The EU and Greece

I have always been a Europhile, I have always said that working together is the best way, but seeing how Greece has been treated has turned my stomach.

Paul Krugman puts it very well, and on Twitter people who would normally be for the EU are furious at what is being done to Greece, under the hashtag #ThisIsACoup, because any country could be treated the same.

Paul Krugman's article:

Killing the European Project

Suppose you consider Tsipras an incompetent twerp. Suppose you dearly want to see Syriza out of power. Suppose, even, that you welcome the prospect of pushing those annoying Greeks out of the euro.

Even if all of that is true, this Eurogroup list of demands is madness. The trending hashtag ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.

Can anything pull Europe back from the brink? Word is that Mario Draghi is trying to reintroduce some sanity, that Hollande is finally showing a bit of the pushback against German morality-play economics that he so signally failed to supply in the past. But much of the damage has already been done. Who will ever trust Germany’s good intentions after this?

In a way, the economics have almost become secondary. But still, let’s be clear: what we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line. This has no bearing at all on the underlying economics of austerity. It’s as true as ever that imposing harsh austerity without debt relief is a doomed policy no matter how willing the country is to accept suffering. And this in turn means that even a complete Greek capitulation would be a dead end.

Can Greece pull off a successful exit? Will Germany try to block a recovery? (Sorry, but that’s the kind of thing we must now ask.)

The European project — a project I have always praised and supported — has just been dealt a terrible, perhaps fatal blow. And whatever you think of Syriza, or Greece, it wasn’t the Greeks who did it.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/killing-the-european-project/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body&_r=2

BTW, contrary to what has been talked about the Greeks not collecting their taxes, this explains exactly why that is simply rubbish:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33479946

I won't post it, if anyone is interested in reading the truth instead of fiction, the information is there.

any country could be treated the same... as in Held economically accountable
Sorry, no sympathy for Greece
dozens of nations through out Africa, Asia and south America have been held to more ridiculous debts, that they had less part in creating.

And that post about why it the tax debts is so high thing is actually worse, the reason why you don't write off debts is you need the debt to be written as an asset on the ledger balance, the fact that the Vast amount of the 'credits' on the ledger are never going to be received means that Greece is actually far more debt with a greater disparity between earnings and spending than the posted figure imply.

"Sensible tax authorities take a view on this issue every year and say, 'We'll write off a proportion of our tax debts that we know we are never going to recover.' Greece, though, is recording this extraordinary large number because they haven't bothered to write off their old debts.

"This is an accounting anomaly."

Greece does indeed have a "massive" tax collection problem, Murphy says, but it certainly hasn't been failing to collect 89.5% of taxes owed in any one year.

So how much tax did the Greeks collect in 2010?
In fact, no reliable figure seems to be available - at least, not as a proportion of the overall amount of tax that should have been collected.

In part this is because Greece has a large "shadow economy" - earning money without paying income tax, or perhaps avoiding paying VAT.

You might assume that businesses in the construction industry or tourism might be the main culprits when it comes to tax evasion, but a report published earlier this year by a group of US academics found that the primary tax-evading industries in Greece included medicine, law, engineering, and the media.

In 2011, an OECD survey ranked Greece as one of the worst rich countries in the world at collecting VAT receipts and social security payments.

When the OECD had tried to do similar surveys between 2005 and 2009 they found that the data was simply "missing".

And that article also Implies it is the GREEKS fault as in not just the gov't but the people as well that engage in major tax avoidance and the social acceptance of this theft.
Combined with ridiculous levels of 'missing' data.

This is like watching a car crash
Decades of lies and economic book cooking to maximize the amount it can borrow is coming back to bite in on the ass.

it is ironic the EUs instance on not having an exit mechanism supposedly to make it stronger now means that Greece can crash the whole EU. there is no 'good' outcome achievable. it is either Zimbabwe like economic annihilation for Greece as the EU hastily creates a kick out mechanism or years of austerity while draining the economic power of the rest of the EU.

The EU has been pulling the strings for a long time before Greece joined the euro...

well germany has now got what it always wanted, the worlds oldest democracy on its knees, neck bowed in subservience to the master race.....

The euro is just a tool being used to achieve what is the overall aims of the EU which is destruction of all national governments and democracy and complete take over of all countries whereby they all become subservient to the complete centralised rule of the EU fascist dictatorship.

deutschland deutschland uber alles

a vision of what Broom Hilda has in store for US if britain votes for a brexit

Never thought I would say it, but agree Victor.

All countries should be run by national governments and with their own currencies for the best interests of their people And fitting with their own specific economies etc.

Shouldn't laugh but just seen this on Twitter:

SHOCK as Angela Merkel announces from 1st August all new Euro notes will be printed on Greece proof paper.

@Sassy
lol