" Come with me through the streets of Athens"

It's easy to compare the EU to global warming...
...both declared 10% have to pay, and 90% get paid

...and then took a vote

Here comes the revolution, kids.

The music is still playing but there aren't enough chairs left.

Take a goood look at it - this is Ontario and Quebec after the Unions and their puppet government are done looting the public purse.

Greece is surreal . . .

http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/23/modern-myths-may-prove-greeks-undoing/

Because Euroland is so smart, so progressive.

Occam said: "...this is Ontario and Quebec after the Unions and their puppet government are done looting the public purse."

Nope. This is a description of downtown Hamilton RIGHT NOW. TODAY. The former beating heart of Canada's industrialization, The Place Where It All Happened, is a wasteland of busted factories and boarded up businesses, and it has been that way for twenty years now.

Everything from socks to Studebakers to steel to rail cars used to be made in Hamilton. Now there's pretty much nothing left. Its dead. The town is dead. To the point where everything worth talking about has moved up onto the Mountain, leaving downtown to the rats. Four legged and two.

What everyone is terrified of is that Mississauga and Toronto will shortly be the same way. And if we keep going in the direction we are, it will be. I give it ten years max without a major change in direction.

Check this out.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-22/war-gaming-greek-euro-exit-highlights-hazards-in-46-hour-weekend.html

Maybe if Greece decides to go back to the drachma, they could wait for a long weekend instead of a regular one. Looks like they will need the extra time.

Athens:

Germany should pay to keep the whole racket going by bailing out the improvident and the uncompetitive.

After you run out of other peoples money,
they should also be blamed.

-

More taxes on the rich!

President Obama..

Further to the link above...

"Greece may have only a 46-hour window of opportunity should it need to plot a route out of the euro.

That’s how much time the country’s leaders would probably have to enact any departure from the single currency while global markets are largely closed, from the end of trading in New York on a Friday to Monday’s market opening in Wellington, New Zealand, based on a synthesis of euro-exit scenarios from 21 economists, analysts and academics.

Over the two days, leaders would have to calm civil unrest while managing a potential sovereign default, planning a new currency, recapitalizing the banks, stemming the outflow of capital and seeking a way to pay bills once the bailout lifeline is cut. The risk is that the task would overwhelm any new government in a country that has had to be rescued twice since 2010 because it couldn’t manage its public finances. "

Phantom is right, and so is Boris Johnson.

It is time to read Atlas Shrugged again.

Don't forget the massive damage spending trillions on renewables has caused.

While I'm not sure if Fred is using sarcasm or not, it is plain to see that the "progressives" or, more appropriately, trade unionists, still believe that further stimulus is called for.

This article mentions a North/South bisection. While I would like to see this fleeting concept mapped out, it surely signals the inevitable collapse of the EU, the Euro, and turmoil for monies pegged to it.

Greenspan and all Keynesians will go down in history as idiots.

The angle being played by France and Italy is fiscal union and the issue of Euro bonds to help stabilize the Euro banking system. Germany is the key as it is one of the few with a credit rating left. But don't you know that Germany benefits the most from EU trade? That could be laughable considering the generational depression they are headed into. The German accountants have to be working the calculators as to the benefit of cutting lose from the EU and throwing in with the Russians. Technologically they are far in advance of most EU countries anyway. They will still sell into those markets. Russia offers a market, cheap labour and resources. Why not?

Euro bonds with Germany being the guarantor will not succeed. The Euro culture is breed on not doing anything more than necessary and looking for the free handout. Besides all this Britian will never agree to fiscal union.

..and historians will write : Greece that's where everything started.....again. The problems are systemic and global. The state as we know it, framed in "social-democratic" manner has seen its prime time. Blaming the monetary system alone is shortsighted when not accounting for underlying political structure. Sooner or later same phenomenons will come To Canada where Euro is not the problem.
The solution: split, regroup and arm. Of course no leader addicted to central command and concentrated on "here and now" will give such order nor it would be supported by many people who are stuck in their time limited knowledge and imagination bordered by local experience. The bonus problem is an aging society fighting tooth and nail to hold to the past.

As a former Hamiltonian I endorse Phantom's assessment 100%.

But, but... these are the smartestest people in the world. They know better than us schlubs.

And if you disagree, SHUT UP!

The Euro Project will lead us to our glorious future! That what all our EU plans and projections and computer simulations show us. Trust us! We are the most brilliant people in Brussels Europe.

They are smarter than you.

