Greek Tragedy ( Capitalism in crisis....again! )

[bozo]

Well whadda you know, 12 months on and despite massive opposition from ordinary Greeks, the first wave of austerity measures has come and gone, along with widespread cuts in jobs and services and all to no avail. The country is still in financial crisis and a second bailout is being sought from the fatcats of the eurozone and IMF. any second loan will mean a second wave of austerity measures with yet more cutsi n jobs and services and hugely unpopular privitisation programme.
Once again, ordinary Greeks see through the political rhetoric and are taking to the barricades to try and stop the capitalist juggernaut of destruction.
Progressives everywhere wish them well!

It's better than the alternative, when a bank fell, we had a global economic crisis of 2008, if a country falls attached to 26 others of the biggest economic market on the planet what do you think will happen to the economy...

Austerity measures hurt ordinary people the worst. Those ordinary people are not responsible for the crisis. They do not see, quite rightly in my view, why they should suffer the pain to be imposed by capitalist moneymen.
It's always the same, caviar everday for the rich, jam tomorrow ( a tomorrow that never arrives ) for the rest.

[Ashendant]

Well whadda you know, 12 months on and despite massive opposition from ordinary Greeks, the first wave of austerity measures has come and gone, along with widespread cuts in jobs and services and all to no avail. The country is still in financial crisis and a second bailout is being sought from the fatcats of the eurozone and IMF. any second loan will mean a second wave of austerity measures with yet more cutsi n jobs and services and hugely unpopular privitisation programme.
Once again, ordinary Greeks see through the political rhetoric and are taking to the barricades to try and stop the capitalist juggernaut of destruction.
Progressives everywhere wish them well!

It's better than the alternative, when a bank fell, we had a global economic crisis of 2008, if a country falls attached to 26 others of the biggest economic market on the planet what do you think will happen to the economy...

Austerity measures hurt ordinary people the worst. Those ordinary people are not responsible for the crisis. They do not see, quite rightly in my view, why they should suffer the pain to be imposed by capitalist moneymen.
It's always the same, caviar everday for the rich, jam tomorrow ( a tomorrow that never arrives ) for the rest.

Either way you would have to pay the price however, in this part the price is cheaper for the whole world

But no worries the EU commission already has some plans on how to improve the situation for the greek people

http://www.euractiv.com/en/euro-finance/...ews-505922

Yes it kinda is humiliating to greece but it's better than the whole world paying it.

[theVOID]

Greece is all but bankrupt and has had to beg for money from richer European countries to bale it out.
The money will be made available, but only on the understanding that a severe austerity package will be meted out to the country.
Unsurprisingly you may think, ordinary Greeks don't relish the idea of massive job losses, pay freezes for those not sacked and cuts in public services that may well put lives at risk.
So, ordinary Greeks have taken to the streets in protest. Their message is a simple one...simple but true.
They say, quite rightly, that they are not responsible for the crisis. The Capitalist class of speculators, bankers, financiers and compliant politicians are.
It is estimated that HALF THE POPULATION will be engaged in violent protests nationwide over the coming weeks and months.
A proportionate response given the circumstances.
Progressives everywhere send them their support

Are you serious?

1. Greece is NOT a capitalist nation, they are left of centre on the economic spectrum. They got into their problems in the usual ways a state faces bankruptcy; mismanagement, malinvestment, elitism, debt and corruption on the part of elected officials, unwarranted exuberance and excessive borrowing by the people and a stilted flow of capital and unchecked greed and power in the private sector which adds up to a picture where the amount of capital borrowed and the way it is used is unable to increase productivity and create wealth in a manner necessary to manage the debts - The whole point of borrowing is to invest capital into productive industry, public or private, to see an increase in productivity that results in a profitable enterprise, generating revenue to manage the debt incurred to make the investment worth while.

2. The EU bailouts will largely kill what is left of their 'democratic capitalism', it all but eliminates any incentive for investment on the part of Greece or foreign capitalists, without incentive to build, grow and invest the state is going to have more control over more of the system, the same state that so blatantly squandered the wealth of the people of Greece to begin with - What you will see is more largely secret deals between the state and the private sector with ultimately far less benefit (or a greater cost) to the people of Greece.

3. The people are pissed off because they are paying the price for something that was largely not their fault, decisions that were made for them by the elites, decisions that they would not have made were they in charge of their own finances. The state was allowed to gamble with their assets and wealth on extraordinary scales, giving cool deals to their cronies and friends in industry and foreign interests, something that the people of Greece, if allowed to use their own money would never have done.

4. The EU is not doing anything at all like capitalism in their bailouts, they are lending money to avoid loosing all of their investments in Greece (investments they made through entirely official channels in an entirely uncapitalistic way) because should Greece default on their loans a large portion of the wealth of the largely socialist EU will be gone, *poof* nowhere to be seen - This will damage the Euro lowering the purchasing power of member states seeing a rise in the cost of living for everyone and damaging industry resulting in job losses and the need for even more welfare. It's far more akin to the US bailouts of corporate entities (which is also entirely uncapitalistic) than it is any capitalist transaction.

