent by those in the Bay of PIIGS plus France.
You do realize that the only reason the Germans enjoy the standard of living that they do now is because German products are artificially cheap inside the Eurozone, you realize this right? When I was a kid going to Greece with my parents in the 70's, there was only one guy in the village that owned a Mercedes. He was the taxi driver and he drove all the way to Germany to buy the car in cash and he drove it back. He bought a Mercedes cause it was his livelihood.
Cut to 2014. Everyone in the village has a Mercedes or a BeEmVe. If the PIIGS leave the Euro or you abandon the PIIGS you think that state of affairs will continue?
experience is different for each of us...i lived in cyprus in the late 60's early 70's and every taxi (thousands of them) was a mercedes, i guess they got them the same way as you described, but they lasted 300,000 miles on one engine.
interesting how the germans don't view their own goods as cheap hey?
but...its all about debt. you can pretend you are rich if people keep lending you money and you keep spending it AND you never have to pay it back. Japan is going to hit that windshiled pretty soon and is the same state as Greece. How come nobody is bitching about that radiation filled and racist country as a failed nation state? its prospect are identical to those of greece and it is a far bigger problem. bay of PIIGS plus france are the same, social promises based on debt.
still if you believe these sorts of stats, germans pay through the noses for the lips and assholes that go into mickey d's (make it a "meal" and check out the coke ocmparison)
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?countr...
interesting also that german unfunded social liabilities are similar to those of the US, but germans don't account for them as trust funds worth around 5 trillion asin the US (with another 35 trillion in the US not accounted for, god knows what the german liabilities are since their state pension benefits are more than three times those of the US).
official german government debt, converted to dollars broke through a nice round $3 trillion in the last few days, 81% of GDP
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/germany (hit the convert to dollars button)
this is around one sixth that of the 18 trillion in US debt which is 105% of GDP...
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/unitedstates
just numbers that mean as much as a nucelar aresenal that can destory the world 10 times over v 50 times over...the common denominator in the nuclear analogy is that the world is destroyed. no country is without its faults, but fiscal and monetary systems fail everyone, and countries that claim to be superior are at best ignorant and at worst bigots.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/11/superiority-complex/...
BS, have a look at Switzerland, or the pre-€ DM-Germany, are they/were they full of starving people? No. To have a strong currency is a good thing for the people, it means buying power and investments inside the country (capital staying inside not to suffer devaluations), so a high standard of living. Germans were fine with the DM, and benefitted all together.
Ask yourself, would you export to someone you know will not be able to deliver to you something valuable to pay off its debts? No you won't. People in Germany could work 30% less without losing any standard of living, only by avoiding to export to that kind of people. Debt relief means nothing else than that! Under the french imposed €-regime, Germany was forced to export buying power, and to import inflation, that means losing the standard of living!
Germany export industry has to shrink and be replaced by internal production and consumption to reach exports = imports, so no one can live on the cost of the other.
that's like the sinking ship abandoning the rat
To stop the hyperinflation, Schacht allowed rentenmarks to be printed. They were backed by nothing, but he promised that volume would be controlled, they could only circulate in German economy, and were forbidden from foreign exchange.
Island of Guernsey had no British pounds, but plenty of Labor available. They issued their own currency to rebuild crumbling infrastructure and put people to work.
Lincoln's Greenbacks were limited in issue, and were not promises to pay something later. They were in themselves money that people used. Congressmen Spaulding of Buffalo New York knew that banks did not have enough metal money to make their credit, yet they were plying their confidence game. Spaulding's bill was backed by Senator Howe of Wisconsin, and in subsequent debates, won the view that paper currencies were irredeemable in metal always and it was time to dispense with fiction. They knew the bankers were promulgating a fiction in order to win usury and have debts on society. It is important to note that Lincoln and Secretary Chase were against the Greenbacks initially.
It's the same in Greece. The debts are outside of Greek law, and it is fiction to say that onerous debts should be paid.
All sovereign countries should have their own money. Since money is law, then it should not extend past a nations boundaries. One cannot easily jubilee debt instruments when they are tangled behind another nations border.
Trade between nations is barter, and that barter can be marked with a Bancor.
The sooner we can get past banker magick, which in turn is subordinated to Kaballah and Zohar mystery religion; kept in place with secret murders, secret societies, and manipulations via money power - the sooner humanity can evolve to its higher self.
The worst elements of humanity should not be in control of money power.
www.sovereignmoney.eu
Yup, exit the EU.
Then Greece can deal with "countless generations of Greek cronyism, corruption and tax-evasion".
Good luck with that.
BTW 6-8 million Jewish people were murdered by the NAZI's, I know this for a FACT (I am not Jewish), but my uncle was fighting the war over there, and saw them firsthand...you lying piece of scum!
That's interesting. My great uncle was in the 442 and walked across Germany liberating the work camps.
He has a different story. When discussing Jews he mostly scoffed and noted that many other peoples were also in the camps.
Most of the Jews in the work camps starved due to America bombing the shit out of Germany at the end of the war. Trains and food stuffs stopped transit, and there was general break down.
Since then revisionist historians have combed the actual records and a very different story is emerging. These are inconvenient facts, but facts nevertheless.
In light of a tsunami of evidence coming out today, most of it court admissable, it is those who are maintaining holocaustianity myths who are either lying scum, or are brainwashed. The real truth matters even if it is uncomfortable.
Based on census records taken before and after the war, about 350,000 Jews died in WW2.
That's a lot of Jews, but it sure ain't 6 million.
An effective holocaust denier, too?
You are, without question, the dumbest man alive.
buck, that IS sarcasm right?
this kind of free speech could lead to jail in germany ...
im not allowed to even THINK about that
:]
oh im so guilty, i should accept that EUDSSR
pay back the guilt
Since it is not sarcasm, I must conclude you are one of the biggest liars i've ever come across! Buckie, to deny what happened in that horrific time period, with all of the evidence, and people still alive that saw it...I am speechless and ashamed for you.
go seek out a WWII vet, then seek medical attention...
this also goes for all the people who down arrowed me, and up arrowed buckie
there were 9 million Jews in Europe before the war, according to census...so you have no idea what you're even talking about, and I will tell you they didn't just murder German Jews
My father was the most honest man I have ever known. He told me he was one of the soldiers that made sure the German towns people walked by the skeletal bodies of the Jews killed just outside there towns. He would not say much about the war but did tell me that. All the Holocaust deniers can kiss my ass and are some sick sons of bitches.
Thank you for your honesty, and willingness to speak up. ZH is a good financial site and some fine minds, but when it comes to geopolitics and history, some of the comments here are unreal.
