Yeah Dude, like tax evasion and not paying The Man, fight the power!
Bollocks.
They’re refusing to accept that they either reform their deeply corrupt ways, stop evading taxes and start paying for own services, or they go bankrupt and the mean nasty IMF conditions will look like a bloody walk in the part.
The Greeks do not have a god given right to borrow my pensions money (which is invested in sovereign bonds in no small part) and not pay me back. If they can’t pay, they can fuck off.
Your bank wankery has got fuck all to do with Greece. It has some place with Ireland, but Greece lied and stole its way into a hole, not via banks but by constant corruption.
Well then **they can fucking pay their taxes and pay their own services, ** because right now they’re not and it ain’t the bloody “markets” that cause them to have spending massive above what their current tax revenue supports, to have massive tax evasion AND to shamelessly fabricate data reported to EU and others.
The “nebulous” markets are in fact my retirement and pension funds investing, and if the Greeks default, that’s my retirement money in part they’re saying “Fuck you” to. So, they can go to hell.
The EU is destined to fail, because they contain too many disparate elements. To be fair, so does the US, but we bonded before that mattered as much, and it was rough business even back then. However, in today’s climate, they’re not going to favor unity over self-interest.
Let’s say Greece decides to default on their debt 100%. Presumably no one would loan to them for a long time. Could they balance their budget if they didn’t have to make any debt payments? Would they be worse off then what the EU wants them to do?
I feel some guarded sympathy for our Greek doper, but it is tinged with a bit of good old American exceptionalism! Here, in America, the wealthy, the corporations, etc. are perfectly willing…nay, eager!..to render their patriotic duty in cash. Often they will hire and consult highly paid tax specialists to ascertain the maximum possible tax assessment. Without, of course, appearing gaudy or showy, which simply wouldn’t do.
The patriotism of the American corporation is the envy of the nations, which you will surely admit. American business is eager to supply our heroes in time of crisis…Haliburton, BlackWater…the proud list goes on and on. We can assume from their public patriotism that they are loathe even to accept any profit, but are compelled by a higher duty, their obligation to their stockholders. And even then, only just enough profit to enable their CEO’s to roll about in piles of hundred dollar bills while snorting cocaine off supermodel’s asses. And not a dime more!
Perhaps if your people were more like Americans, imbued with the same stern moral fiber, you might yet prosper! Our hopes are with you.
I suspect they would be better off. And I’m not sure that no one would want to loan them money. In fact, currently, no one wants to loan them money. Or more exactly the interest rates are ludicrously high (18%, if I’m not mistaken) which is about the same. Once they would have defaulted, loaners might feel that their better financial situation makes loans less risky (and besides, there wouldn’t be anymore the threat of default looming), so I’d guess that the interest rate would drop significantly.
However, they lied about their economic situation already, and they are still afflicted with massive tax evasion and massive corruption. There’d be little reason to trust them to pay back any loans. My guess is if they default virtually no one will loan them anything for a long time, and they’ll plunge into an economic abyss. Why loan them money if they’ll just take it and refuse to pay later? Or even be unable to pay? If they don’t do something about their combination of tax evasion, corruption and high spending* then loaning them money is just throwing it into a black hole; the only reason to do it now is to attempt to prevent default and collapse. If the Greeks default, why throw more money at a nation determined to commit economic suicide?
And no, I have no inherent objection to high government spending - but you have to gather the revenue for it.
I would suggest that a condition of Bailing out Greece be that a new election cycle is held and qualified people be placed in the positions of power. EU oversight can restructure the tax collection and oversight systems to ensure that there is at least a paper trail. If they want to avoid chaos they better hang a few bankers in effigy by finding the worst offenders and stripping them of their assets. Otherwise privatization, combined with no loans will toss Greece back into a second world oligarchy.
There have been instances of countries defaulting on their debt and recovering fairly well after an initial bout of pain. Argentina in 2002 is the prime example of this, but Argentina’s example may not be directly relevant to Greece. Argentina has a built in export economy in raw materials, which helped with their account balances and they were able to devalue their currency once they dropped their peg. If Greece had its own currency, they could devalue and unilaterally restructure their debt at the same time, but now they are faced with the unpleasant prospect of unwinding form the Euro. I don’t think anyone really knows how that would play out.
There’s some data (although I’m not convinced) out there that a slow-motion bank run is already underway in Greece. If that’s the case and it keeps up, they’ll eventually be forced out of the Euro anyway, and then there’s no point in trying to repay the debt without a unilateral restructuring.
At the same time, its estimated that the hidden economy in Greece is around 25% of their GDP. The U.S. acknowledges that the hidden economy is a huge tax revenue problem for us, and ours is only estimated to be around 8%. There are a lot fewer under the table deals in the U.S. than in Greece.
(We just legislate them so they are above the table deals with tax breaks for corporations, but that is a different problem than Greece’s)
Excuse me, but if the Greeks do say “Fuck you”, what are you going to do to make them go to hell? Invade them? You signed up for military duty yet? Ready to deploy?
Saying “Fuck you” to a group of people who can take your livelihood with them when they jump off a cliff isn’t particularly the wisest move.
You’re up against a real John Galt situation here - not the foolish one-man scenario pushed by Ayn Rand, but rather a John Galt made up of millions.
we r getting tired of saying and posting this everywhere. there is no tax evasion in greece. we all pay our taxes. only big corps arent paying [edit:which most arent greek in the first place@#!!%@] and like 1 in the million individuals.
what the tv do is find the super-wow rich doctor tax evading and then they lie and lie and lie.
we r all paying our taxes , this situtation is riduculous. repeating lies u hear from ur nice tv wont do u or us any good either. this is how things r in greece.
