The social unrest will not end, and nor will the suffering for the Greek people.

Seems to me that overthrowing the government would end this shit nice and fast. Revolution! Up against the wall, motherfuckers! (American motherfuckers, take note. Actually, don’t…our walls could use some “dual-purposing”, too.)

I know nothing about international finance, europe’s economy, how this came to be…. but

this is an amazing thing happening in the European Union. Who knows what’s going to happen here.

It’s easy to imagine that this will end badly. Martial law?

Greece was a military dictatorship, not that long ago.

“that the measures passed last night are irreversible.”; yeah, right. exit the euro and, presto, reversed.

Good analysis of what might happen on such an exit is here.

We can’t look at this crisis through American eyes. If something like this happened in America — and who knows it won’t–the sheeple would accept it as God’s punishment for whatever. Greece and the other European countries have really dense social networks, people who know and live with each other, and a dense history that their children imbibe almost from birth. Whatever the Greek Parliament does, if it is not accepted by that society, it will not happen. The European bankers understand that perfectly, which is why they keep holding out for unenforceable terms.

There’s another point: the Greeks are mobile, and they will leave for other parts of Europe if they can’t survive in their home country. This simply displaces the crisis to France and Germany. It’s like a ballon: you squeeze one part and the other side inflates.

Given that Greece was occupied by Germany in WWII, I’m not surprised that the Greeks are not eager to answer to Germany once again.

Screw the Euro and the Eurozone. It’s time for the Greeks to go their own way with the Drachma. Sure, there would be uncertainty and a period of adjustment, but could it be any worse, really, than what the country is suffering now? It appears that Germany is spearheading the destruction and strip-mining of Greece for the Banksters and now doing economically what it didn’t do militarily during WWII.
I’m surprised the Greeks have put up with this shit for so long and not resisted more. That may soon change.

100,000 protestors.
11.3 million population of Greece.
That’s a little less than 1% (approx. 0.88%). That’s who showed up. How many people wanted to and couldn’t?

Imagine if approx. 1% of the US showed up in DC and did this. That’s 3 million people in the US. 40 buildings for 11.3 million. So for 300 million, that’s approx. 1200 buildings burnt to the ground.

That’s the comparison in perspective.
If anyone thinks the Greek people are going to take this lying down, look at the fucking numbers!
And things are going to get a lot worse. 22% MANDATED reduction in public service jobs? These ruling fools have lost their mind. Greece is going to burn, and there’s going to be blood.

It’s just tragic. And so stupid. How can they (the Germans, the EU, the economists, all the PTB) not see that austerity is already destroying the Greek economy, well, all the economies that are trying to be “austere.”

How can they think this will work? Expelling the ones who disagree? What was the point of that?

This.cannot.end.well.

Greek police union wants to arrest EU/IMF officials

No, there’s about 4.5 million people in Athens and that’s the protest numbers – Athenians. Take away 1.5 million for the aged and the children – that leaves about 3 million.

So it’s a quite higher percentage of people in the street in Athens, about 1:30 instead of 1:88 like you are saying.

Here’s a fascinating article challenging the perceived morality of debt;
http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/david-graebers-debt-my-first-5000-words/

“Across the board cuts in nearly all of private sector wages and salaries to the tune of 22%”

WHY are private sector salaries involved here?

Oh yes! Part of the banksters’ global plantation plan… we’ll all be working 12 hour days in exchange for a single bowl of rice — just wait and see.

Those fuckers won’t be happy until they have abolished wages and have a human slave workforce throughout the world.

Bankers are not economists and politicians are not economists, but politicians listen to bankers, and together, they make economic policy and write legislation.Conratulations: you now have a group of apprentice plumbers doing critical brain surgery. European banking systems (like the one in the U.S.)have never been successful in any effort except to consolidate wealth, create poverty, cause wars and decimate societies. And yet it goes on and on, unabated. Greece may well be the first civilized country (democracy began there, remember?)in our lifetime to actually disppear as a societal entity. There is world-wide handwriting on the walls, but no one is bothering to read it.