US history text books always refer to six millions jews killed in the holocaust. They conveniently forget about the 7 million other untermensch who were also snuffed out but weren't Jewish. No mention at the end of Schndler's List either.
you mean that pictures, war trial evidence, gold fillings melted down, actual footage of das chue and xyklon b and other such stories are a fabrication, as are the stories of living survivors, prison guards and nazi records from Sobibor, Auschwitz, Berkenau, Treblinks etc etc?
http://go.fold3.com/holocaust_records/
someone is an insult to the intelligence of the human race and mentally deranged..
Work will set you free you godless reprobate.
Just like it says on the gates of hell.
I was personally acquainted with some Sephardic Jewish survivors of the Nazi death camps. They survived by their ability to play beautiful music. I was told these things by others or by overhearing their open conversations, not by eavesdropping. I didn't feel I had any business opening up such horrendous survivor memories. I couldn't see myself asking them, "Why did you out of hundreds and hundreds of your friends and relatives and neighbors from _______ all die, yet you lived?"
I knew several survivors of Japanese Prisoner of War camps one of whom was a good friend. It's really difficult to imagine the horrors involved in their day-to-day survival and how desperate they all were for anything even resembling food. My friend was imprisoned on Java, in the Dutch East Indies. He said that at the end of the war there was nothing left alive within the barbed wire enclosing his camp, well, excepting for very skeletal people and guards. There was nothing growing; nothing moving or crawling; nothing flying that could be caught. We worked together at the same globally-significant aerospace company in the Pacific Northwest. We always made sure to keep him out of any meetings with customers from Japan. He said, there are some things you can never forget. They call it PTSD now.
Half of my first wife's family, had all lived in Europe, and died during WW II. The SS Einsatzgruppen were established and trained well before the invasion of the Soviet Union to follow the frontline German Heer (Army) Blitzkrieg forces, beginning in June 1941, rounding up all of the Jews that they could find and executing them. Because from the very beginning, the new lands targeted for conquest, that were to provide "Lebensraum", that is living room for Germans, were going to be Juden Frei, that is completely Free of Jews.
Don't peddle your crap about inability to provide food to work camps because of American bombing. The Germans began exterminating human beings solely based on religion before America even entered WW II! Based on Margaret Sanger's beliefs, founder of Planned Parenthood in the United States, the Germans began executing defective humans whom had no hope for a quality of life as, say an SS Einsatzgruppen Fuhrer or as a Concentration Camp Guard, something positively contributing to the State. Of course, in a miracle Margaret Sanger's most damaging, er, I mean evidence of collaboration with the Nazi extermination programs, oops, I mean…well, her papers were apparently burned. Imagine that happening here? And Planned Parenthood is still going strong trying to limit undesirables birth rates. Just amazing.
Now there is new, widespread genocide occurring in the Middle East. Sunni Muslims are murdering Shia Muslims, Christians, and other religious groups based on the tenets of Islamic Jihad in the Koran. Yet our supreme leader, who should henceforth be referred to as the AOTUS—Ayatollah Of The United States, Ayatollah Hussein Obama— based on his actions or inactions, cannot even allow himself to say the name of the group behind the genocide in the Middle East, Nigeria, and elsewhere: the Islamic State of Israel and the Levant(I can't keep up with the permutations of their name. Though I think they are all under the umbrella of the Muslim Brotherhood?). Yet, he'll go back as far as the year 1100 to specifically excoriate Christians, for trying to regain the Christian Holy Lands during the Crusades, which were earlier conquered by Islamic forces.
The AOTUS excoriates American Christians but refuses to acknowledge the predominant white, Christian Churches behind the anti-slavery movements and the Civil Rights movements.
I, for one, impeach the AOTUS:
• for a multitude of high crimes and misdemeanors;
• for working to divide Americans by race, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, etc.;
• for Unconstitutional acts such as making Law by Executive fiat;
• most probably for using the National Security organs of the State to spy on, gather damaging information on and then blackmail political opponents;
• for killing American citizens without charges, opportunity to face their accusers, without a lawyer, judge or jury in a trial;
• for refusing to equally uphold and enforce the Laws of the United States as in allowing political friends owing millions upon millions in back taxes and penalties, indeed allowing them dozens of meetings in the White House, whereas others individuals have been repeatedly harassed by the IRS;
• for using organs of the State to prosecute political enemies and to reward political friends;
• for ongoing multiple illegal actions and illegal inactions;
• for egregious, multiple lies with serious, material effects on nearly every American to the extent that nothing he says, and nothing communicated by his administration's organs of propaganda can be believed, destroying his legitimacy and the legitimacy of his administration;
• for his failure to do anything to address the Veterans Administration's problems qualifying and providing qualified veterans with promised medical care and other forms of assistance, yet making a top priority to illegally import tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children, some of whom have serious communicable diseases, emphasizing providing drugs to illegal immigrant transgendered individuals, even as veterans are dying from lack of care. [I personally know one veteran who has been waiting five years for VA and/or Social Security Disability benefits. Yet, because the VA operates on a paperwork system, they cannot even give him the tiniest level of status on his claim. He lives in an apartment maybe one-half of a mile from the VA hospital and the local, North-central Florida town's police force seems to delight in harassing veterans on their way to or from the VA hospital.];
• for illegally sending his campaign team to Israel to interfere in Israel's internal politics by trying to defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu;
• for undermining our allies in the Middle East (Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq, etc.) to the advantage of Iran, whose Mullahs have sworn to use nuclear weapons to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, undoubtably sparking a general nuclear exchange involving regional and superpowers;
• for withdrawing all US forces from Iraq which were providing critical advisory and support and training to the nascent Iraqi army. Without the support of these thousands of Americans, the Iraqi army lost confidence in their leaders and fell apart, abandoning their weapons on the battlefield for ISIS to acquire including the premier tank in the world, the M1A1. In addition, he is forcing the US Air Force to retire the world's premier tank buster, the A-10. At a minimum USAF forces should be destroying ISIS-held M1A1 tanks unless ISIS has already agreed to return them including payments for ordnance used and wear and tear. If ISIS uses these tanks to overrun Saudi Arabian defenses the entire Western world including much of the Asian world will be held hostage because of Saudi Arabia's vast oil reservoirs of easily recovered oil (~63% of known world reserves);
• interference in the internal political affairs of Ukraine, a country formerly part of the USSR and having a significant Russian population and holding industries strategically important to Russia within its borders, sparking a revolution against a legally elected government, an act akin to Russia meddling in Canada, bankrolling a Russian-friendly government that begins targeting Americans as enemies of the State;
• the AOTUS Administration exhibits a complete lack of understanding of legitimate, strategic US, Chinese and Russian interests and a corporate psychology bordering on the psychopathic insane to the extent that AOTUS openly discusses the desirability of avoiding war with Russia over Ukraine, something not even Jimmy Carter would have been crazy enough to talk about;
Henceforth, I refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the AOTUS or LPOTUS as the leader of the United States of America. This is definitely not a call to violence. It is a call to the people of the United States and to the United States House of Representatives to impeach this insane man and for the Senate of the United States of America to convict him. I can't imagine that Joe Biden on his worst day could prove as bad as AOTUS.
