Money Troubles Take Personal Toll In Greece

New York Times:

It has been one year since Greece avoided bankruptcy when Europe and the International Monetary Fund provided a 110 billion euro ($155 billion) bailout. While no one expected the country to reverse its sagging fortunes quickly, the despair of Greeks like Anargyros D. reflects a level of suffering deeper than anyone here had anticipated.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[Hibba Ali]

08:37 AM on 05/23/2011

http://www.stampedconcretepatios.com/

[Hibba Ali]

08:37 AM on 05/23/2011

I love your blog and your articles. I have bookmarked your homepage for further use, i just wanted to thank you for this great job.
stamped concrete patio

[DanAsta]

09:55 PM on 05/18/2011

This is a thread where, if you know nothing about Greece, you feel free to spout off nonsense. I can tell you that 99% of the so-called facts thrown around are baloney. Go look at real facts such as those provided by Eurostat and the OECD. Face it, you don't know squat about Greece,.

[b525]

12:30 PM on 05/17/2011

It seems like the Greek government may have drifted to the left and become to big, with an aging population to boot.

The U.S. seems to be drifting in the opposite direction, with our government being shrunk to the point that it's ineffective in addressing the needs of 300 million people.

Somewhere between these two extremes is a happy medium.

Remember Goldilocks and the three bears?.....had to fight the right bed.

[imonlyhereforthelaughs]

03:51 PM on 05/16/2011

Can't we just give Greece to Turkey and be done with it?

[biodieselvw]

04:39 PM on 05/16/2011

I don't like any Grease on my Turkey.

[econ1]

02:58 PM on 05/16/2011

"the publicly owned power and train companies has been a bitter disappointment. Those companies, home to powerful unions that protect what some view as thousands of excess workers, remain largely untouched by reforms. "

At some point the drains on the productive sectors become too great to support. The public and supported areas will call for higher drains...but eventually it will be too much and it will be painful to have to reduce the transfers.

I think there are estimates that nearly a quarter of the workers are in the public sector in one manner or another.

[AyeChart]

04:14 PM on 05/16/2011

Hey, America!  Now that we have a clear example of where the union-coddling socialist agenda leads, can we stop this Obamabus and turn it around?

[CologneCitizen]

01:05 AM on 05/17/2011

How come the union-coddling socialist country Germany is a worldwide power in manufacturing, exports and benefits for its citizens ? From childcare, health care or long mandatory paid vacations, we have it all.

[gerald4]

02:45 PM on 05/16/2011

Why should not most Greek citizens be on some government taxpayer supported payroll or some government taxpayer supported contract.

The Greek people do not want to work to create the things that they consume. US citizens don't work to create anything (almost), so why should the Greeks have to work?

Why can't everybody in the world live off of borrowed money and stop working, just like the USA?

All of the industrial nations accept the freshly printed US Tereasury Bonds and US Dollars in return for the things they make for US citizens to consume. Why should US citizens work in some dirty factory to make the things that US citizens consume?

[imonlyhereforthelaughs]

03:53 PM on 05/16/2011

Talk about ignorant. You do realize that American manufacturing employees didn't get together to vote their jobs to be shipped overseas, right?

Kind of like blaming the victim for being rap ed.

[gerald4]

04:14 PM on 05/16/2011

Do you think that maybe the foreign product manufacturers that export consumer products to the USA might have paid US lobbyists to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on wine, food, women, song, vacations, cash, sexual services, corporate jobs for the (unemployable) children/wives/girlfriends of enough of the US senators and US congressmen (and their congressional aids who actually control the members of congress) plus campaign contributions to entice (bribe) enough of our Republican and Democratic US Congressmen and Senators for the past 20 years to create all of these various "FREE TRADE LEGISLATION" to ratify various trade treaties that allowed, caused, and ECONOMICALLY REQUIRED our businesses to take advantage of the lower labor costs, lower electrical energy costs, lower business taxes, lower payroll taxes to pay for health care costs, lower unemployment insurance costs, lower environmental manufacturing costs and other anti-business costs that are not required in various foreign countries with less anti-business laws that are applicable to businesses in the USA?