/sarc

Really doesn't look that much better on this side of the pond.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/22/congress-staring-over-edge-of-fiscal-cliff/

The Greeks need to leave or the Germans need to leave. One or the other. There needs to be a major currency adjustment and it cant happen while both are in the same currency.

The only hope for Greek redemption lay in bankruptcy quite frankly. The conseqeunces of which are harsh for many, in Greece and outside. But accept that the money wont be paid, take the loss and MOVE FORWARD

Phantom: 'What everyone is terrified of is that Mississauga and Toronto will shortly be the same way.'

---

Just got back from a couple of business trips to TO and one thing that strikes me (excuse the pun) at the airport is "where are the white people".

Not being bigoted per se, but this thought hit me last trip.

Then downtown TO the metro types are everywhere, I had a really hard time thinking they weren't of a different persuasion if you get my drift. I know sounds bigoted again, but that's the path my daughter has chosen, and I still love her.

However wrong is not right.

The time for Greece to default has come and gone. The last two years has gutted their economy completely. They should have done as Iceland did.

You will see people sitting on cardboard, heads down, hands out, or pushing trolleys full of scrap metal.

The new green economy and its resulting jobs! Paging Dalton MacGuinty!

Ken said: "It is time to read Atlas Shrugged again."

Hamilton is what it looks like when Atlas already shrugged twenty years ago, Ken. Used to be industry, now there's Wallmart and McDonald's. And the welfare office, of course. John Galt packed up and left in the 1980s.

Truthfully, I think Hamilton never recovered from the Jimmy Carter recession. Everybody with any intentions to make it moved out, everybody else kind of went along until the big companies either went out of business or moved to North Carolina and then China. IMHO the thing that finally killed downtown Hamilton was Eaton's going under in '99. That was the last straw that broke the camel's back.

Now we get to see the same show played out in Europe. No more two hour lunches and four hour workdays, I guess.

John Brooks, observation of Reality(tm) is not bigotry. Toronto is more racially divided by neighborhood than anybody wants to admit. And yes, those who swish are definitely concentrated down town.

it's not just Europe's economy that's foundering but at least in Egypt the tourist 'guides' and trinket salesmen can take solace in knowing that after the islamic brotherhood takes power, they won't have to worry about that anymore...all the tourist attractions and archaeological sites will have been flattened as 'unislamic' so they won't have to worry about being out of that line of work and can go back to scratching a living in the sand in between bouts of pushing their foreheads into it...because tourists won't be rushing back to places where 99% of the politicians and the populace are calling for their deaths as infidels...

good read at the site...

http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/at-egypt-s-step-pyramid-vendors-wait-for-tourists-1.1302246

Saqqara - On the road to Egypt's Djoser step pyramid at Saqqara there's not a trace of a tourist anywhere, and a handful of trinket and souvenir salesmen sit on a metal railing hoping for a lucky break.

The uprising that overthrew former president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 dealt a serious blow to Egypt's vital tourism sector, and a year on, visitors have been slow to return to this key archaeological site south of Cairo.

“After January 25, tourism stopped. There's no more work,” laments Saad Darwish, who sports around a dozen of the baseball caps he has for sale, one atop another, on his head.

In ordinary times, around 1 000 tourists a day would be flocking to Saqqara, one of the oldest and richest of Egypt's many archeological sites.

But these days the numbers range from a handful to about 200, according to vendors here.

Right you are Ken and Phantom:

'It is time to read Atlas Shrugged again.'
Posted by: Ken (Kulak) at May 23, 2012 10:42 AM

It appears that Mr. Theil (featured in the post above with a goof from msm) has already made the move; he has established floating Libertarian Islands for like minded people.

For a much grimmer look at what the future could hold, wise people should read Ayn Rand's 'other' story; that of Russia (Soviet Union) in the 1920's. The book is "We the Living" - all the best and brightest die in that book.

Jema54,I just purchased "We the Living" and hope to get around reading it later this summer.

Greed and idiocy do go hand in hand. We are the authors of our destruction. The allegedly progressive EU is holding on to itself by sinews. We can stop out similar fate if we want to.

Ken (Kulak) You will be amazed at how very sad that book is. I was young when I read it the first time and it had a major impact on my philosophy of life. As you are from that end of the world, I think that it will seem less a nightmare, to you, than a real possibility as it does to most naive North Americans. The same things that happened in "We the Living" are happening here but it is easier to ignore that terrible reality than to figure out a way to fight it and stop it.