Former Belgian PM, Guy Verhofstadt, had some candid things to say to Greek PM, Alexis Tsipras:
Verhofstadt’s words were very clear. Whether Tsipras and the Greek people are interested to act upon them is much less certain.
Former Belgian PM, Guy Verhofstadt, had some candid things to say to Greek PM, Alexis Tsipras:
Verhofstadt’s words were very clear. Whether Tsipras and the Greek people are interested to act upon them is much less certain.
the one comment that sums it up is that there is too much government consuming what little wealth there is. Canada has far too many government departments and employees at all levels, federal, provincial and municipal. eventually Canadians will find themselves screwed like the greeks.
Dear Kathleen Wynne,
Please take note. Some of this applies to you.
Tsipras did not create the crisis, that goes back at least as far as Papandreou, but he surely has exacerbated it.
The problem is that the EU/ECB/IMF cannot permit Greece to leave the euro zone or EU. Those choices are legally only Greece’s. There is no mechanism to impose Grexit despite all the ranting. So, Greece could (has has) default and retain the euro and stay in the EU.
The worst outcome for the EU/ECB/IMF is Grexit from both. Empires wax, stagnate and wane. The EU grew rapidly since its birth as the ECSC in the early 50’s, but in recent years it has stagnated. The last additions to its territory occurred with the breakups of Yugoslavia and the USSR a generation ago. Since then its attempt to enrol Ukraine resulted in a proxy war with Russia that has destroyed Ukraine. Its attempt to install a puppet government in Libya resulted in utter chaos, ruin for the Libyan people and the expansion of ISIS in North Africa.
The loss of Greece would be an actual reduction in the size of the EU. The other PIIGS are also ripe for exit, and even the UK is a possible candidate to leave. Every European country has a significant and vocal minority that would prefer independence. If Greece leaves, other will eventually follow. Mayb the EU future is once again the ECSC.
Yes, good words indeed. I particularly liked the point about the nomination of 13 party members to sinecures.
Here in Ottawa, it is always interesting when I meet people, 2/3 of the time they’ll be government workers. Last one I spoke to was a manager in the department of something and social development.
“Thank God that we have a department of social development, otherwise just think, we’d have no society”. Fortunately the wine arrived to rescue the situation.
The problem is political parties using government largesse to get elected and the subsequent distribution of spoils. It is endemic, the only solution is the restriction of the purview of government.
What a blathering blowhard this stinking hypocrite is. These guys all have 20/20 vision except when they look in the mirror. It’s foolish to believe that the people of Greece were not railroaded by socialist bureaucrats and their corporate fascist confederates. These creeps have every intention on enslaving everyone. Open your mind and eyes and you’ll see it plain as day
Here’s what Nigel Farage had to say about what real happened.
https://youtu.be/94UcyJnRcGU
I hope he goes back to Greece and says “f%$k you” then Greece finally collapses exits the euro zone the cards come down and eu is finished then we can start to rebuild.
As always brain-dead liberals think that goverment can solves all the natons problems but the trouble is goverment cuases all the problems especialy with Obama the Fink running it all
Pure, utter unadulterated drivel. Farage’s point that the Euro was done as a Mitterand-Kohl stealth project is entirely true. But it has no bearing whatsoever on the fundamental corruption that underlies Greek government and financial structures. Verhofstadt is entirely correct that Greece has never made the slightest effort to reform its economy and its entitlement privileges, and that is what lies at the root of this problem. Your blathering about banksters is mere noise signifying nothing relevant.
I find it interesting that in this case you want to deny personal responsibility and blame external forces who somehow tricked the hapless Greeks into all this.
Belgian mouth piece can go crawl back up his fascist butt. Brussels was responsible for the irresponsible banking/economic practices which were used to bribe the lesser productive or reluctant nations into their Euro soviet. Reap the harvest of your acquisitive planting.
I prefer Nigel Farage’s take on the Greek default:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94UcyJnRcGU
“Here in Ottawa, it is always interesting when I meet people, 2/3 of the time they’ll be government workers.”
In all fairness, Ottawa is not only the national capital, it is a purpose-built capital.* So it stands to reason than a considerable percentage of its work force would be employed by the Federal Government.
“Thank God that we have a department of social development, otherwise just think, we’d have no society”.
