The Greeks Get It

yea your right keep paying your fucken taxes asswipe so i can keep getting the GI bill to pay for my school, books, and housing all on your dime mother fucker! oh but waite if you were to get off your lazy ass and put your life on the line in service and protection of this country you can be a leech like me, A MEXICAN AMERICAN.

But what was the end result of Mai 68? The movement resulted in the victory of the Gaullist side in the elections that came right after. True, it brought about change, but I don't think it brought about any change that could not have come through peaceful means.

In the end, they failed and society rejected them. The movement was completely against the establishment, but what is supposed to happen after they overthrow the government? What then? I wonder what would have happened in France had that movement actually succeeded in overthrowing the government.

After the overthrow of government then comes anarchy, and out of anarchy usually emerges despotism because people have an intense reaction to the anarchy and violence and give in to anyone who can promise law and order and fill the vacuum.

If those that feel that my lifestyle is a danger to their liberty and think that the only way to win their liberty will be to deny mine, then they better be prepared to encounter resistance on my part as well.

They have every right to fight for their revolution, but they will not find me among their ranks.

Why should I risk what I have now for the unknown? And for that matter why should the majority of the people in this country?

I came from a country where we put that to risk, and everything went terribly wrong.

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme. You have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than becoming rich in the U.S. (statistically speaking)

And we replaced it with a totalitarian government. Now we are 100 times worse off than before. Not that I am for the man that was there before.

I am for his overthrow, but at the cost of destroying Cuban society. Cuba is in chains...

People this country ARE rich. The middle class in this country live in a luxury not seen in many parts of the world. Perhaps not filthy rich, but certainly prosperous affluent lives.

France certainly did so. But it was an inch away from anarchy if the movement had actually succeeded in toppling the government. There were some very radical elements in the movement.

Nonviolence worked for Ghandi and MLK.

That was a different century when those tactics had a chance to work. They won't let it work again, you can take that to the bank.

Sometimes you have to get loud and push back.

Are you sure you actually read those quotes? Even the Dalai Lama believes it is ok to use violence in self defense. Ghandi himself said that pacifism was misunderstood because he was ANYTHING but passive. Pacifism does not mean rolling over and letting someone rape and murder your family. Pacifism is about exhausting ALL tools before war and violence are used. In every single instance, I see war and violence being the first tool used. Yet the claim is made that pacifism does not work...how would you know?

Exactly

Dude look at the constitution. WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT!! WE ARE DOING THIS TO OURSELVES!

Spot on shanklinmike, spot on.

...because lack of government is soooo much better. The logic train still fails to leave the station. SSDD.

You're right that 120% of GDP is insane though. Half that much is insane. They're going to have to default on at least some of it. I guess the only way they could get people to lend them money was to just start lying like hell which only dug them deeper. That's some serious hard core incompetence.

um.. Greece not USA. We have recently had our own little bout with incompetent administrations. though.

Take a look at the photo above. That's extremist.

Are you kidding, you have no idea, crystalman has more comprehension and understanding of European issues in his thumbnail than you do in the entirety of your body. . . your mind was excluded because there is no evidence that it is in use.

communist infiltrators

War and violence are always the first tool in the box everyone reaches for. Perhaps it is time we did an inventory of the tool box so that we might understand we have more tools than we thought.

Yeah, we've not used the nukes yet. . .

You sure about that?

I'm not sure you have studied history.

If we don't clean house, both houses, in Washington come November, you better believe we are headed down that path. Everyone of them that voted for the TARP, the stimulus, or Obamacare deserves to be run out of town on a rail, as soon as possible

Spoken like someone who has never had to kill their own dinner. It is often neither a an easy, pleasant, or reliable process.

well admittedly I have never killed my own dinner while naked. Though I suspect the aforementioned qualifications may apply to McDonald's as well. I am in no hurry to get my junk anywhere near a deep fat fryer.

So the banks have no blame?

I disagree. IMHO it wasn't the homeowners, they weren't the ones either driving or controlling the market. The housing market was being driven by the lending market. It was all about cheap money for anyone. That was being driven by an uncontrolled securities system. The problem was a new computer program came out that was effectively a CAD program for designing securities products, and it was so unbelievably good that it was capable of designing securities that litterally no one could understand. This wouldn't necessarily have been crippling, except that douche bag bankers learned that it could be used to hide the quality of the land they were buying, so they could buy a crappy loan on the cheap, tart it up by carefully mixing parts of it with thousands of others, and effectively sell it to someone else as a better loan than it actually was.

This still wouldn't have been crippling, except the federal government, who was supposed to be controlling the market weren't doing their job either. The whole process was generating great economic numbers which the administration needed to keep itself in office so there developed a behavior of willful ignorance regarding the whole thing.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Bloomberg is a financial news group. You really expect them to tell their customers they are useless douche bags that screwed up the country? Yeah, people will really keep buying their stuff if they do that. Bloomberg is no more likeluto be accurate on this subject than "Cosmo" is about "what men really want"want" Cosmo can't even let real menwrite those things because it's not about what they actually want as much as it is about what their customers wish they wanted.