(by the way
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis)The original name for the group in Arabic was Al-Dawla Al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. The first three words translate to the Islamic State of Iraq while “al-Sham” refers to Syria or an undefined region around Syria.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil)Sep 14, 2014)
...The AOTUS excoriates American Christians but refuses to acknowledge the predominant white, Christian Churches behind the anti-slavery movements and the Civil Rights movements...
Your ethnically slanted rant against Potus is a distortion of history. I won't take you to account on your geopolitical opinions but your debasement of History is something that needs to be contested. (I know you try and absolve yourself from that "sin" by proclaiming your adherence to the Shoah's reality and how your personal family thread can confirm that reality. But your self absolution of your ethnic impartiality is subsequently contradicted by what you write to make your ethnic bias stick against this "moslem" inclined Potus.
My only take against your line of reasoning is your manipulation of History, so here goes :
1° The Holy Land was never Christian. It was jewish and Roman, then moslem. The Byzantines contested and fought the Sassanid encroachments therein under Zorastrian Khusro, during a "crusader" zeal period going from Justinian to Heraclius. But their claims on the whole were about conquest as part of the old Persia vs Greece thread, not about RELIGIOUSLY orientated clash of civilization. This is evident from the writing of Anna Comnenos in her Alexiad, epochal recital about her father's period of the first Crusade which gives much information on Byzantine culture and attitudes since its inception. She extolls Greek sense of honour and intelligence and "demonizes" the barbarian; so called "crusading" Norman Frank; more than the Moslem enemy; in her heirarchy of cultural antithesis to her Hellenic ideal.
Neither with Zorastrian Persia nor with its successor, Arab Islam, was religion a problem for them. Wars were fought for territory and wealth against races with other cultural/belief systems. Period.
2° Clash of civilzation was NOT an issue in the Arab invasion of Iberia in 700. The ruling Visigoths were Arians and Catholic religion only came to Spain in the 8-9th century under Charlemagne's very limited incursion, as he chased the Arabs from Frankish domains. The Spanish kings of Leon, Castille, Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia in those days considered the Omeyyad kingdom of Andalusia as Spanish as themselves and Islam a religion like Arianism. In fact the original Iberian culture was "Mozarab" a syncretic culture as the Arabs were much more culturally civilized and advanced.
Its only when the Berber moslem invasions of the Almoravid began that the kings of Iberia went to clash of civilization. It corresponded to the period of ascendant Catholic intolerance (Gregorian reforms, Great schism and contestation of Holy Roman Emperor's Temporal power-- Canossa incident--as well, centralisation of collect of monies under the Episcopal system which made the Church very rich).
So the Catholic church went POLITICAL bigtime. And catholic intolerance SPIKED.
The First Crusade's massacres of Jerusalem's whole population (old, young, jew and moslem) was a crime that even shocked the Byzantine ally of the Frankish invader. The colonial conquest motive predominated under the guise of the Cross and clash of civilization mantra of "God wills it".
Remember the Dissemination of Christianty in Saxon lands under Charlemagne was just as brutal. It was "baptism or death" ! And many died all the way to Vienna !
Bernard of Clairvaux spouted his "soldier monk" perversion of the evangelical teachings and created the "reformist" scholastic knee jerk of Abelard and Arnold of Brescia against the Church's perversion of the original message of Savior, now a church that had become a POLITICAL MATRIX with an Inquisition.
The scarlet trace of the Catholic church's intolerance towards any form of christian reform is highlighted by the ruthless and summary treatment meted out to the Cathars of France; a whole civilization and language was destroyed 'cos GOD willed it even in Christian LAnds. And I won't bore you with the the tales of the 4th Crusade that "crucified" Constantinople under Frankish and Venetian ire and GREED.
As for the Catholic church's attitude to the Amerindian populations enslaved by the COnquistadors, all you have to do is read the papal bull Inter Caetera 1493 to understand in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS how the church propagated the "baptism or death" meme to serve the cause of the Catholic Kings of Spain, now lords of the New World.
So when you pontify about History and clash of civilization being the "other guy", the musli, and how the western elites have become tolerant since then, remember that road was PAVED with the blood of people who fought the catholic and Anglican or Protestant churches to create a secular culture that we enjoy today under the neutral mantra of enlightenment.
Western History is a bitch that has a chronology since Thucydide invented it based on FACT not legend and obscurantist fiction. And that is the best time line to understand Causality. We all recognise that.
You trangress that rule at your own risk.
"My great uncle was in the 442 and walked across Germany liberating the work camps."
Assuming that you are referring to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, your uncle would have been part of the 522nd Field Artillery Batallion which was actually detached from the 442nd at the time the 522nd was in Germany. The experience of the 522nd was limited to Dachau and is still somewhat controversial.
"Holocaust historians conclude that the Nisei liberated Kaufering IV Hurlach. This camp housed about 3,000 prisoners. Hurlach was one of 169 subordinate slave labor camps of Dachau. Dachau, like Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Mathausen and Ravensbruck, was surrounded by hundreds of sub-camps. In Germany alone, there were 956 sub-camps."
http://www.goforbroke.org/history/history_historical_campaigns_central.php
I have great respect for the 442nd and what they accomplished in WWII. I Also have great respect for the Jewish next door neighbor I had while growing up. He was a decorated marine who made the landing at Tarawa.
so mefobills, you are another shameless liar and thief of life, I pity you as well as your lying ass uncle
And it's about time, too. When a nation runs out of food prisoners and poor are last in line to be fed. That's the only reason the work camp residents were skinny during the final few weeks. Had the camps been reached a few months earlier there wouldn't have been any of those convenient propaganda pictures of underfed workers. About half of the tales of ill treatment have been proven to be nonsense, and in time the full truth will be in the open and we'll all know it was all gross exaggeration, a cover for the many hideous Allied war crimes.
"The country needs €4 billion to €5 billion to tide it over until June..."
The Fed prints that much money every day to pump up the US markets. Makes me think that the US is in a lot worse shape than I previously imagined.
My dad was on the first ship into Nagasaki after it was bombed.
He never talked about it. I found out from my sister after he died.
Funny, you never hear the Japanese talk about that. I guess they talk about it among themselves and are too polite or traumatized to mention it to Americans.
But I was in Paris one day and these sirens went off. Everyone stopped as this little tiny car came into view and this little old lady emerged from the car and walked up the steps into this building. Someone told me that it was the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and she was the last survivior. You could have heard a pin drop on that street.
Of all the horrors that humans have done to fellow humans, that one has certainly remained front and center. I wonder to whose benefit that might be...following the money and all...
My dad was on the first ship into Nagasaki after it was bombed.