How do you think that US Government environmental damage liability limits, pharmaceutical liability limits, product liability limits, tax exemption loopholes, agricultural subsidies, and other laws benefiting only a few people were created by our elected US congress and US senate, and then enforced by our elected presidents and their bureaucratic administrators?

[AyeChart]

04:18 PM on 05/16/2011

Another case of trying to shift the blame from the deficit-spending, union-coddling, benefit-providing mismanagement of socialism to anywhere else.

But hey there!  Greece has gone further down the road than the USA.  But don't hit the brakes or we'll run right into the back of your economic bus as we're travelin' fast down that same road. 

The only hope is that we might have enough voters who have learned from Greece's bad example.

Just returned from Greece.  It's quite interesting, quite entertaining, and the people are very nice folks.  But they've been lost to the Marxist socialist mentality for far too long...the disease may be incurable.

[gerald4]

04:29 PM on 05/16/2011

Did the Greek Government ran out of other peoples money to spend on themselves?

[repuglycon]

01:35 PM on 05/16/2011

Economy Causing 'Deep Emotional Shock' For Many In (USA).

[GeorgieMark]

01:03 PM on 05/16/2011

Let's not fool ourselves here,
I keep reading comments on how affluent Greeks avoided paying taxes and how middle class Greeks paid every penny (or drachma). That is not the case!

A year ago Greece's shadow economy (or unreported income) accounted for 25% of its GDP. That compared to the USA which stood at 7%.

Also I shan't tire myself of repeating this over and over again.

Public Sector workers in Greece are approximately 1 million which is staggering if you consider that the country's entire population is 11 million people.
These people on average earn 50% more than their private sector counterparts.
The public sector exploded from the 80s onwards when a given political party in order to get votes created unnecessary work positions.

As for the private sector, well, governments in Greece had provided for them also. Corriere Della Serra, calculated that a lorry travelling from Salonica to Athens Greece costs more than a lorry travelling from Frankfurt Germany to Milan Italy.

These things are unreasonable by any stretch of the imagination and it wasn't just bankers or the really rich who benefited from the Government's profligate spending and corrupted m.o.
Oh sure Goldman Sachs did help Greece masquerade the true size of its budget holes; but Greece had to get money from anywhere possible to keep the corrupt engines running.

And that uber corrupt mechanism is the product of consecutive Greek governments and of the voters who showered them with votes to receive benefits/public jobs.

[Robert SF]

03:32 PM on 05/16/2011

Yes, lots of people in the public sector, but you seem to think that is the CAUSE of the problem instead of the SYMPTOM. Governments start hiring more and more as unemployment goes up. This happens everywhere, even here in the US, and it happens at all three levels (Fed, state, and local). It's not corruption, it's desperation.

There are no jobs. Why can't those four damn words sink in? This is a world-wide crisis. Few countries have unemployment rates under 10%.

[AyeChart]

04:23 PM on 05/16/2011

And you, Robert, have not gone far enough back to find the real cause.  The real cause is government promised too much, taxed too much, and this is what dampened the private economy.  The government's response was a positive feedback circuit which is very bad engineering.  Instead of cutting the size of government, cutting taxes, and letting the private economy grow, they went the Obama/Democratic route.  You recall those people pushing the stimulus bill who used the analogy "we're getting out of recession; now's not the time to take our foot off the gas pedal, we've got to keep stepping on the gas" to promote more spending?  But have they ever noticed that stepping on the gas only spins your wheels, you lose traction, and you stay in the ditch?

These Democratic liberal socialist Marxist "economists" apparently can't drive a car any better than they can advise a president.

But back to Greece and economics and positive feedback circuits--what happens if you have a thermostat that raises the temperature whenever the temperature goes up?  Soon your goose is cooked.

[Michael GE]

06:26 PM on 05/16/2011

Hmmm. I am not trying to contradict you here. I just would like to add some information. Some European economies are getting more and more desperate to find skilled workers. I remember dimly that for example Germany in cooperation with the EU commission is trying to set up an English (and other?) language job database for open opportunities across Europe. Kind of every open job that is reported at the national authorities will be forwarded to that database and translated so that you can applicate from anywhere in Europe.
Last week I saw a report that for example in Spain right now language courses in German language are more than overrun.
What I want to point out: Every European can get a job anywhere in Europe without restrictions. The main disadvantage, if compared for example to the US is obviously the language barrier. But I think even that barrier is getting less of an obstacle. I suppose the majority of Europeans born in the mid- seventies will be able to communicate in English without noteable problems. Hey, it may not sound pretty and - like my writings here at HuPo - have considerable grammatical shortcomings but it will serve the purpose. :)

[sonoffestus]

12:24 PM on 05/16/2011

Maybe Greeks should have been paying their taxes all these years. The Greek population historically has made the avoidence of paying taxes a national sport. Funny, one can cut all you want, but without revenue nothing will change.

[crankyCrackPot]

01:17 PM on 05/16/2011

Pretty much sums it up.

[AyeChart]

04:26 PM on 05/16/2011

Have you considered that a rational person avoids onerous taxation?  That you can't get tax-blood out of a turnip?  That people wouldn't avoid taxes if they were not so onerous and were sensible and that there was a sense that some benefit derived from paying the taxes?  Overpromising and overtaxing are the two Greek socialist Marxist Democratic errors.

[vobox3343]

12:12 PM on 05/16/2011

Looking at Greece, we can understand and appreciate President Obama for doing those things which averted the depression. And understanding what the Republicans are trying to do, should cause us discomfort. Whoa.

[jwoww]

12:21 PM on 05/16/2011

all obama did was throw bad money after bad projects. the economy is not in a strong recovery and now that the fed money has run out, the pain will start to set in. We are seeing that now with inflation, especially at the grocery store and gas pump.

[AyeChart]

04:31 PM on 05/16/2011

Sad, but true.  Who were the fools who voted for Obama?  He promised that his policies would raise gasolien prices.  He promised to wage class warfare on the wealthy even if it did not improve tax revenue.  Who would have voted for such?

[VA RT]

11:51 AM on 05/16/2011

I wonder if the IMF will bail out the USA when we fail to raise our debt ceiling??

[Michael GE]

12:01 PM on 05/16/2011

I suppose this depends: Is the US representative at the IMF a Republican or a Democrat? I don't know. But if it's a Republican, he would surely veto a bailout for reasons of un-americaness and un-Hayekiness. :)

[VA RT]

11:50 AM on 05/16/2011

It's all coming here folks, in the not too distant future....

[vippy]

11:33 AM on 05/16/2011

Read in a foreign paper that Greece has great wealth, still!  Don't just jump to conclusions just yet.
 

[Aikaterina]

11:11 AM on 05/16/2011

The troubles in Greece are quite similar to those here in the US: high unemployment, millions losing their jobs, homes, benefits and life-savings, all due to greed, corruption, manipulation and recklessness of those at the top tiers (bankers and politicians), who keep their fortunes and lavish lifestyles, while imposing harsh "austerity" measures on their victims.

The majority of wage earners (in Greece or here) pay taxes out of their paychecks, some of which are ostensibly dedicated to benefits such as unemployment, pensions, health care, etc. Average wage earners can't hide their income or shelter themseles from paying taxes, while the elite manage to elude their fair (proportionate) share, yet enjoy the privileges of making decisions about others (for whom they deem any safety net as unnecessary or wasteful), even though their decisions-actions brought about the debt-deficit and collapse of their economy.

As with much of the US meltdown, Goldman-Sachs helped engineer Greece's massive debt and mask (cover it up) via "creative" accounting-legal maneuvers. The US didn't investigate or indict any G.S. executives on criminal charges. Perhaps the Greek government will file a lawsuit against them.