I don’t see the difference between this an a military occupation of Greece. The government has surrendered its sovereign ability to make laws for the welfare and governance of its own people, and it has given up the ability to protect business and commerce from international predators. Foreigners will take possession of Greek national resources and assets. All that is missing is grey coated soldiers on the street corners. The elected government has become a vassal of the emperors of Europe, paying a crushing tribute to their lords.

Well, here is the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free, our government is already owned and controlled by the Banksters…. Step One completed.

I don’t know where you get the info. that it’s just people of Athens.
Please inform/educate me with the details and source.

I’m not disagreeing with you, just appreciate the info.

You may be correct. I’m just going from the bare, un-dissected, numbers.
Either way, it’s bloody scary.

You seem to be suggesting that the Germans won this time without firing a bullet. But that may be too harsh. It seems the Greek government surrendered without a shot being fired. What a shame for the people there.

Yes, but do you think anyone really cares outside of OWS and they seem to be dwindling?

Two words: “European Spring”

Too much Greece in the EU works.

Oops, Greece has slipped!

Austerity has its rewards. For the 1%.

However, the Greek population is heavily weighted toward Athens.

Shades of Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine.”

Greece has been traumatized in the last few years by high unemployment and drastic cuts to the social safety nets. While the country is still reeling, the appointed (not elected) Prime Minister can direct the administration of the final coup.

Privatize public property – the water supply, for heaven’s sake!
Outlaw labor unions and strikes.
Slash government spending so social safety nets are completely eliminated.
Deregulate so that corporations roam about the land completely unimpeded.

Use the resulting social unrest as an excuse to clamp down with the army and police (if they don’t rebel), and voila, we have the ideal corporate state. The last vestiges of left-leaning social democracy are wiped out.

Who is next? Italy? Spain?

I bet the other PIIGS, just default and jump ship.
It can’t be worse then what is happening in Greece.

The Greeks are becoming the underclass of Europe. Soon they will be sneaking across borders to stand in front of their version of Home Depot looking for day work. Sound familiar?

What is happening in Greece today is a consequence of the separation of fiscal and monetary policy with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1991. Todays headlines were predicted decades ago, but were politically inconvenient at the time. It is just common sense that you cant have a single currency shared by multiple/conflicting sovereign governments, each with their own disparate fiscal and social goals. Even if Greece gets the next bailout payment it will only buy a little more time.

Is it fair that Greece and her people must suffer such indignity? Is it fair that the citizens of Germany and the stronger EU members must raise taxes to bail out their Southern neighbors? Nothing but further strife and pain can come of continuing this failed experiment. The Euro-Elite must finally question their assumptions and address the real problem and integrate fiscal and monetary policy within a single entity: either by acquiescing control to a pan-European central entity (e.g. Federalism), or by disbanding and restoring each countrys independent currency and central bank. Then at least Greece would be able to control its own destiny. The current situation is unsustainable, and further it is unconscionable to inflict such suffering in the name of some unattainable theory of European unity.

Difficult to see why the Greeks should accept this political or monetary/austerity strip mining of Greece by European and American banking/entrenched wealth interests when there are alternatives which would not gut fiscal/currency powers and humanity/sovereignty of Greece.

There plainly were some allergic to any light of day borrowing/banking practices being done by Athens in lead-up to what is now ailing Greece. When one surveys/views the main players who were doing the giving/taking of this Take/Give Orgy borrowing/loaning story the common,small people of Greece were not the big card players or dice throwers in the grift/graft.

The Germans are not the only heavies in this Greek Tragedy. Some big American players were/are as well. Fancy that. One could perhaps conclude the Euro was set up and sabotaged by monetary forces allied with the Global Dollar Power/Hegemony WashingtonDC seems very set on maintaining. See US $$ Global Hegemony and PetroDollar/Pentagon Power. Who is in. Who is out. See Iraq. See Libya. See Iran.