He never talked about it. I found out from my sister after he died.
Funny, you never hear the Japanese talk about that. I guess they talk about it among themselves and are too polite or traumatized to mention it to Americans.
But I was in Paris one day and these sirens went off. Everyone stopped as this little tiny car came into view and this little old lady emerged from the car and walked up the steps into this building. Someone told me that it was the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and she was the last survivior. You could have heard a pin drop on that street.
Of all the horrors that humans have done to fellow humans, that one has certainly remained front and center. I wonder to whose benefit that might be...following the money and all...
http://www.fg.gov.ua/news/
The Finance Ministry denies the possibility of nationalization of Bank deposits of citizens of Ukraine in the case of the introduction of martial lawhttp://www.rbcua.com/rus/minfin-otritsaet-vozmozhnost-natsionalizatsii-b...
http://gazeta.zn.ua/finances/strizhka-po-osobomu-_.html
https://z5h64q92x9.net/proxy_u/uk-en.en/gazeta.zn.ua/finances/strizhka-p...
USE Google translate or similar; very interesting articles
There's a bigger issue here that keeps popping into my brain. I think the world is suffering from "over" employment right now. In the US the only job growth is in sectors that require some level of manual labor, mostly service and farm jobs. Coincidentally, these are also areas where employers can pay a realistically low wage and no benefits. These are the only jobs where it doesn't yet make financial sense to automate, but it will come. Almost every other job is redundant all the way from bank tellers, to stockbrokers to CEOs and especially politicians. Even robots are made by other robots and huge chunks of software can be automatically generated. Moving forward, the countries that are going to be worst impacted are those with bigger populations. Which is why I think Iceland was so quickly able to recover when they fucked off the bankers. The US government employs 15 times the population of Iceland and many millions of other jobs rely on the government's largesse. Even the US prison population is five times bigger than Iceland's population. Greece falls in the middle somewhere with 11 million people and with an economy that can draw huge numbers of tourists in, they may actually have some chance of succeeding. Or at least doing better than the current established powers.
mijev - Maybe a lot of the fear mongering is the people who would be most affected, i.e., the bankers and government officials.
Frankly, I find a world without Obamacare, property tax, income tax, licenses for everything from driving to using the library, border patrol, airport security, coast guard, and the thousands of other policing entities really liberating. Bring it on!
yep, it's just a thought that's been recurring every time I read comments about dem vs republicans, socialists, commies et al. I think there is a big reset coming which will make those terms obsolete. Iceland sounds like nirvana on paper. 330,000 population , GDP of $14B+, universal healthcare and free tertiary education. Not to mention (relatively) free markets. Along with Singapore which has a similar set of demographics, would you brand them as socialists or capitalists? Beats me but neither sounds like a bad place to live right now.
The BoG is still allowed to print its own euros (digital and notes) under the ELA, for now. They could lose ELA authorization when the current "agreement" ends on 28Feb15. But, if they still have ink and bits who can tell the difference between a Greek euro and anyone else's?
All euro notes are marked with an identifier for the issuing country, so you can tell the difference. But that also means Greece doesn't need to revert to the drachma, they can just go on printing Greek euros. (Like lots of countries denominate their currency in dollars.)
Obviously the Greek euro would be worth a lot less than an EZ euro, but it would cause consternation for the ECB. Greek euros circulating in Europe would immediately lose value and people might start to value euros differently depending on the currency of issue, effectively reintroducing distinct currencies from the various EZ countries.
bazza, a very good observation +100
"greek euros circulating in Europe would immediately lose value and people might start to value euros differently depending on the currency of issue, effectively reintroducing distinct currencies from the various EZ countries."
Maybe the Greeks should start printing German Euros.
Greece should round up some bankers, throw them in jail (ala Iceland), and wait to see if any of the people of the EU are willing to go to war and fight and die for any of those pricks. Of course not, shrug. It's just a good start. Molon Labe.
Russia is becoming a key player in the Grexit Crisis.
Greece's new government refuses to continue the Extend and Pretend game that the ECB/EC/IMF Troika has been using to paper over the fact that the EU has been in serious financial straits since it caught contagion from the US 2008 meltdown. The PIIGS are bankrupt, and many other EU nations are seriously underwater (UK, France, Netherlands, ...)
The Greek "bailout" saved the German, French, and UK banks that had lent foolishly to fuel the bubble prosperity of the PIIGS in the early 2000s. Those banks, in 2009 and 2010, held $Billions in impaired PIIGS Sovereign Bonds and IOUs from banks in the PIIGS, and faced bankruptcy as a result. In the Greek "bailout", Greece was given emergency funds to survive, but the Troika used most of the bailout funds to buy the bonds and IOUs from the German, French and UK banks, and the Greek Treasury ended up owing for everything. IMF austerity and privatization rules were part of the bailout package, so Greece had to cut back social spending and give budget priority to payments to the Troika. The Greek economy went into depression (like Ireland and Spain under austerity) with about 60% youth unemployment, about 35% overall unemployment, homelessness and suicides, and general poverty and misery.
Under Extend and Pretend, the Greek government got regular further loans from the Troika so Greece could meet its loan payments to the Troika and the Greek debt to the Troika kept rising.
Austerity, for some reason, was not popular with the Greeks living in misery. So they voted for Syriza, the party that promised to renegotiate the bailout debt and end austerity. Syriza has now committed the cardinal sin of refusing to continue Extend and Pretend. The Troika has issued an ultimatum: " Ask for more money by February 16 or we will not lend you any more money". HUH?
If Syriza does not back down and accept more loan money from the Troika, it will default on its bond debts as they come due. Such default will not only destroy value of Greek sovereign bonds and Greek bank bonds, but may trigger $Trillions in derivatives obligations and cause earthquakes in financial markets worldwide. The Troika is panicking. Its whole financial house of cards may collapse and the public's illusion about the Troika having kept the EU economy healthy will be exposed as a delusion. Not good. Upsetting, even. People might lose faith in their local banks as safe havens for their money.
Worse, if Syriza wins a restructuring of its debts and easing of austerity from the Troika, voters in the other PIIGS will be emboldened to demand the same. But if Greece defaults and leaves the Euro Zone or leaves the EU, other PIIGS nations may follow. Either way, the Troika is at major risk, and the Euro may fail and the EU start to lose members.
Russia has been suffering under the trade and financial sanctions imposed by the EU, and suffering from moves made by the EU to counter Russia's monopoly on natural gas deliveries to eastern Europe (see Third Energy Package (3rd EP)). Putin has been busy positioning Russia to counter the EU. The Euopean Commission granted itself powers under the 3rdEP to take control of Gazprom's pipelines in EU states and force Gazprom to share use and profits of the lines with EC cronies. The 3rdEP would also cement the EC as having sole authority to negotiate gas deals with Gazprom, increasing the EC's bureaucratic reach. The 3rdEP was used to block the South Stream gas pipeline project unless Gazprom and Russia folded to EC demands on ownership, control, use, profits, and prices.