I was in Greece 3 weeks ago. The people there are poor and unemployed. Most Greeks work for themselves all year round. They are not on vacation. They work harder than anyone I know, including myself. The Greeks put their trust into their government, but the government failed them and is now trying to fix their problems by putting hardships on the people of Greece. The Greeks are showing the entire world that we don't need to blindly follow and trust governments and corporations that will fail us. They inspire us to stand up for ourselves and not to be controlled by governments or corporation.

The Joseph Steiglitz article supports rather than refutes my comment.
I'm actually kind of a Steglitz fan (Both of them. There is also a famous photographer by the same name.). I love the term "free market fundamentalists" It very much jibes with my concept that libertarianism is actually a Utopian religion rather than a school of economics.

Perhaps there is a confusion in my statement. (assuming of course you are countering my reply to your comment, )
I am merely stating that Bloomberg cannot be considered an uninterested party when apportioning blame in the financial scandal for the reasons I described. If you are talking about a different comment I will be happy to further reply.

To the extent that they gave loans to people who did not deserve them and then went on to securitize those loans yes they do shoulder some of the blame but I saw people lining up to buy condos and houses and were willing to pay $30,000 more than what someone else paid a few days earlier. Buyers worked themselves into a frenzy, banks do not control housinfg prices or what people are willing to pay.

I remember seeing stories of homeowners refinancing so that they could put in a pool or replace their kitchens. They were using their homes like piggy banks. Banks can't make loans unless people are coming through their doors.

So are you telling me that the lenders were going into people's homes and forcing a loan down their throats? Are you telling me that banks were forcing people to buy 10 condo's using their credit cards for downpayments? I am not saying that the banks carry none of the blame but you can't force a loan on a person who knows they can't afford it.

You may have been in Greece 3 weeks ago but I have a friend who has been living their for years and he says they are idiots. I am more inclined to believe a person who lives there. If the Greeks worked dso hard they wouldn't be in this predicament. The fact that they are destroying their own infrastructure is even more telling. Greece has a relatively small economy and yet they spent like drunken sailors without a plan to pay back the money, now they have to pay the piper and the people don't like it. This violence is hardly the solution to their problems, they need to accept the fact that they aren't as rich as some of the other nations in Europe and start spending far less money.

Yes, sub prime lenders did in fact do that. They are called predatory lenders and they insisted that people could pay for the homes. Sub prime lenders did everything they could to get a person into a home, even lying to the borrower. Banks don't care because they make money whether you default or not. YES, the borrowers share as much blame as the banks and lenders, but the banks deserve JUST as much.

No I am not saying that. That is the same argument drug dealers and loan sharks use. You are trying to pass the liability to a non controlling party. The bank is the one who controls lending. They have the data, the final decision, and all the power. That is the way the system is set up. It is the responsibility of the BANK to determine if the borrower is capable of handling the debt. If the borrower cannot it is the
BANK, that takes the hit. The banks found a way to pass off the liability of bad loans (notice they are called bad loans not bad borrows) and promptly stopped caring whether the loans they were making were any good or not.

Yeah, well I'm fighting for my good life too. And watching them protest while my stock portfolio I'm depending on to retire someday goes down because of their excesses doesn't exactly inspire my sympathy.

Your right, the stock market shouldn't be a gamble. It should be regulated so you can retire some day. So we all can retire some day. We deserve it, all of us. I honestly hope you farewell.

Your stocks are going down because of THEIR (the greek people's) excesses?

Jesus Christ, do you actually examine the bullshit you spout? Do you know a thing about economics?

You realize this is a Sovereign Debt Crisis which was covered up for years by a U.S. Corporation (Goldmah Sachs) hiding their debt from the EU and rating agencies through complex financial instruments (Credit Default Swaps, Synthetic Collatoralized Debt Obligations, etc).

You realize investors holding the Greek bonds which are blowing up and aren't able to be repaid without this "loan".... You realize when they were looking at various countries Bond markets to invest in.. they saw say, the U.S. at 4%, Germany at 3.5%, etc etc... all the way to Greece at a higher percent.. maybe 8%.

The investors are paid more to take on more RISK. They did not do their due diligence., they were wrong in thinking it was a safe investmest, so they should LOSE money. A haircut. Extended time to repay the bond. Lower Coupon-Price. Lower-facevalue.

But no. Instead the investors (read:banks) can NOT take a single penny of loss on their investment. They want 100 cents on the dollar (just like Goldman Sachs did when AIG went bankrupt..how soon we forget).

This is a sham. They greeks, however lazy they might be, don't deserve to have a depression forced upon them because investment banks and german/french banks don't want to take a haircut on their FAILED risky investment into Greece.

