BRUSSELS (AP) — After months of acrimony, Greece finally clinched a bailout agreement with its European creditors on Monday that will, if implemented, secure the country's place in the euro and avoid financial collapse. The terms of the deal, however, will be painful both for Greeks and their radical left-led government, which since its election in January had vowed to stand up to the creditors and reject the budget cuts they have been demanding. Before it can get 85 billion euros ($95.07 billion) in bailout cash and support for its banks to reopen, the Greek government will have to pass a raft of austerity measures that include sales tax increases, reforms to pensions, and labor market reforms. Greece will be on a tight timetable to implement its reforms — a reflection of how little its creditors trust the government to honor a deal. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras infuriated his European partners last month when he called for a popular vote against economic reforms the creditors has proposed. The Greek people voted against those proposals, but will be horrified to see that they now face even tougher measures. Both sides acknowledged the bitterness that marked their negotiations and kept them negotiating nine hours past a Sunday midnight deadline. "Trust needs to be rebuilt," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, adding that with the deal, "Greece has a chance to return to the path of growth." http://news.yahoo.com/greece-talks-drag-beyond-deadline-amid-warnings-euro-042354170--finance.html My take - I'm glad the Greeks are being put through the ringer on this. They need to get their act together. No more "I want a 30 hr work week and retirement by 50" mentality. Either they man/woman up, or get dropped from the EU and go back to the basics and rebuild themselves. And while I fully concede the rich bankers of Greece unlawfully pocketed a large chunk of the original bail out money, that alone is not the reason for Greece's turmoil.
We are headed towards being in a similar boat within 25 years the way we're going. But if we fall, the whole world will fall along with us.
Greece got bitch-slapped. They elected this PM to stand up to the Creditors, they passed a referendum with 60% of the vote to stand up the creditors. They ended up having to implement changes that were harsher than they were asked to do back in January. Spain and Portugal aren´t going to even try to play the same game now.
Difficult to see Greece implementing such reforms, it will take a whole new generation to change the mentality - probably now its going to be another round of cat and mouse with the creditors. Not investing in Europe for the time being.
They should have left the Euro years ago. I see lot of junk about how Europe is holding Greece hostage and "banksters" and blah blah blah. My understanding (PLEASE correct me if I am wrong) is that Greece mismanaged is country, paid millions to lazy public sector workers to do nothing and half the country didn't even pay income tax. They did this on borrowed money, then when the bill came due they wined about it now being fair.
Lazy journalism Before making any statements you should check the facts.they can be easily found.the average Greek does not retire at 50 or work 30 hours. In fact the average retirement age is 63. The average work week is 42.7 hrs.that is 40% more hours than the average German
In part wrong Yes previous government mismanaged the country.lots of them also held businesses and tried to avoid taxes see the Lagarde List. The average Greek paid 47% taxes straight out of their wages. But everybody outside Greece was happy about the government, it allowed them to bribe them. Examples are ample ex. Siemens. Or just look at the deals the Greek government closed with military suppliers from Germany,France and the USA. Most of them were done trough bribery. So when a new party comes along and says it's done with all of that you'd suspect that everybody would applaud that. Not so. Strange
I really don't know what will happen to Greece, they need loans just to pay the loans, the banks are closed, people don't have money and the government cannot decide how to run the country.
While an agreement as now been reached, that certainly doesn't mean it the end of the whole sorry saga. At best this is just a stop gap, and if the Greek government doesn't implement massive changes to the economy then they're going to be in the same boat a few months down the line. Whatever changes have to be made, at the end of the day it's the working people in Greece that are going to have to bear the brunt of the policies that will be introduced.