First, Russia cancelled the South Stream gas project for delivery of gas through Bulgaria to a distribution hub in Austria, then redirected South Stream to Turkey and onward to the Turkey/Greece border. Then Russia told the EU that if it wanted Russian gas for southern Europe, get it from the Turkey/Greece hub because we are going to shut off the Ukraine gas pipelines as soon as Turk Stream is up and running.
The US and EU had planned to replace the Russian gas monopoly by bringing gas from the Middle East and Central Asia via Syria and Turkey, but their plans have not gone well. Turkey's Erdogan, as the new energy czar for southern Europe, has been emboldened to tell the EU that Turkey does not need EU membership after all and is not too happy about being in NATO either. Turkey made noises about redirecting its economic focus east to the Eurasian Economic Union. The EC and NATO headquarters are not happy.
Then Putin got really cheeky and told Greece to leave the EU and join the Eurasian Economic Union. Putin also indicated that Russia might lend money to Greece to tide it over its exit from the EU.
In the midst of this, Merkel of Germany and Hollande of France flew to Moscow on Friday Feb.6, ostensibly to seek a settlement of the Ukraine civil war, but surely they must have Grexit and Russia's position as possible enabler of Grexit on their minds. Putin may be in a position to: (a) force Ukraine to give up on Crimea and cease attempts to put down the rebellions in east Ukraine; (b) force the EU to drop its sanctions and financial war against Russia, and make nice to Russia and Gazprom over gas deliveries and gas prices; and (c) force the EU to prevent NATO from having any presence in Ukraine.
A conference call among Putin, Merkel, Hollande, and Kiev's Poroshenko is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 7. Stay tuned, folks.
Fascinating games afoot.
The Bankers are actually saying: "You had better go even further in debt to us (and keep paying us blood money back) or we will cut you off!"
let them starve...a blackmailer if you give in to them once will keep coming back until they have everything. What a bunch of shameless disgusting lying deadbeats. Why the hell should the rest of europe pay for greek gov workers free 13th month of salary when the greeks themselves refuse to pay their own taxes...fk them and the high horse they rode in on.
Somebody should have thought of that before the Eurozone came into being.
Portugal and Ireland are both coming out and starting to grow again after extensive reforms and quiet hard work...it's always been greece the outlier, the country that lied to get in, lied to get loans, lied to get the bailout...fk greece, if they dont want to save themselves let them starve, enough is enough. EU will be stronger without these lying shameless beggars.
Deutschland über alles!
http://youtu.be/mZ8zUcg_Lks
Oh aye, Ireland's doing just fine, as long as you ignore emigration still at pre-Wall GDR rates. (The Irish continue to be replaced by Third Worlders. Brazilians seem to like Ireland for some reason.)
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/emigration-of-irish-nation...
"We'll take the niggers and the chinks, but we don't want the Irish".
72 Hours after the Greeks find out what the Icelandic people found out....that default is OK the American banking nightmare will begin.....
"Greece has already bluffed with everything it has". I thought ZH realized better than that.
The new Greek government understands compared to the situation Germany and the ECB want continued, Greece is better out of the EZ, defaulting big time on its debts, and with no more control by the troika.
Maybe they can extract some better outcome from Germany and the ECB through the current process, but they aren't bluffing about stopping the ongoing pillaging of Greece.
If they leave the EU can have an army like the US once had. At least they'll have plenty of German submarines.
You can believe me or not but my father in law is FSB. U.S. supplied arms have been entering western Ukraine and are being sold to Syria.(Isis) I have no reason to doubt him. So basically from what I can tell is that the U.S, is arming ISIS. So there you go, that is your report from Russia directly.
.
Thanks for this additional perspective. It fits in with a lot of the various sightings of the Ukranian Antonov AN-124.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/02/03/american-lethal-militar...
Soros: I've been ordered to get that pipeline. Assad must go!
Valerie: I'll have McCain contact the jihad joes over there and see what we can do. Then I'll have my stooge make a speech."
Achmed, "yes, senator, we are moderates. We dont do any head chopping an' stuff. We'll help out for some Ferns."
McCain: "You guys are great."
Later
Achmed: "The old goat fell for it! Haha, now we can go full retard!"
Fighters: "Alan's Snack Bar!"
Socialist have an excellent track record of turning economies around.
ha ha...made me laugh..still any political system where people are happy not trying to cheat each other actually does work, trouble is, people just love to lie, cheat and steal in varying proportions of the population.
questions when does the state stop and the community start and isn't the Us already a socialist federation? it sure as hell aint based on the free market.
so·cial·ism ?s?SH??liz?m/ noun noun: socialism a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. cap·i·tal·ism ?kap?dl?iz?m/ noun noun: capitalism an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. com·mu·nism ?kämy??niz?m/ noun noun: communism; noun: Communism; plural noun: CommunismsIslamoCommunism
An invention of Barry Soetero, Intl. Man of Mystery,
Evrerone is under a communist regime and islam.
Let's face it: everyone's broke. The 'kids' are simply going through the motions until a grown-up blows the whistle and tells everyone to get out of the pool.
The whole charade is ridiculous.
Gold, Bit-Chez!
Tough call.
Maybe half-in Gold and helf-in Shorts.
If the Shorts zoom higher then eventually sell (*if allowed*) and buy Gold and Silver (CEF, and physical).
If Gold starts zooming higher and the Shorts don't, at some point sell shorts in fiat and get the Gold and Silver.
Dup.
“We will have liquidity problems in March if taxes don’t improve,” Mr. Stathakis said. “Then we’ll see how harsh Europe is."
Russia should have that new Greek naval base open by March.
Just Grexit Greece.
Get your sovereignty, independence and dignity back.
And start the breaking of the chains holding 500,000,000 people in little more than a mass internment camp.
Ok some want to stay - the eastern Europeans gouging on western Europe's often free houses, free health care and benefits.
But many of us want out out out.
Greeks love fisting - mostly themselves
Bath House will definitely offer to Back them up!
It is lack of money that usually hands control to bankers.
World War 1 was a great opportunity for US bankers to gain control over politicians in the US and Europe and make lots of money.
In this case the new politicians in Greece are a new breed they are not a rich part of the establishment and do not have old money fortunes to preserve.
They are probably not heavily invested in stocks and shares.
The leader actually lives in a flat in a working class area of Athens, money is not his God.
They just might see the shock treatment of default as the thing that will shake the Greek people out of their walking nightmare.
Syriza supporters are not rich and will not have much to loose, the countries oligarchs will loose plenty.
This is the Greek financial minister taking to Max Keiser some time ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwAClUrhrek
Is is even more illuminating now.
Prepare for default, it is part of the plan.
