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Greece crisis: Greek MPs face second austerity vote

Clashes in Athens continue overnight with tear gas and smoke from fires filling the city centre.

Greece's parliament is to hold a second vote on its austerity programme, which it needs to implement to secure the country further financial support.

The vote is about putting into practice the tax hikes, pay cuts, privatisations and public sector redundancies approved in principle on Wednesday.

The vote was a retreat from the "grave scenario of default", the EU said.

Public reaction has been very hostile, and the debate has been accompanied by strikes and violent protest.

Clashes continued on Syntagma (Constitution) Square outside parliament overnight, as police fired tear gas at stone-throwing youths.

Protesters set fire to a post office in the finance ministry building, on another part of the square.

But Athenian street cleaning crews have now come out in force removing debris from two days of battles in the square, says the BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens.

Police have restricted access to the city centre to prevent demonstrators from obstructing members of parliament heading to vote on the new law.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13970916

Note: Update Record, 30 June 2011 Last updated at 08:54 GMT

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vendor (Post 1693895)

As in many cases, measures too little too late, and the Greeks have been aware of this long time.... and that there would come a day when they are forced to produce "balls" but they are dependent on other countries within the EU, in order to continue the journey.

What "balls"? I know many including relations, who work long hours (in the private sector) or 2 or more jobs - like the lazy macho southerners they are - while the government was wasting money and cooking the books to join the Euro. :nope:

Before any of you arrogant **** from "other" parts of Europe or North America (yes including Canada) pipe up, how often have I heard that the political elites in other countries, even in supposed democracies have dragged other nations in directions like the headlong rush into the Euro some of you claim are leading to ruin in spite of the "will of the people". In other words spitting out ethnic stereotypes is insulting and obscuring the real reasons for the crisis. :x:down:

Yes I am a Canadian of Greek origin so perhaps a little bias. I am angry at the crisis and also the reactions to it-while I am angry at some stuff I have read here I almost lost some friends on another forum over this issue so I better not say anymore.

And what do you think the main reason why the country finds itself in this situation, for it can hardly have been a novelty for you, even if you do not live in the country that there have been financial problems like other countries in Europe, or in the world as a whole.

Quote:

Originally Posted by STEED (Post 1694335)

Love the way the media has reported this in such a way the country will grind to a stop and fall off a cliff! What a bunch of tarts that work in the news.

I doubt there are enough people who can afford to take a day off to have any real major impact.

Quote:

Originally Posted by joea (Post 1694548)

Before any of you arrogant **** from "other" parts of Europe or North America (yes including Canada) pipe up

As a tax payer from "other part of Europe" the matter concerns me. Therefore I believe I am allowed to have an opinion. That doesn't make me arrogant.

I know that, along others, my country has loaned money to Greece.
I know that we are likely going to loan more money to Greece.
I know my country too has problems that could use the money and that money doesn't grow on the trees.
I know what I have and haven't seen and heard on this matter.
I know my opinion regarding the loaning and helping has changed based on that.

So I am asking myself: should we support Greece and why? Because they are part of Europe? Because we get into trouble if we don't? Because it's the right thing to do? Because there is going to be improvement and they are going to pay us back with interests? I have been forced to ask and I haven't found a proper answer.

Does that mean I hate Greece or the Greeks? Hardly. I hate idiots. What I see in the media is idiotic behaviour, so that makes me dislike the news I read, but not the entire people. But it also makes my opinion of supporting these same people more negative.

Does that make me arrogant? I can't see how.
Does that make me ignorant? Perhaps.
Does barging into a thread and basically calling everyone else idiots help me to change it? No, not really.

So educate me. Help me get rid of my ignorance. Help me see the other side of the fence. I don't speak Insult, so try Reason instead. Because I have seen you write in other threads, I know you are reasonable and therefore assume that you have better motive to participate in a thread than to rant and make yourself look childish. I suppose I am right?

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimbuna (Post 1694615)

I doubt there are enough people who can afford to take a day off to have any real major impact.

Agreed. :yep:

Yet to see today's news which will be a good laugh no doubt. :rotfl2:

Greece: MPs pass second austerity vote

Greece's parliament has passed a second vote on its austerity programme, which was needed to secure the country further financial support.

