It'll be another big week for Greece. It's a big game of brinkmanship between the two parties and I'm pretty sure that something will have to give in the next few days. But in the bigger scheme of things Greece is in a bad state - it's heavily in debt but doesn't want to change, and doesn't seem willing/able to pay back. If that was a person and not a country, those that had lent the money would want nothing to do with them again. We'll see how the two sides shape up.
It wasn't always that way in Europe - the Euro wasn't around many years ago, and these things often take a while. And the Euro hasn't been doing so hot lately either. Either way, excessive entitlements and other spending, borrowing, printing, etc gets you into trouble sooner or later. Basic economics.
If you look at the financial history of Greece, it's not the first time in modern history that they are about to default. In fact, they have done it 5 times (if I'm not mistaken) within the last 200 years. Just makes me wonder what kind of an idiot keeps loaning them the money.. well the answer is of course the idiot who isn't playing with his own cash. And now they are talking about EU possibly bending (once again) and giving Greece more so they don't default in 8 days. If they do that, we will be having this same discussion in a few months when this money runs out.
You would have figured that after 200 years, they would have figured out a decent solution to all of their economic issues.
For 200 years they have gotten other people to pay for their expenses. I think that's a pretty decent solution to everything as long as they can keep finding idiots who are willing to pay it. It's not the Greeks who are stupid, they simply figured out a way to have someone else pay everything for them.
The situation economically speaking is extremely complex and the populations simply don't understand why they work and work and work and there is a crisis. The workers aren't the ones doing something wrong here.
As is always the case in there situations, it's the common people, the workers that will suffer the most. It's all very well the politicians flying all ove the world in private jets to talks about the economy, it's the people back at home who are suffering.
The Greek government is trying to face the money beast, but the fact is that who is suffering right now is the Greek people because they can't access their money and they don't know with what currency they will wake up tomorrow.
That's the problem the EU faces now though. While it obviously can't just write off the loan they have given, at the same time if the Greek people are going to be plunged into poverty, we can't just stand by and let that happen either. Compromise is the key word at the moment but it doesn't look like an agreement is going to be reached anytime soon. The longer it goes on, the worse it's getting but where do we go from here?
It is and it isn´t. I was reading a report/article this weekend and it said that Greece has the largest ´grey market´ in the western world. Basically there is a lot of commerce happening that isn´t being taxed... the number i believe was 24% of commerce is not taxed. Obviously that is not individual´s faults, more that the goverment doesn´t enforce business and tax laws Also, as someone mentioned, this is an ongoing problem that does matter. The fact that Greece has such a long history of defaulting and not caring means that they are paying significantly higher interest rates that countries that do not default. Someone asked who would loan money to Greece? well someone who was getting 7% interest on a loan that is basically always going to be guaranteed by the EU. Trust me, if Greece just walks away and doesn´t pay, the actual banks who loaned Greece the money will get paid by someone.. either the IMF or the EU.