"When people have nothing to lose, they lose it."
-Celente
Debt free here. Peace.
Varoufakis on quasi-currencies not controlled by ECB
Varoufakis on what GreXit means for Europe and RoW:
"those of us who loathe the Euro the most have the greatest moral imperative to save it"
Varoufakis on IMF alliances and national investment banks
"oppressive European policies"
Did EU or Greek goverment voted in by greeks spend too much and than choose to take loan? Or was it EU that knocked to greek doors and forced them to take loan?
It was the greeks who needed money and came to EU to ask for it: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/05/02/us-eurozone-idUSTRE6400PJ20100502
Forgetting to blame Putin?
No potato for you today.
+100
are you implying that the likes of Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, and others had no role in the bailout programme?
and now that these banks have dumped their greek bonds onto the ECB's balance sheet, everyone wants to throw greece to the wolves?
sounds like human psychopathy at its finest...
the unelected bankers/FMs took over and "accepted" the money-and took most of it you douche
Germany may have set a very dangerous precedent by insisting the sovereign bail out the banks in every case
If Deutsche comes calling for their derivative losses in the case of a GRExIT, Angela might not want to see the bill
Why, lo and behold!
Here's the answer for Greece right here:
https://oathkeepers.org/oktester/washington-state-patriots-preparing-to-...
Extra credit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xe5cQDIbMs
update
http://www.theolympian.com/2015/02/07/3566110/gun-rights-advocates-rally...
CUT EXPENSES
CUT PROGRAMS
CUT PAYCHECKS
Greece doesn't ACTUALLY have a big problem. They, and virtually everyone else just pretend they have a problem.
My entire life I've wanted things, but not bought them. Why? Because I didn't have the money. If "government" is to exist at all, they can do the same.
SIMPLE.
The FACT of the matter is, an ENORMOUS percentage of what "governments" do is flat out NOT NECESSARY. Window dressing. Furthermore, many things governments spend money on, interested "citizens" would do for free. Can't pay the library staff? Wanna bet they can't find people who care about libraries to take over running of libraries? And so forth.
They can also reduce paychecks. The workers don't like that? Tough turkey. Nobody likes having less money than they want to have. Let them complain. Let them strike. Tell the people, "we don't have enough money to collect garbage, so hire your own companies, cuz we don't do that any more after next month". End of expense.
This notion that governments CANNOT operate with ever-expanded debt is A LIE. Furthermore, if it was true, that would be a great reasons to declare government dissolved.
If Greece 100% defaults on all loans, they absolutely can operate on whatever tax revenues they get.
Don't believe that? Fine, then implement the MUCH BETTER MODEL, namely "government by subscription". No need to cancel any "beloved" government services, just make them "available by subscription". Charge whatever is required to provide the service. Charge too much... people will buy that service from private vendors.
It is pitiful to watch grown sentient beings get so hysterical over things so simple and so obvious. Give it a rest. Get real. Default... 100%. Then provide services by subscription. What will happen next will blow most people away... the entire freaking nation will become so efficient in one or two years that they'll have to nuke the place to prevent people in other nations from realizing what a burden involuntary (non-subscription) government is.
Effectively pay only for those services you need and CUT THE REST makes for the most efficient government.
Add trhis bit to make even better.
All government purchases oif any kind must be publicly tendered in a publication so that all citizens not just large corps. can supply. The winning tender is declared publicly so competitiors can challenge government if they choose via bribes a dearer tender than theirs. CUTS OUT THE FRAUD / CORRUPTION as it is now public.
How are you going to pay taxes when you don't have a job or money. That is pie in the sky talk. I hate all forms of oppressive govt! There is no utopia my dear, NONE!
When Capitalism was subverted by Democratic Socialism, Amerika became a banana republic, as to Europe, they are ALL Socialists, just look at them fight themselves into the grave!
bah
quite logical and i think spock would agree with this... :)
Proven than all process of annexation part of Ukraine - Crimea - was illegit. Contract signed by Putin and so called "representatives" of Crimea is ilegit because those "representatives" where illegit and whole referendum was illegit:
RUS: http://youtu.be/vAWpwRXmxP4
please dont bore us with your uninformed, hysterical opinions... (look up the root word Hyster if you need to)
Shyster: Female Jewish attorney ?
dreadnaught, you are one for the ages! It is you that is uninformed, Russia does hegemony just like every other country with corrupt govts. You would do well to educate yourself, because it is you that is a bore! Hysterical indeed.
First cab of the rank - only so far all this can kicking can go, But it is only money so we'll wait and see if the EU can handle reality,
What you sow you then reap.
Its time for Europe and Pax Americana to face the financial music.
As we hear the sound of jack boots in Ukraine, we know this only the beginning of the pain and Sarajevo 1914 points its ugly nose on the Spanish Main from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of >Tripoli.
A continent from the Cape to Cairo suffering from commodity rape and destruction of nation-state; with a Boko Haram playing at planet of the Apes; all with the negligent predatory will of Oligarchy capitalism which prefers to look the other way and continues to suck the blood of backward nations with the complicity of corrupt surrogates whose only ambition is to stash their wealth in Swiss or Cayman buccaneer lands.
All the while they rampage the wealth of their impoverished countrymen for the generations to come.
Now the first world awash in debt and using the slave labour arbitrage meme only has to offer the people of Greece and elsewhere the choice to align themselves with the wages of slavery in Bengladesh and face the tsunami of dystopian destruction this entails to the entire planet.
These guys have out-done Charles V and his genocidal conquistadors in their ongoing hubris.
you don't seem very optimistic about this...
And the walls kept tumbling down
In the city that we love
Great clouds roll over the hills
Bringing darkness from above
But if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
Nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes,
Does it almost feel like
You've been here before?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
Beautiful (but scary) writing!
Prinzip empties his pistol in Sarajevo .... and 10 million Euro-lemmings commit fratricide .... no wonder the Muslims .... are encouraged .... they like the taste of LEVERAGE !
How about Washington?? Just imagine the threat of a Russian naval base on one of the Greek islands. Since there is apparently not much love lost between Putin and Erdogan it would be a win-win for Greece.
Thats why Obama is suddenly so sympathetic for the Greek people...
Bath House: "I stand ready with pen and phone to Back in to Greece and Back them up."
most ZHers are clueless about the Varoufakis narrative in context of the Subversive Festival
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversive_Festival
and there's plenty more:
Alexis Tsipras & Slavoj Žižek /// The Role of the European Left ||| 15th May 2013https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUh96oXYt18
nation-state, anarcho-syndicalism coming to periphery Europe?
I want to see a fight between the Greek International Termites and the other International Termites!
Welcome to the new Gold Drachma next week, closely followed by the Gold CAD, RUB, INR, CHF and CNY - the 2015 gold bullion exchange standard is born. Goodbye private central banking and usury.