It's not just the "progressives" that feel for the people of Greece, it's anyone who feels sorry for the people who were conned or forced into financial schemes beyond their control, who have their own financial decisions largely removed from them, who are forced to sit back and watch as the state and their favourite industries get to reap all the benefits of a subservient population, borrowing against their assets, ruining their credit rating and then forcing all the liabilities off on people who had no say or responsibility over the matter.

If Greece were a capitalist nation the debt incurred would have been allocated via market signals, such as supply and demand, productivity, profit and price to industries which could have used the debt to invest in infrastructure that would create more wealth than it took in - That is quite plainly not what happened in Greece.

[Epimethean]

It's a circular loan system that perpetuates itself without paying into progress out of the current crisis.

[bozo]

theVoid asks if I'm serious. Well yes actually.
The Greek people have already suffered 1 round of attacks on their living standards and are about to face a second.
This dose of capitalist medicine will see state organisations sold off to private enterprise with a knock-on effect of more unemployment and poorer pay and conditions for those employed in the new companies. Also, there will be more cuts to public services the people rely on.
The people rightly recognise that they are not responsible for any fiscal crisis the country has and are rightly against taking the capitalist medicine the moneymen are prescribing.
That is why progressives everywhere wish them well in the age old fight of the ordinary worker to maintain what hard-won benefits they still have whilst the rich and powerful continue to attack those benefits.

[Ashendant]

theVoid asks if I'm serious. Well yes actually.
The Greek people have already suffered 1 round of attacks on their living standards and are about to face a second.
This dose of capitalist medicine will see state organisations sold off to private enterprise with a knock-on effect of more unemployment and poorer pay and conditions for those employed in the new companies. Also, there will be more cuts to public services the people rely on.
The people rightly recognise that they are not responsible for any fiscal crisis the country has and are rightly against taking the capitalist medicine the moneymen are prescribing.
That is why progressives everywhere wish them well in the age old fight of the ordinary worker to maintain what hard-won benefits they still have whilst the rich and powerful continue to attack those benefits.

You have to suffer before you can recover, the only reason america is not on the same level is because rating agencies are american

[Autumnlicious]

It's not just capitalism, but also the elite deals done by the few who've been enriched by their exploitation of damn near everything.

[theVOID]

theVoid asks if I'm serious. Well yes actually.
The Greek people have already suffered 1 round of attacks on their living standards and are about to face a second.

Yeah, that's what happens when your state gets into ridiculous amounts of debt and because of their fiscal recklessness and incompetence they have fuck all to show for it. Being the state their liabilities extended to all public assets, now the people they owe vast sums of money to want their loans repaid and Greece is in a position where it either has to make drastic cuts to it's public sector (the cost of it's reckless malinvestment) in order to secure reinvestment by the EU in the form of bailouts, or it has to default on it's loans and go through a nasty period of shrinking growth, skyrocketing interest rates and low purchasing power.

It's by and large not the fault of the people, they're not the ones who squandered so much investment, this falls on their corrupt state and the international bankers who got to cosy up with the government to leech of the wealth of the people.

This dose of capitalist medicine will see state organisations sold off to private enterprise with a knock-on effect of more unemployment and poorer pay and conditions for those employed in the new companies. Also, there will be more cuts to public services the people rely on.

Are you just ignorant of what capitalism is or do you choose to ignore the fact that Greece is in fact an example of a collapsed and dying welfare state? The EU's bailouts aren't remotely capitalist either, they will likely crush what is left of Greece's already small market economy.

The people rightly recognise that they are not responsible for any fiscal crisis the country has and are rightly against taking the capitalist medicine the moneymen are prescribing.

Does capitalism just meed 'boogie man' to you? Because not only has capitalism got fuck all to do with the European Union and Greece, but the 'moneymen' in this case are not the banks, they're already looking to recover the money that they lent to Greece and probably won't get back, they aren't prepared to loan it even more money, so it's up to the EU to give Greece the credit by taking it from other member nations and borrowing against their assets because they believe they will recover more European investment in Greece long term than if they let it default.

That is why progressives everywhere wish them well in the age old fight of the ordinary worker to maintain what hard-won benefits they still have whilst the rich and powerful continue to attack those benefits.

The problem here was the Greek people NOT having enough control over their own finances and how to spend and invest it and it was not the lost in the private sector post 2008 to anywhere near the extent that it was in the public sector in Greece, it was State debt that was the big problem, not privately held debt.

---

It's not just capitalism, but also the elite deals done by the few who've been enriched by their exploitation of damn near everything.

Which is Mercantilism, not Capitalism.

[bozo]

theVoid, we agree on one thing then, the Greek people are not responsible for the country's problems.

Do you then support their opposition to the second round of austerity measures?

Am I ignorant of capitalism? Well I've been a socialist for almost 40 years so I like to think not.
I can see how global capitalism isn't doing much for world peace, the third world or wage slaves around the globe , whilst ensuring an ever-widening gap between the richest and poorest.

Capitalism has everything to do with the EU and Greece, in this instance, since any help that country gets will be based on financial terms that will hurt those already suffering while the richest will continue to escape the worst of the austerity measures.

[bozo]

News from the streets of Athens as the battle rages:

Spyros Linardopoulos, protester " the situation that the workers are undergoing is tragic and we are near poverty levels.
The government has declared war and we will answer back with war ".

Antonis Vrahas, demonstrater " we don't owe any money. It's the others who stole it ".