Ah yes, the tail’s perspective on the purpose of the dog. A common public service conceit.
* Like Washington or Canberra but unlike London or Paris which, though capitals, are also cities in their own right and have large populations neither connected with nor involved in government administration.
Exactly, and Nigel had it right.
Verhofstadt I suspect is also a socialist as are most of the EU parliamentarians and his words about Greece reducing the size of government ring somewhat hollow as the EU is itself a bloated bureaucracy. He also went on about democracy in Greece while much of the EU government’s workings are not democratic in any way and controlled by the bureaucrats Van Rompey and the Marxist Barasso. The EU parliamentarians get to decide what is for lunch today and hand out largesse to buy constituents, much like Canadian parliamentarians.
oldwhiteguy is right about the size of government at all levels in Canada, especially at the federal and provincial levels. As an aside, in the last few elections in Ontario and Alberta, we have openly seen the power of the various government unions to skew the elections, and the unions are gearing up to try and make a major impact on this fall’s federal election.
I am constantly barraged by offers to finance or refinance my debt so that I can buy
something. Do I do it, no! The Greeks are not innocent in this matter. They have created a first world social infrastructure in a borderline 3rd world country. You can dress it up however you wish but the bottom line is the Greeks took the money the same way the
sub-prime borrowers did in the USA mortgage fiasco. Are financial illerates running the entire globe? Blaming Germany for Greece is farcical. Greece is no different than the other PIGG’s. It is all about entitlement and political expediency.
There are constituencies in this world that have advantages which will likely never be surmounted by other areas. Geopolitics explains so much. Progressivism wants to ignore these realities and it leds to situations like Greece. The Olmpics held in Greece a few years ago was a case in point. They spent billions of $’s they did not have to put on a pretentious show for the world. The fact that it was a huge failure had no serious fallout.
IMO the question to ask is how any pretense of a middle class will exist as incomes are reduced by automation and the movement of capital to maximize return. Easy to criticize capital but it is the only process which minimalizes socialization of process which in turn allows the carpetbaggers access to that capital. My town that used to have 2000 workers in forestry now has 500. That is the bottom line.
Heh,
Isn’t it interesting how the Belgian socialist comes to grips with reality?
Sez its ok for him to say the things he sez, because he is a socialist.
It would be completely unacceptable if someone like Nigel Farrage said those same things because according to the socialists/fascists, Farrage is “far right”.
To circumvent him being called “far right” he points to the “far right” to the left of him and lets everybody know that he is not like them.
Pretty convoluted.
Heh.
Ps. Just to note for some that would point out that he is a liberal democrat, ok you got me there, good for you.
Canada could start with de-legalizing CUPE.
The situation in Greece is analogous to the Mr. Creosote sketch from Monty Python. Mr. Creosote is the Greek economy, John Cleese is Germany and the diners are the remaining EU country members.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aczPDGC3f8U
A population of 11 million and 800,000 government workers, wow.
My favorite part is at 5:20 when Verhofstadt states that the Syriza party is still getting money from the Greek government and for once Alexis Tsipras is seen without his imbecilic grin.
Only Nixon could go to China, and all that.
CT, it seems to me that it is the lender whose responsibility it is to make certain that the borrower can afford to repay the loan. Who has the problem if the borrower defaults?
And you blame sub-prime borrowers for taking the money offered them? Don’t be daft. Again, it’s the lender’s responsibility to ensure the borrower is creditworthy. But in this case the lenders were criminals. They were lending so that they could package the mortgages and sell them off as AAA investments. And to top it all off, they then placed bets that the mortgage portfolios would default!!
Who is guilty? The poor slob who wants a house and is given a mortgage he cannot afford at the moment, but soon will be able to flip it for a profit because residential property never loses value? Or the pin striped banker who gave the mortgage knowing it was unaffordable but didn’t care because he was going to sell it as a prime mortgage investment and collect on a bet he knew was a certainty?
These bankers are like crack dealers who give away samples to get people hooked so that they can be skinned alive. I have no use for them.
Blame Crash and Occam:
Having watched this video clip, it looks to me that Farage is calling Tsipras’ bluff — who wants the graft to continue (“Nice EU you have there … be a shame if something happened to it”). And Tsipras clearly doesn’t like it.
Farage can be very blunt while also being very subtle. Clever lad.
— Bad News
“it seems to me that it is the lender whose responsibility it is to make certain that the borrower can afford to repay the loan. Who has the problem if the borrower defaults?”
It seems to me that the EU first lent to Greece to keep them in the EU and solvent after the 2008 crash as their main consideration, not to reap a profit. That consideration still holds today but is eroding quickly because of the constant bad faith of the borrower.
“And you blame sub-prime borrowers for taking the money offered them? Don’t be daft. Again, it’s the lender’s responsibility to ensure the borrower is creditworthy. But in this case the lenders were criminals. They were lending so that they could package the mortgages and sell them off as AAA investments.”
This ignores that fact that American banks, which are largely private enterprises, didn’t want to lend to sub-prime borrowers but were forced to do so because of the CRA and accusations of Redlining. Then, since these private enterprises were forced to lend by law and the Federal government, they decided to spread the direct risk to themselves by making lemons into lemonade.
Investors bought so much of the lemonade, which didn’t have enough sugar in it, that it soured the whole financial system.
That risk was forced upon the banks and government regulation forced them to change their lending practices by either throwing out their lending criteria(which they did) or getting out of the mortgage business altogether.(which would have been fine with BJ Clinton et al because then they would have stepped in and had Fanny May and Freddie Mac issueing sup-prime mortgages directly)
If the government hadn’t interfered in private enterprise, none of it would have happened.
Socialism is the criminal there, not capital lending.
@ 12:22, we can only wish, but don’t hold your breath waiting for that.
“Who is guilty? The poor slob who wants a house and is given a mortgage he cannot afford at the moment,”
Yes exactly him and he should flogged for that, thrown out of the house and sold into indentured servitude, spat upon and publicly shunned and despised. Every single subhuman who took a loan he could not pay off and expected to world to bail him out should be mercilessly persecuted until the debt is paid. Mooselimbs are right about this one. Expecting ants to bail out grasshoppers is a height of hypocrisy and immorality.
I asked my son who is currently doing a PHD at McGill what he his thoughts were, his response:
I’ve been reading allot about it and it’s a pretty complicated issue. It seems like much of Greece’s debt was accrued by corrupt governments that channelled much of the nation’s wealth to private individuals. That makes it a little difficult to feel that the Greek people ‘in-general’ deserve to have their economy reduced to rubble. When I was in Greece you could see – even in the touristy areas – that Greeks were suffering and that despite their supposedly generous welfare state, most of them live in apartments that Canadians would find squalid.
Also, and in general, debt crises are not caused by the amount of money owed, but by the creditor’s perception of the debtor’s ability to pay back what they owe. In that respect, debt crises are a question of trust. At the moment, the EU – and notably Germany – is deciding that it doesn’t trust Greece to pay back the money French and German banks lent it. That’s why Germany, the ECB and the IMF are demanding that they be allowed to set the terms for Greece’s fiscal policy – the EU already controls Greece’s monetary policy. Basically they’re saying “look kid, your parents screwed up, you owe us allot of money, and now we own you”. While Greece’s current government is trying to say, “we know we owe you money but we think we can pay you back quicker by spending just a little more, getting people back to work, getting the economy running, rather than cutting all government spending and etc.”. I think Greece’s new government is partially right. Austerity measures employed for the last 5 years haven’t worked. They’ve massively increased unemployment which has cost the state more than its saved. Thanks to austerity Greece has so far been less, not more, able to pay back their debts. If that continues the only way for Germany and France to get their money back would be to force Greece to liquidate their state assets (property, crown-corporations and etc), which is in fact what they’re pushing for. I think this is somewhat similar to a situation in which a bank forecloses on someone’s house, kicks them to the curb and simply cuts its losses.
Whether Greece would recover from that type of thrashing, dust itself off and start again is hard to predict. If the IMF and the EU have their way Greece could simply become another pool of cheap destitute labour for German factories.
On the other hand, trusting Greece to spend its way out of trouble may be like lending the prodigal son his older brother’s inheritance and somehow hoping that he doesn’t waste the second half of the family’s money too. Greece obviously hasn’t proven itself to be fiscally responsible since the second world war, but before the euro they could devalue their currency effectively making it cheaper to pay back debt. Now that the EU’s policies prevent this type of inflationary monetary policy, Greece is stuck (and therefore may have to leave the EU).