The vote approved putting into practice the tax hikes, pay cuts, privatisations and public sector redundancies approved in principle on Wednesday.

Greek PM George Papandreou hailed its passage as "a crucial step" for Greece.

Public reaction has been very hostile, and the debate has been accompanied by strikes and violent protest.

But had the package been rejected, Greece could have run out of money within weeks. The EU and the International Monetary Fund had demanded that the measures be implemented before they extend further loans to Greece.

With the votes passed, Greece can now receive the latest tranche of a 110bn-euro (£98bn) loan, instead of defaulting.

"We have still many difficult and crucial battles ahead of us," Mr Papandreou told a cabinet meeting after Thursday's bill was passed by 155 votes to 136.

His ruling Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) has a slim parliamentary majority, with 154 out of 300 deputies.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13970916

Note: Update Record,30 June 2011 Last updated at 15:57 GMT

Quote:

Published 01:46 30.06.11
Latest update 01:46 30.06.11
A white elephant in northern Greece

The foul child of the deadly marriage of megalomania and easy credit

By Doron Tsur

How is it possible, in today's information age, that Greece is facing bankruptcy? The very fact of a Western nation, a member of the euro bloc, defaulting on its liabilities, calls for sober consideration on the part of anyone involved in economics and investments.
How is it that despite all our accrued experience and economic knowledge, our models and theories, our monitoring and controls, the mistakes of 50 and 100 years ago are repeating themselves? There was no information then. Today there is. What happened?

Last year at about this time I toured northern Greece by car. I highly recommended visiting this area, which is absolutely lovely.
On one serpentine mountain road, a surrealistic vista suddenly opened before me - that of my narrow hill track feeding into a superhighway of monstrous dimensions - at least for Greece. It tunneled through mountains and spanned valleys over vast bridges. This state-of-the-art roadway outdid the German and Austrian Autobahnen and the Italian Autostrade of my experience. Israel's Route 6 is a goat track by comparison to the grand Greek road.
My astonishment only grew as the days passed and I availed myself of this extraordinary road. Mainly because I was all but alone on it. Traffic was ludicrously thin.
Since one doesn't run into a white elephant like that every day, my curiosity was piqued. How did such a gigantic project come into being, and why? And above all, how much did it cost and who footed the bill??
The bill: 6 billion euros
In our information age, obtaining information is easy. The project turned out to be the New Via Egnatia, a 670-kilometer speedway connecting Igoumenitsa in the west to the Turkish border in the east. It crosses the Pindus Mountains, which stretch from northern Greece to southern Albaria, maintaining roughly the same altitude throughout, thanks to that impressive arrangement of bridges and tunnels.
In some places the highway parallel the original Via Egnatia, an ancient Roman road.
Construction took a decade and was completed in 2009, with some ancillary works still being carried out. The cost of the project - at least 6 billion euros - was financed by the Greek government, the European Development Bank and the European Union.
The logic underlying the New Via Egnatia was as follows: Turkey will be accepted into the EU, after which overland traffic to and from that country will increase dramatically. Its neighbors - Greece, Bulgaria and Macedonia, as well as Albania and Montenegro - will see a surge in growth. They will want to connect to Europe in the northwest and to Turkey in the southeast. The road will go on to link up with the great pan-European highways, and has the potential to become a key axis of development of the region.
But Turkey isn't a member of the EU, not yet. The Balkan nations and the rest of southeastern Europe are not growing like weeds. The result is a 670-kilometer white elephant.
It was not Greece's only mega-project of the past decade. Athens got a spanking new airport and subway system. The 2004 Olympics were a terrific boost to development, whose bill the Greeks are still paying for.
The whole world is pointing fingers, accusing Greece of laziness, profligacy and living high on the hog at the expense of others (mainly the Germans ). True in part, but not the whole story.
Some of Greece's economic problems lie in its desire, in the past decade, to bring its basic infrastructure closer to the European standard. The reason? Sheer, human envy.
Take the ease of obtaining big financing for big projects (that masquerade as investments in the future ). Marry it to the natural tendency of politicians to approve any project that will entail a photograph of them cutting a ribbon. This unholy union is an incubator for white elephants.
It happens with people, cities, companies and countries: At some point, everyone takes a bite that is too big to chew.
Greece is a small state, with a widely scattered population of 11 million. Its north is mountainous, and much of the south consists of numerous small islands: not promising conditions for building Western-European-style infrastructure.
Considering the size of the population that has to foot the bill, there is no way to make building such infrastructure projects economically feasible. One cannot expect a nation with just 81 people per square kilometer to create projects like the ones in Germany, where the population density is nearer 230 per square kilometer. (The population density in central Israel was 329 people per square kilometer in 2009, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Today it is about 340. )
A company making huge investment in building production capacity, for which it has to borrow money, could flourish if its underlying assumptions were correct. But if its assumptions turn out to be nonsense, its borrowing could wipe it out. That is Greece's problem in a nutshell. There are other reasons, such as a high standard of living not supported by the country's resources, not to mention the willingness of creditors to lend money, which greatly exacerbated Greece's problems.
Several conclusions can be reached from the story of Greece.
1. Big national projects can lead to prosperity. Or they can turn out to be megalomaniac fantasies that will bury their investors alive.
2. Easy credit can create a kind of blindness to the merits of a project, which can end up charging forward with no controls, or even serious thought. That is true of people, of companies, and of nations. We all have a touch of megalomania, and when it meets easily available credit the result can be economic dynamite.
3. Sometimes a drive through the mountains can bring economic insights just as profound as sitting at a desk in front of a computer monitor glowing with spreadsheets.