Creation of the Euro while perhaps solving some European economic zone issues also created or is now creating other problems that Europe’s political/economic contours now seem poorly tooled or capable of doing much about other than monetary/austerity policy/day of reckoning water treading or doing this brutal you drown first stuff the Greeks are now fully experiencing while Europe hopes the drownings will slow or stop.

Greece is not the only part of this Euro vs. Europe story to be sure and as the Euro wobbles and falters from too much structurally poor monetary engineering other European lands and peoples face what Greece and the Greek people are being impaled on now. This then gets back to the US $$ as well. POTUS Obama does not inspire very much belief for doing a stand-up to Wall St. or Big Banking money politics — indeed quite the opposite should be and can be expected from this I Am America’s One Percent POTUS.

Here in the USA we common,small Americans have been taken to the cleaners by Wall Street,Big American Banks and the USG to the tune of hundreds of billion $$ going into the trillion $$ ranges since late 2008 when legit counting and accounting done in light of day is honestly performed.

So — the Obama WH predictably is unscrewing any hooks that could be used to catch some small or large portion of the criminals and crimes Wall St. and the Big Banks surely had coming in aces post mid 2008. How G.W.Bush of Barack Obama — The Pretend D who really is a swell Money Party POTUS. AG Eric Holder is a disgrace. At this point AG Eric Holder likely has more skeletons in the closet than Vincent Price ever faced in any horror film.

So now distressed American homeowners are going to “get” a $25 Billion Banks/Mortgage firms pay-out/pay-off courtesy of Barack Obama’s WH murky Big Bank Settle/Sell Out legal and political Rumba? Wow!! — $25 Billion!!

Well — make that a maybe $$25 billion — nothing is really inked yet.

$$25 billion — after the USG/American Tax Payers shoveled out over what is easily above the $$1 trillion mark ( it is prudent to surmise this number is now above $$2 trillion with all the BackDoor Money hand offs and QE done by the Fed since late 2008 ) to Wall St. gamblers/grifters and Big Bank gangsters. Only $$25 billion? Smells like more of Barack Obama’s famous Loaded Up With False Hope Audacity and Change You Will Not Ever See.

Americans in bad/distressed mortgage straits get to share/split this $25 Billion? Maybe more. Maybe less. Maybe in the final count-out it proves to be all taxpayer money being passed by the USG/Obama WH/Fed thru the Big Banks/Mortgage Game Players which means after being held up by these crookeds Americans are now being played for Real Rubes again by Barack Obama(DINO),AG Eric Holder(Holder) and a D Party run WH to appease One Percent Oligarchists/Ultra Wealthy Barons towards Nov.2012 IOU WH politics.

The Greeks are burning buildings. It is easy to see why they would be.

Odd indeed it is that Americans are not doing some of the same these days.

But then again plenty of Americans willingly play along with the R vs. D political scams conducted 24/7/365/2/4 here in the USA and are willing to believe/pretend this actually matters much to Wealth/Money Party of USA.

“How can they think this will work? “

It works very well for the 1%. Just think of the fire sale going on in Greece for anyone that has some spare cash. Prime property below market value. 21st century feudalism is on the rise. What’s not to love?