_________

Even if you dont understand/believe all this, let me ask you one simple question:

WHY SHOULD YOU GIVE A SHIT WHAT IS GOING ON IN GREECE... what do you care if they are as lazy as you think they are, how could that effect you?

The Answer is because your 401k account, US BANKS, other investment banks, other European central banks DIDNT DO THEIR DUE DILIGENCE.

They made bad investments, and if your company has its 401k or retirement funds into a bank who invested in these BONDS, thats the fault of the investor.

was this sarcastic? I hope so.

The stock market shouldn't be a gamble? What the hell do you think it is? Set up for Joe Six Pack? Its a giant casino. The game is rigged. You want to see what will happen to your "safe retirement accounts" in about 5 years time? Do some research on what happened in Argentina, during their deflationary collapse.

+^d

I said, “It should be regulated.” Do you have a drivers license? Do you have auto insurance? Do you have to pass a smog test and have your car registered? You are regulated. Does the farmer, the packer and the grocer have to follow certain sanitation rules? They are regulated. The stock market should also be regulated, so it is no longer a gambling casino, and your investments, NOT BETS, are secured.

Ah, so those banks and investors forced Greece to borrow more money than they could pay back, is that it? That sounds as stupid as saying the housing bubble burst because lenders were forcing people to buy houses they couldn't afford. They knew they couldn't afford it, but they borrowed it anyway. But I forgot, personal responsibility is a thing of the past.

yeah but if wishes were horses beggars would ride, as the saying goes

All financial investment follows risk vs.reward format almost by definition of their function. If the risk is low the return drops as well. If there is no risk in the stock market it would return the same rate as a treasury bill.

"Your stocks are going down because of THEIR (the greek people's) excesses?"

I think you may have misinterpreted his comment. I read it as the Greek government's excesses.

"Time to rethink the “free” market." Truth!

Lower risks, lower profits, higher security. Sounds good to me! If you want to gamble, go ahead, but not with my money. I have no problem with high risk investments, as long as they cannot take the rest of us down with them. Regulate, regulate, then gamble yourself into poverty if you want. But I would suggest a social system that guarantees you a roof, food, medical care, and a modest retirement, no matter what. You know, Human Rights! After all, you deserve peace like anyone else. :)

so get out of the stock market and buy t-bills instead. That's what they are for. If you are risk averse you settle for a lower return (frequently less than half btw)

I'm not getting how someone is playing the market with your money though. You are the one buying stock.

the second half of your argument goes into the whole rights vs. entitlements debate which needs a whole other thread.

for you and anyone else in high school that feels they are getting the educational shaft, I suggest you look up some book lists for college classes from a major university. Start with the intro classes, just to be sure. Just read as much as you can now, to save yourself a lot of heart ache from having to correct inaccurate or incomplete info given at the high school level. If you do that, I don't think there will be anything that can stop you... oh, and always improve your writing skills and vocab; helpful to use classics like Dostoevsky, any of the beats, and just keep trucking from there.

It is sad that the only real way to get an education is to do it yourself, but trust me you will not be disappointed in the years to come if you put in the time now.

actually US taxes are incredibly low compared to almost all other fully developed nations. it's one of the reasons tha aforementioned public education is so shitty. Rich people send their kids to private prep schools that are much much higher in quality.

sorry doublepost. There is something very wrong with my internet connection atm.

Top what? Top tax rates or top academic scores?

If it's academic scores, It sounds like we are agreeing with each other about everything except how high the taxes are in the US compared to other countries. I am saying that as much as the right may bitch about it, american taxes are really very low compared to other developed nations.

If it's taxes I don;t know how you got those numbers, but even assuming they are right, you are picking countries that have basically never been to war. Try a few European union nations or maybe Australia or Canada and see how you stack up.

Yeah? And?

I will stand in the pass.

In my opinion, the moment we resign ourselves to the idea that there is no one in government that is really trying to represent the people and when we resign ourselves to the futility of social action by peaceful means we leave only the alternative of class struggle, which will always result in the ruin of society.

I think it is a cynical conclusion we must resist coming to... the alternatives are not very good. The best way is to demand and lead in social action.

Yet, the fact of the matter is, we've had the parties in power go back and forth, back and forth, yet none of the core issues are met for either side.

You have gotten my stance completely wrong if you think I am blaming this on bad politicians and that I think we "don't have anyone really trying to represent us in gov." I know we do, but I also know that they are confined to doing what they can in the system that is setup. The fact of the matter is, with the way campaigns are financed, it is ludicrous to assume that those currently gaining the most (money and power) from the status quo aren't going to be rewarded, and the middle class/working class who can't afford to have 5 lobbyists to each member of congress for their issue of choice will have anything done for them.

The system is broken. It doesn't work. Big issues are unable to get solved. Debt is now to the point where it is mathematically impossible to repay it in this country. Wars are waged that the population are against (on the pretense of lies), and what do they do about it? "Double down" , "bail out". Kick the can down the road...

Wake up, they are looting the system. They being the financial and corporate interests that are no longer bound by nation states.