The author is the CEO of Compass Psagot.

..............

Taken from The Marker-Ha'aretz

@MH Very interesting article!

Greece crisis: Poland's Jacek Rostowski criticises EU

Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski has criticised Europe's handling of the Greek debt crisis.

He suggested that too much emphasis had been put on austerity measures and not enough on growth.

And he accused some opposition parties in eurozone countries of showing a "breathtaking short-sightedness" over decisions to support Greece.

His comments come after Poland took over the six-month presidency of the European Union (EU) on Friday.

Mr Rostowski will now chair meetings of EU finance ministers, and hopes to join talks among eurozone finance ministers - even though Poland has not adopted the euro as its currency.

The EU and International Monetary Fund provided Greece with 110 billion euros in emergency loans in May 2010, with the next instalment due in the coming weeks to stave off the imminent threat of default.

Eurozone finance ministers are discussing the details of a second bail-out designed to help Greece pay its debts until the end of 2014.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14002520

Note: Update Record,2 July 2011 Last updated at 15:12 GMT

Quote:

Originally Posted by STEED (Post 1694816)

Agreed. :yep:

Yet to see today's news which will be a good laugh no doubt. :rotfl2:

I was left with the impression it didn't have the impact that was hoped for.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimbuna (Post 1696657)

I was left with the impression it didn't have the impact that was hoped for.

Even the government said it was a flop. As I said jim, they should have gone on strike and stayed out on strike. Maybe there get the point sooner than later I hope.

Quote:

Originally Posted by STEED (Post 1696942)

Even the government said it was a flop. As I said jim, they should have gone on strike and stayed out on strike. Maybe there get the point sooner than later I hope.

It simply boils down to the 'affordability' factor then...how many working class do you know that can afford to go on a prolonged strike?

I'm not sure I know any.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jimbuna (Post 1697007)

It simply boils down to the 'affordability' factor then...how many working class do you know that can afford to go on a prolonged strike?

I'm not sure I know any.

The Miners did it back in the 80's, problem was the coal stocks were high but in the case of the public sector they should think about it. After all Pinky & Perky are a couple of wet behind the ears upper class twits. Not like the iron bitch Thatcher which clearly they will never get any where near her level.

You want change you must fight for change.

Quote:

Originally Posted by STEED (Post 1697085)

I'm talking about now....I wore a uniform in the days of the miners strike and do realise matters were 'different' then....there is actually less animosity towards the present government (working class wise) than there was back then but that could be down to the simple fact there are less people working today than there was then :03: