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Torquemada
06 Jun 15 16:11
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Date Joined: 27 Apr 12
| Topic/replies: 4,760 | Blogger: Torquemada's blog
Saw a report yesterday that said their health system is operating on 6% of its usual funding!  Now, everyone knows they've largely brought this cash crisis on themselves, but surely things like this can't be allowed to continue, it's inhumane. 

What should be done?  Trouble is, of course, let the Greeks off the debts and all those others in hock will obviously expect the same.  What a mess!  Break the whole lot up and abandon the Euro?
Pause • Switch to Standard View What should be done about Greece?
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Report PatraTheCat • June 6, 2015 5:21 PM BST
Fascinating siuation, rather darkly so for Greece.

My opinion, uninformed though it may be, is that there are ultimately three outcomes:

1. Greece eventually pays its debts off itself.
2. Greece's creditors write off lots of the debt and effectively bail it out.
3. Greece defaults and leaves the Euro.

1 seems very unlikely ("In the highly unlikely event that Greece could generate a 2% or 3% [budget] surplus year-in and year-out without its economy shrinking further (which few economists would anticipate), it would take around half a century for Greek public sector debt to fall to a level regarded as sustainable", according to Robert Peston (http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32989534)

2 seems unthinkable due to the precedent it would set.

So it's 3.
Report Burton-Brewers • June 6, 2015 5:24 PM BST
they'll be ok they've got loads of migrants arriving everyone knows what a boost to the economy they are.
Report alun2005 • June 6, 2015 5:32 PM BST
Indeed B-B.  I haven't heard ONE political/media/lefty pundit telling us (yet) that Greece's problems can be resolved by bringing in 7 million immigrants or more from Somalia.

Did Immigration suddenly become a bad thing then?
Report Foinavon • June 6, 2015 5:47 PM BST
There is a 4th way Patra the cat.
Greece's creditors don't actually write off the debt, they just keep deferring the payments so the debts are neither serviced nor paid. This way they avoid setting a precedent for other debtor nations and theoretically help Greece get back on it's feet.
Report Eeternaloptimist • June 6, 2015 5:51 PM BST
Funnily enough I was thinking a fourth option would be, to use the overused phrase, to find a way of kicking the can down the road again. What Foinavon suggests would seem as likely a scenario as any in the short term but who knows? Certainly not the people of Europe. They will be the last to know.
Report Foinavon • June 6, 2015 6:03 PM BST
German taxpayers wouldn't be happy that's for sure. You work long hours on the production line in the car factory then pay your taxes only to see the money given to the Greeks so that they can keep buying the cars you make.
The Greeks themselves are not renowned for paying their taxes which is part of the reason why they continue to be in hock to the Germans.
Report Foinavon • June 6, 2015 6:06 PM BST
All the thanks they get at the end of the day is to be called Nazis just for wanting their own money back. Laugh
Report Eeternaloptimist • June 6, 2015 6:21 PM BST
The bottom line which Europe cannot address in the short term is that Germans think like and think they are Germans and all the other countries feel a sense of identity with their own homeland and national identity. Consequently, there is no desire to help out their fellow Europeans. In terms of scale the biggest entity people seem able to buy into is a nation and unless Europe can find a way of engendering that sense of nationhood then the north will continue to resent paying to the south and the south will continue to resent the north for needing it. America had to go through a civil war and a couple of centuries of history all within a completely new country for different peoples within the country to accept their need to assist their fellow Americans. It's an exceptionally hard sell for the European elite.
Report numer0ne • June 6, 2015 8:49 PM BST
Bring back slave labor. Have a roulette wheel decide which ones get sold into it. God, do I have to think of everything?
Report Ibrahima Sonko • June 6, 2015 9:30 PM BST
I think they should send in Ed Millaband, he claimed so much a month ago. Seems a no brainer.
Report Eeternaloptimist • June 6, 2015 9:37 PM BST
Puts me in mind of that insurance advert a while ago about turning a calamity into a disaster. Laugh
Report maleuk01. • June 6, 2015 10:55 PM BST
another option, is not to let the greeks retire at 55-57 on full pension.

and those earning actually pay some taxes.

problem sorted. Aint that hard.
Report G1_Jockey_4 • June 7, 2015 12:22 AM BST
German taxpayers wouldn't be happy that's for sure.

fk the germanz.
they owe a few for the world war.

think they should be paying the bubbles back properly and anyone else they fked about with.
Report Eeternaloptimist • June 7, 2015 12:42 AM BST
Nearly a century ago and we are still talking about the war. Laugh
Report G1_Jockey_4 • June 7, 2015 12:45 PM BST
fkn right Laugh

they must never forget
Report mobo • June 7, 2015 2:57 PM BST
we can forget the war  but we will be told never to forget dresden!!!

adolf who!!???
Report mobo • June 7, 2015 2:58 PM BST
and how many of you still haven't apologised for slavery!!??
Report numer0ne • June 7, 2015 3:47 PM BST
you might say slavery still exists (well it does, but I mean in the mainstream)
Report bongo • June 7, 2015 3:58 PM BST
They could stop subsidising agriculture, that would save a few bob.

The only EU country with soil warm enough to grow saffron apparently ( pound for pound one of the world's most expensive herbs ) but do they grow and export any, do they feck. The farmers would rather get paid for not innovating, just like ours. The EU saffron supply all comes from Iran and further east.
Report spellingandgrammarchecker • June 7, 2015 6:36 PM BST
I liked Olivia Neutron Bomb in it.
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