It’s not really clear from the article about the vote authorizing the austerity measure. The members who were expelled from voting was not underlined nearly emphatically enough in my humble opinion. It is outrageous that so many members of the Greek parliament were not allowed to vote because it was known that they were going to vote against it.
That is why, or mostly why, the measures passed. If everytime an unpopular bill was passed in the United States, because the congressmen who were against it were not allowed to vote, then there would be an uproar and this would be outlawed. But the interference in the decison making in Greece to basically strangle the Greek people with austerity policies, to turn their own representatives against the people who elected them, knowingly crushing the ability of the Greek people to have any say whatsoever on what they are prepared to stomach in order to remain in the EU, is criminal. The reason they would default is because the debt is not theirs in the first place. It is an unfair debt and structured on the EU policy that allows countries like Greek to share disproportionately in the overall EU indebtedness. It is not fair to force the Greek people to take it on the chin for the oligarchs. It’s disgraceful to reduce Greece, which was once the cradle of classic intellectualism and culture, to a civilization that cannot even feed it’s own children, and puts them in camps, because their parents had to abandon them since they didn’t have enough money to buy food to keep them alive. It’s disgusting.
We here in America will not be happy when our food supply dries up, which could be the case in a few months from now, because the same oligarchs who are allowing Greek children to starve will allow our children to starve.
That is if any of us are still standing once Barack Obama manages to trigger off thermonuclear World War Three. He is utterly ruthless, judging by the Fast and Furious thing, he is prepared to let guns walk into a foreign country and fall into the hands of drug cartels who are known to be ready to take down the Mexican Government, and allow Hezbollah and other undesirables to cross our weakened borden into the US, and now is working in concert with Al Qaeda, the sworn enemy of the US after nine eleven, in Syria to overthrow the Assad government, and closely knit with Israel and it’s leaders who work in concert with MEK a known terrorist group to destablize Iran by organizing them to murder four major Iranian nuclear scientists. He will let the US people die on the border from guns that were supplied directly to Mexican drug dealer cartel memebers, and he will align himself idealogically with known terrorists to fight against Russia and China, which is what is the certain resut of his intervention in Syria and Iran, and today the Saudi led Arab League has passed a resolution that would allow three thousand peace keeping troops into syria. Labrov of Russia says that there must be a cease fire in effect before any peace keeping can start, and also there has to be agreement for the peace corps to come into Syria, from the leadership of Syria. This is not what they agree to now, so if the Peace keepers were to start going into Syria, it would in actuality be an invasion. It is widely reported that Obama and Hillary clinton were ready to have NATO troops go in as they did in Libya, and that they are allying themselves with Al Qaeda now and the Somalian terrorist group fighters to cause mayhem for Assad now.
Obama is allied with Al Qaeda and MEK by association with Israel, that is the president of the United States is now in bed with two terrorist groups, Al Qaeda and the MEK. We have a law just passed by Obama, that outlaws those US citizens who are found to be connected with and working with directly or indirectly, any terrorist organization, to be arrested by the US military, and thrown into prison without recourse to a lawyer.
Barack Obama tells us he is a US citizen, and he has opening confessed his position regarding Syria and Iran, and is knowing involved with Alqaeda and MEK in this respect, so hasta la vista amigo. Hershey kisses for days, it’s appropriate, tomorrow’s Valentines Day. Chocolate city is melting the heat is being turned up……………….. time to get out of the kitchen Mr President Sir, the pot is boiling over…………. too many cooks are spoiling the broth……………………

We need to have Glass Steagall reinstated globally. That would shut down Wall Street, which means that Barack Obama’s piggy bank would not be filled to the brim any longer. The too big to fail banks would be under bankruptcy protection and there would not longer be the oligarchs money protecting Obama from being impeached or legally removed from office by the cabinet invoking the 25th amendment section 4, both actions that would get him relieved of his duties, and the drive to remain in bed with Al Quada, our sworn enemy in syria, and MEK who is closely linked with Israel our ally, would be elbowed by the citizens of the US.
No president of ours would be permitted to work in concert with terrorists and provoke a thermonuclear war that would certainly destroy civilization worldwide, killing billions of people too.

We cannot allow this state of affairs to continue any longer.
We have to have Glass Steagall reinstated.
We need to open the Third National Bank.
We need to have congress start uttering ccredit to be issued by the new Bank in the form of currency money for grand projects that will take generations to complete, and will put all our people back to meaningful work.
We have to create our future, otherwise the oligarchs will be creating it and that would not be acceptable.

Yes, Greece can be worse, and likely will be. They are about to run out of other people’s money, and they have no real wealth of their own. This is the moment the slacker relative is told to move out of the basement, even if he ends up homeless on the street. It won’t be a Zimbabwe experience, but closer than you now imagine.