Either this happens by the end of Feb 2015 or in March, WW3 is already slated to begin.
the new greek government is in no position to introduce the drachma or a derivative thereof.
they are linked to the Euro just like the SNB is...
No position? You mean they will de-SWIFTed or de-BISed?
Introducing the new BRICS derived World Economic Bank!
When systems don't work, they won't work.
if Greece leaves the EZ, that unleashes weapons of mass financial destruction.
listen/watch the videos i've posted with Varoufakis and Tsipras illuminating their position on that point.
most are underestimating Merkel's pragmatism and desire for a peaceful Europe.
Merkel is clearly a Western puppet, I've been following everything very closely for years, and the actions of the real leaders of the West show a very different and evil strategy, with Syria, Ukraine and ISIS, they want war in Ukraine to fully control it, in order to threaten and subjugate Russia, pushing NATO to another strategic border and permanently threaten Crimea - The Grand Cheese Board, where they eat all the cheese and leave only the broken biscuits, against Putin's Multipolar Chess Board, on which, he has already hinted and in fact announced, "checkmate".
The video is almost a year old and Syriza could also be a Western stooge party, as corrupt as all the other bought and paid for politicians, we shall see. But like the Euro and EU, Greece is out of time. Starting from next week and for the following three or four weeks, things are about to see some very big shifts away from the unipolar world - including the possibility of an asymmetric world war.
Gold Drachma is the only viable option remaining, leaving the EU if necessary (and if so, into the arms of Russia, Turkey and the EEU). SWIFT and BIS are systems that can and will be circumvented quickly, so there is no real central banking control, just perceived and implemented by various 'enforcements' (which are known, profiled and counter measured by multipolarites).
Greece, the Euro and EU are all sideshows in what is about to happen... Stay tuned my friend, it will be a bumpy ride and many will fall off the wagon.
remove putin's cock from your mouth...
where have you been the last 15 years?
we've been living in a multi-polar world since the dawn of the second millenium.
i know you have fantasies that you want to see become realities, but that's not a strong basis upon which to reason and predict the future.
of course the ride will be bumpy.
people fall off the wagon everyday.
and people hop on as well.
nothing new under the sun.
I'm not gay and by the way, what is the Vinnland flag all about - is it a band or cult following? I prefer the very basic green Libyan flag myself.
Have a look at this trader1, news just come in, a hot Kremlin leak...
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1836.htm
Looks like Ukraine has to be solved by Wednesday next week or its 'total war' in Europe, and will start around 1st March, as I said. Ides of March is 15th, so maybe then.
Have you got any long GBP, Euro or Dollar positions?
Anyway, regardless, good luck and do please stay on the wagon, as I will.
i don't care if you're gay or not. you seem to have a strange fetish about vlad though. he may have a problem with your sycophantic antics...
sorcha faal? you're kidding me...
no, you can't be.
you really believe your own fantasy.
good one picking up on color patterns.
stick to that and leave the geopolitics to the big boys and girls.
With the world saturated in debt, it is time to realise that banks are a one trick pony.
They issue loans (debt) and collect interest on these loans (debt).
For a company that produces real products, like Apple, once the market is saturated with the iPhone 5, you bring out the iPhone 6 and the whole cycle start again.
In a world saturated with Debt 1, the banks need to come up with a new product, Debt 2.
I don’t think it exists.
1600s:
Sol: "let's invent fiat money out of nothing and force people to use it!"
Abe: "Yeah! We'll bribe governments and make it happen. But, hey, what will happen when there is eventiually too much and it crashes?"
Sol: "We'll be long gone by then."
Greece will not run out of money. The night Tsipras won, Vladmir went to bed with a smile on his face! You can't make this stuff up!
there is enough money in greek oligarch coffers:
Greece is sort of small. They should find these elites and beat their asses.
The important thing noone talks about is natural gas. The pipe will be built to deliver gas to Greece from Turkey instead of Ukraine. So, Greece will be receiving significant revenues from gas infrastructure and distribution.
Note, that it is much longer to build the pipe to Greece from Turkey than to Bulgaria from Turkey. This is intentional choice!
With Greece leaving EU, Europe will be in very risky position...
It's simple. The Greeks partied for years and stuck Europe with the bill. The loans will never be repaid and now the Greeks will have to party on their own. Next time there are Greeks bearing gifts (bonds) just say no to drugs.
Good god! I can't believe individuals still believe such shit, particularly those that comment on ZH.
greece must decrare bankrapcy since its debt is not sustainable. That is it. If debtors think that other considerations overweight they should accept losses and allow Greece to stay in Eurozone.
It is really up to europe to choose what is more important. The problem is incompetence of Brussels burocrats who likely cannot correctly assign weights to all consequences in their forecasts of the scenarios.
Great summary! You are right. Either they eat the loss and keep Greeking or the don't and shit blows up.
Of many handred of billions spent on Greece , 80 % went back to the western zombi banks . If rescue means more debt ..... F..ck the rescue . The paper money is just a kolossal fraud . Why can't the BCE write off the Greek debt ? After all , they printed hundred of billions and they gave it at 1 % interest to the zombi banks . The BCE retards have money for the banks but not for the population ....... I hope Greece defaults ....
Nuland is right ! F..ck the EU !
LOL. Run out of money? Really? They're the fucking government. Just print the euros up as much as they need. Do they have to ask permission from the EU to print fiat? After all its only paper or ones and zeros and what will the EU do, declare them counterfeiters while the ECB creates billions monthly out of thin air?
If the ECB won't loan money to Greece, Putin will, but only under two conditions.
1. Greece must leave the EU.
2. Greece must leave NATO.
Putin will want Greece in NATO - they need to know what the enemy does. It appears NATO doesn't have enough sense to know any better. ... should work out fine for Russia.
The leading horse is white
The second horse is red
The third one is a black,
The last one is a green.
That ain't no bullshit.
I stand firmly behind the Greeks.
Far behind
Do what my wifw does when she is running low on funds, go shopping.
Correct.
When things get really depressing, go buy more stuff and get someone else to pay for it.
Malaka !
Opa !
(*I am learning Greek sayings these days*)
fiat finance allows these things.
The guy with the sign -
"We are not Merkel's colony" is an idiot.
You know what that guy wants don't you?
He wants Merkel to give him some cash so he can buy some lunch and have a few drinks.
These stupid fucks are like college kids that want mommy and daddy to pay all their bills - and give them enough extra money so they can party so much they flunk out.
They claim they are adults, and demand to be treated like adults. Since they are adults they should be able to do what ever they want.
Now give me my allowance suckers I need to buy some weed.
Great news for the Greeks! Be bold brothers and tell the Banksters "no longer, will we be your debt slaves!"
