what is goin down in greece

http://libcom.org/tags/greece?page=2

 

I'm half greek/finnish but living in finland. yea I called my relatives to ask how is things going on down there, they say that the situation is chaotic man.. tough shit

 

The financial situation between Greece and the EU is getting very sticky. Essentially, the EU doesn't want to bail Greece out, because there is just so much debt that they're afraid to commit. The EU, however, also doesn't want to just kick Greece out and let it burn. So they're holding Greece in a kind of limbo, giving them a little aid here and there, which basically means that they're just going to kind of stay in a state of chaos until everyone decides what to do.

What Greece's foreign minister (some title like that, I can't recall exactly) said, was that Greece either needs to be totally bailed out and saved, or just let to totally fall apart then pick itself up from the rubble. This whole thing that they're doing now, with just keeping everything up in the air needs to stop.

Germany's angry, because, due to the nature of the EU, they're all stuck together. This means that when things are good, everyone gets to enjoy and share the wealth, and when things are bad, they can all help each other out. Germany is doing pretty well right now, and trying to come out of its recession, while Greece is doing absolutely miserably. Greece is essentially dragging the whole entire EU down. The value of a euro is standard throughout all the EU, so if one of them gets into tremendous debt, they all experience the negative effects, not just that one place. Germany is getting to the point where they just want Greece out of the EU because it's making things so difficult for them.

I hope this post answered your questions in an impartial-ish way. I tried, because frankly, I'm very angry with Germany and very pro-Greece.

 

I think this is one of the reasons why the UK opposed the single currency in the EU initially. There were worried that the pound would be devalued against it and therefore the American dollar if several of the economies throughout the EU were going arse up. The pound of course is one of the only currencies that has greater value than the US dollar.

 

I forgot the figure that Greece have asked the EU for. I believe it is in the region of 45 billion Euros with the IMF potentially chipping in a further 25 billion Euros. As a result Greek loans have been graded as junk. Portugal is the next country to watch as they are also having trouble. Both of these countries economies have had about a 2% devaluing effect on all financial markets around the world. And the reason, peoples greed.

 

Just saw the youtube uploads of the recent May Day actions in Greece....more "riot-porn" to watch.

 

I'm portuguese and I absolutely agree with you.
People here tended to just ask the banks for money and they just loan the money they ask for, almost no questions asked...Now, the banks are going bankrupt and they're asking everyone for the money they loaned but people ( mainly because of their capitalist, naive, futile thinking) don't have the money to pay them, so the banks just take away everything the people own and sell them to replace the money, but no one wants to buy their stuff either, so everything's just fucked up economically and the government had to loan a thousand millions dollars to BPN (Portuguese Bank of Business) because the bank spend the money people had saved there to buy more actions and to pay the administrators their absurd salaries and weren't able to replace the people's money.

But still, we're going to spend millions of tax payers money to build fucking high-speed-train (TGV) rails and investing in submarines and useless crap like that AND the portuguese government wants to loan money to the greeks, like we didn't have enough problems and our debt wasn't already big enough.

I'm pro-greece, and I think they need help but Portugal should just stay out of it...Or maybe we should let all the EU go bankrupt and then take down the government and build the path to a peaceful anarchist society !