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Grexit "Disaster" Looms As Greek Hospitals Run Out Of Sheets, Painkillers
The default countdown is about to go under 10 days and it is becoming increasingly apparent that both Greece and its creditors have had enough.
Months of tense negotiations have gone nowhere and yielded exactly nothing and it now looks like PM Alexis Tsipras and FinMin Yanis Varoufakis may be willing to miss a June 5 payment to the IMF if it means proving they are serious about keeping their campaign promises and forcing the troika to the bargaining table. The implications of a missed payment aren’t entirely clear but Athens is keen to predict the worst as it tries to squeeze concessions from creditors. Bloomberg has more:
A day after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Greek society can’t absorb any more austerity measures, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said his government has met the euro area and IMF three-quarters of the way, and that it’s up to creditors to cover the remainder.
“Greece has made enormous strides reaching a deal, it is now up to the institutions to do their bit,” Varoufakis said Sunday on BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. “It is not in their interests as our creditors that the cow that produces the milk should be beaten into submission to the extent that the milk will not be enough for them to get their money back”...
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, meanwhile, signaled there isn’t much wiggle room after Tsipras’s government committed to policy changes in return for aid in a euro-area accord on Feb. 20.
“That is the condition for completing the current program,” Schaeuble said in a Deutschlandfunk radio interview aired Sunday. “The problems are rooted in Greece. And now Greece does have to fulfill its commitments.”
Some members of Tsipras’s Syriza party advocate defaulting on loans rather than backing down from the anti-austerity policies that swept it to power in January even if that leads the country out of the euro.
Greece doesn’t have the money, and won’t pay what it owes the IMF in June, Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis said in a Mega TV interview on Sunday. Spiegel Online on April 1 cited Voutsis as saying Greece should delay an April 9 payment to the fund, which was made.
“We’ve done remarkably well for an economy that doesn’t have access to the money markets to meet our obligations,” Varoufakis said. “At some point we will not be able to do it.”
“Once you are in a monetary union, getting out of it is catastrophic,” Varoufakis said. “It would be a disaster for everyone involved. It would be a disaster primarily for the Greek social economy but it would also be the beginning of the end of the common currency project in Europe, whatever some analysts might be saying.”
And "whatever some analysts might be saying", Greeks are now suffering mightily, as the €22 million per day hit to the economy has now bankrupted the country's hospitals which have reportedly run out of painkillers and sheets. Here's The Independent:
Greek hospitals have run out of supplies such as painkillers, scissors and sheets as budget cuts have left the health service unable to provide even basic provisions for operations and medical procedures…
Huge cuts to the healthcare budget, amid the economic turmoil which made millions unemployed, have left than 2.5m Greeks uninsured, up from 500,000 in 2008..healthcare spending has fallen by 25 per cent since 2009, creating shortages of the most basic surgical equipment and leaving too little money to pay nurses' salaries.Reports have surfaced of patients being turned away from hospital because there was no meter to measure their high blood pressure, while others have had to do without painkillers during medical procedures. One patient was even asked to bring their own sheets to hospital.A trainee surgeon at KAT, a respected state hospital in Athens, said the situation was at “breaking point”.“There is no money to repair medical equipment, no money for ambulances to use for petrol, no money to hire nurses and no money to buy modern surgical supplies."
Meanwhile, Tsipras is steadfastly refusing to compromise on the now ubiquitous "red lines" and the most outspoken austerity advocates look to be entrenching themselves even further as the following quote from German FinMin Wolfgang Schaeuble makes clear:
Greece committed itself to the fulfillment of this program on Feb. 20 and therefore we don't need to talk about alternatives.
Clearly, the end game is approaching although it's till unclear what form it will take. The idea that a developed country cannot provide basic emergency medical care because it is in poor standing with the institutions that print a fiat currency is patently absurd and simply isn't tenable meaning that one way or another, this 'situation' will resolve itself in the coming weeks, an event which will put Europe's broken bond markets to a rather difficult test.
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To fix this they are trying for a $2 billion humanitarian aid loan.
HAHAHAHA
Or the $2 billion in profits that the ECB doesn't return to Greece as it does with all other EZ members.
Don't You ( Troika ) Want ME Baby?
Success breeds Success. Unfortunately Failure breeds failure and the highly corrupted Body of Megalomaniacs , that is the EU are Unwilling to Allocate even Emergency Funds to a Member who is considered to be the weakest link in the Chain. Now it doesn't take an Economist to understand that in Promoting a Union, spending Vast Tax-Payer ( silent partners[SHEEP] in effect with ZERO input ) Contributions in doing so YOU ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS YOUR WEAKEST LINK.
We are ALL aware of the misappropriation of OUR FUNDS by OUR REPRESENTATIVES , enabling them to Flit around the Globe in 1st Class; employing several, sometimes related salaried staff; spending on Hookers & Blow & Parties/ Functions and WASTING SOME ( smirk ). . . . and all the while this EU/Troika Juggernaut( NO MATTER PREVIOUS RIGHTS OR WRONGS) have chosen in their Infinite Stupidity to hang a member out to dry and thereby effectively participating in a Genocide of the POOR in Greece.
Most of the other State Members of the Happy EU Family must surely be looking over their shoulder as to whom is going to be 'abandoned/ scapegoated NEXT '. Despite being a Basket Case, France, for example, enjoy's favourable treatment in it's equally impossible task of lowering Debt/Deficits via Austerity and yet through Cronyism and Creative Accounting and blatant falsification of Employment Statistics, festers unabashed like a bloated beached whale. First they came for the Greeks . . .
Revolt or Die Slowly Fuckwits
When you make a deal with the devil..shit like this happens.... You can retire at 43...but you won't have any fucking bed pans when your dying of cancer at 53
Too many people here are blaming thr Greek people.
Corrupt politicians took money from corrupt bankers and now 11 million people have to go back to the stone age just so the banks can get the money back plus interest.
It's all the fault of the Greek people and the bankers are only doing their job ? Yeah right.
europe was better before...so much
It is absolutely obvious that Greece should exit and snuggle up with China and Russia.
As I've stated before, don't anyone worry, the West will pay. They'll pay and pay and pay, because a Grexit WOULD MEAN THE END OF THE UE.
It's the tail wagging the dog, or getting a taste of your own medecine (whichever image you like best).
Grab your popcorn and watch the EU empty its pockets.
Defalt while you still have blood
find new friends
The solution is trivially simple:
the greeks just need to live on what they actually earn instead of what they steal and defraud from others under pretense of "borrowing'.
Now you will suffer you hyper corrupt thieving socialist parasites !!!!!!
Im afraid that the 'Socailist' Banks took off with nearly every penny of money 'loaned' to Greece....the average people got little or nothing
You don't 'buy' sheets to the point of running out of them. You 'wash' them.
But there is more of a multiplier effect when you just buy new ones!
Did you sleep through Econ 101?
You'll know it's officially bad when Greeks start loading up on to boats to go to Libya.
America in 5 years...tops.
Why do "they" keep on postponing the inevitable? Get it over with, please, the news about Greece starts getting boring.
Just wait until they run out of anti-depressants....
Look, who consumes all those medical services anyway? The old farts. And who receives all the retirement checks and bulk of social services? The old farts. Leaving? The young farts, the ones not requiring nearly as much in medical services and the ones who can do actual productive physical work. Seems to me that if this situation goes on long enough, it will resolve itself regardless. The young farts just have to get through a rough patch.
Meanwhile the Greeks should tell that grumpiest of old German pharts, Schaeuble, that he can just sit on his thumb and spin. As easy as it is to commit, it's just as easy to un-commit simply by giving him the finger.
zero