There are some moves showing that Tsipras prepares for Grexit
There are some moves showing that Tsipras prepares for Grexit
Please excuse my naive question. Why cannot Greece simply print Euro's? Sorry, I am not joking. I was once in the UK and had in my pocket an Irish pound, the UK shop keeper was hesitant about taking it, but did. It was the first time that I noticed currencies can come from different countries (even though they were both UK pounds, one was printer in Ireland). I think, and I could be wrong, that I have seen Euro's (euro's?) printed in different countries. Am I wrong? Have I not seen euro's with from different printers in different countries? Or, do they all come out of Belgium?
Seriously, don't kick me to hard (a little kicking I will understand), but, since we just print dollars, which all the states use, why can't the Greeks just print euros (kind of a nation by nation, or vassal state by vassal state, QE).
(Perhaps we should extend QE to each citizen. The government simply isssues a printer to each citizen and they just print what they need. Hey, I think I am on to something here, some details to work out...)
Please excuse my use of the term Citizen in the post above, that was racist of me.
How many times do you want to be excused?
You sound like you are part of the Papal Curia, to whom the current Pope Francis in his reformist zeal keeps repeating : you old cardinals have a lot of sinful ways that need to be urgently reformed. This church is so corrupt I don't know where to begin !
I am not an expert Estrella but,inflation because no one would trust the euro.
It's neither "Euro's," nor "euro's."
It's "euros."
About the other crisis, Ukraine (now linked to the greek one in the great scheme of things) :
Back to Minsk on Wednesday based on Normandy format : Mutti, Hollande, Choco-king, Putin.
And the deal, if it works, is a neutral zone for a period of "cooling off" and subsequent political program once the dust has settled allowing for a partition line between autonomist regions (presumably where a voting referendum will be performed before the Eu and Un decide to a federative scheme of things which pours into concrete the de facto separation of Ukraine from "federated" novo russia regions, having own financial and political autonomy as surrogates of Putin).
As a historical precedent : In 1970 the region of East Pakistan seceded from West Pakistan and after a lost war West Pakistan admitted to its independence and Bengladesh was born. The world community accepted that partition based on local vote which massively confirmed the independence bias; all under the sponsorship of India whose forces helped defeat the invading West Pak army in what was then East Pak.
In the current instance Putin's Russia is playing th role of India.
I don't quite know why Putin is bothering with all this except for PR purposes. This won't be over till Wonka is driven from Kiev and Mutti from Berlin by Russian tanks, and Putin can have a serious conversation with Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, and other like-minded leaders on the future of a free and prosperous Europe free from bankster influence.
you've just destroyed the rationale of why Putin should not be bombed by Pax Americana.
If the future is MArine and Putin eating in Berlin we can all sing Sieg Heil !
For all of you holocost deniers have fun watching these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9x-FhRsikY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xq5GCd4ZBI
I bet you will celebrate these and tell the world they are all fake, I'll even bet my last dollar you will actually do this.
You people read and believe what you want, because it is convenient, because you have been brainwashed by liars and because you have no souls!
God will sort you out!
Three hundred thousand dead Jews is nothing to sneeze at. Why can't the holocast promoters use that real number instead of the idiotic six million number, which absolutely no one believes?
When a nation runs out of food prisoners and poor are last in line to be fed. That's the only reason the work camp residents were skinny during the final few weeks. Had the camps been reached a few months earlier there wouldn't have been any of those convenient propaganda pictures of underfed workers. About half of the tales of ill treatment have been proven to be nonsense, and in time the full truth will be in the open and we'll all know it was all gross exaggeration, a cover for the many hideous Allied war crimes.
another one deluded, there are so many of the brain dead here it is no longer funny. think you know the answer do ya, good for you, God will sort you out too.
i laugh in the face of you deniers, who are as ignorant as a rock, spew forth your lies, fine by me.
btw, lets see if you can get that skinny in a week or two...
Unix I hope you will agree when I say that the word "holocaust" is an umbrella term used to describe anything which happened to the believers of the Jewish religion during and just prior to the Second World War. Encompassed within that umbrella term there are statements made regarded as fact by the issuers of those statements. There are millions of statements made about the events of those years. Some of those statements have been proven to be true and some of those statements have been proven to be false. The remainder have not yet been conclusively proven one way or the other.
Therefore, a mixture of proven, disproven and yet to be decided statements have been made under the umbrella of the word "holocaust". What is intellectually dishonest is to shout "holocaust denier" at anyone who discusses any of the millions of statements in any detail, particularly those statements which have been conclusively disproven. The use of the phrase "holocaust denier" is a tool used by those who do not wish to engage in discussion but rather to shut any discussion down. The word "racist" is used in the same way.
In all of your posts on this topic all I see is your attempt to shut down the conversation and end with the all too familiar ad hominems. If you were intellectually honest you would not need to revert to such tactics. You would embrace the topic at hand and provide evidence to support your contention. You should also be prepared to change your opinion on any subject if presented with compelling evidence which contradicts your previoulsy held belief. Obvioulsy the opposite applies to the party offering the opposite view.
If you truly believe the entirety of all of the statements made under the umbrella of the "holocaust" then you should be able to defend each one of the statements individually rather than under the umbrella term. If you accept that some of the statements made have been conclusively proven to be false then you should be sufficiently intellectually honest to accept those publicly and defend only the statements which you truly believe to be true.
Shouting "holocaust denier" and resorting to ad hominems in an attempt to win an argument is intellectually dishonest and not worthy of any attempt to engage you in intelligent and adult conversation.
Rex, You make very valid points, you are level headed and honest, and I thank you for that. I guess I get to the boiling point too quickly, it all started out innocently enough, I asked a question of one person, to get clarity, and it kind of spiralled from there. Believe me, I am no fan of the banksters, but when generalizations are used to smear (what I think) is a whole population, whether it be the Jewish people, or European people or American people, I tend to get a little testy.
I will check that in the future...as some people have stepped up to help me, by providing me with some reading material, I intend to delve in with both feet and an open mind, to seek the truth.
Thank you!
No problem. Every day is a school day for me here too.
I give up. I hate it when one person tries to dominate a thread.
If you are referring to me, then you have no idea, what I am all about. I am exposing these NAZI lovers for what they are - SCUM!
I also am pointing out that it does not matter what the Socialists in the EU, or Greece, or Amerikia do, they are going to lose badly! Matter of fact we all are going to lose, based on what the money changers like Cosmos, Self-Enslavement, Buckaroo Bonzi try to shove down our throats!
If I get banned from this site for speaking the truth, so be it.
thanks for speaking up.
your not the only one who gets tired of the overtaking of this forum by this sort of thing
<<< Grexit
<<< No Grexit, more can kicking ahead
Which will it be ?
Harvery Organ is warning that $4 TRILLION in Greek derivatives will detonate in 10 days, triggering a dominoe collapse of the entire Western financial system!
Personally, I think the Troika will blink at the last moment.