Posted on 06/15/2015 7:39:47 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is to hold an emergency government meeting at midday London time to discuss the failure of the latest round of discussions with its creditors to help stop the country tumbling into bankruptcy.
Tsipras will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Yannis Dragasakis, State Minister Nikos Pappas and Alternative Foreign Minister for International Economic Relations Euclid Tsakalotos in the wake of the breakdown of negotiations in Brussels at the weekend, a government spokesman confirmed.
Talks between Greece and its creditors over the weekend yet again failed to resolve the impasse over reforms, with European officials blaming Greece for failing to offer concessions in return for a final tranche of desperately-needed financial aid.
Former Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, who led the country from 2009- 2011 and oversaw Greece's first request for an international bailout in 2010, told CNBC that the situation was a mess.
"It seems again very close to the brink of a disaster and it will be a real sin (if talks fail)," he told CNBC Friday.
The Greek people had sacrificed a lot over the last five years and battled high unemployment, he said, in order to "remain in the euro and at some point be able to access the markets and then get on a path of growth."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
pensions were set at that age to have people retire and then bring in the young to retire at later ages. Part one happened, part two did not. (see Amnesty with only a promise of future border security)
“I’d gladly pay you Tuesday, for a Greek Economy today”
“Greece is a café society. What does it produce?”
Welfare recipients.
The 55 retirement was to push out employees to make room for the young. When the young too the jobs as planned, the age was not increased.
Businesses should do that here. Put the fedgov out of business.
Maybe they’re just not spending enough money on social programs....
The Greek electorate voted for less austerity. This was done months ago. The Greeks generally want to run Greece the old Greek way.
You cannot vote yourself money forever but that is what has been done. Voting against the laws of economics, as with the laws of physics, is silly but so be it.
The working people in Finland and other EU countries have been very generous to Greece and have ignored prior misrepresentations of financial conditions in Greece. They should not be saddled with more gifts to people who will never pay the gifts back.
It all seems so straightforward. The components of this system are impossibly incompatible. What is the delay?
The Greeks like to spend tax money collected in other nations.
If they put half the effort into building an economy that they’ve put into whining and blustering, they wouldn’t need to borrow money.
But then, Greece has been “on the brink of disaster” for years now.
There’s one Greek city where there are more Porsche Cayennes registered than there are people reporting incomes over $50,000. Cheating on your taxes is the national sport in Greece.
It is a product of not understanding the benefits of a free market economy and a cadre of self serving socialists/communists.
The EU (Germany) is to blame too because they actually FORBADE unleashing the capitalist market through lower taxes. Their solutions were all about taking MORE TAXES and wealth redistribution.
The inteligencia of their university system has the attitude of since the government borrowed the money, the government should pay it back. Never mind the fact the citizens are the government (BTW they also had TWO immigration amnesty programs with the same justification excuses as politicians are using here)
They now have a serious talent drain as their best and brightest flee all of the EU not just Greece.
The financial conditions/value of Greek bonds were valued by US brokerages (goldman etc...) then sold to private investors. Now, those bonds are held by public entities.
This is no longer a fight about money, this is a fight about political dominance with Germany via papers taking over the entire EU.
About right... they've been playing this same song for years now, and it always seems to work. Someone gives them more money to avert the immediate crisis, and nothing changes.
“avoiding taxes” is a centuries old product of avoiding the Dhimi tax from the Ottoman empire occupiers.
Rank and file Greeks know government is always a problem.
Paging Angela Merkel.
You provide some very wise insights. The idea that more taxes are the only path to economic stability is a violation of systems theory in the form of a suppressing loop—suppressing growth and stabilizing shortfalls. The brain drain becomes weakened if there is no place to escape to—the US has become less promising in the past 7 years and there are not many other options.
If Greeks would limit surnames to 4 syllables, efficiency would be improved and the economy would rebound
Besides being a nice vacation spot, very little.
There’s little or no secret about Greece’s entry into the EU...it was more or less a subprime mortgage deal largely engineered by GS. For better or worse, their GDP is (I am told) about equal to Rhode Island. Deutsche Bank is in fairly serious doodoo over this, something that may relate to Merkel’s unfailing interest in keeping the union together.
Greece needs another military junta.
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