What’s Up in Greece on Feb 21/12? tagged: , , , , , , ,

What’s Up in Greece on Feb 21/12?

Posted by in Very Mix

Difficult to say. After the finance ministers agreed in the early morning hours of Tuesday to give Greece a second bailout worth 130 billion euro, international media hailed “Greece wins second bailout”. At the same time Greeks (the people) started to count the total 240 billions of euros that will have to pay back. Greeks (the government) felt relieved to have saved the country from a disorderly bankruptcy. PM Lucas Papademos said right after the 12-hour marathon Eurogroup meeting, that “this is a day of historical meaning for Greece”.  Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos heralded that the positive decision was taken because of the sacrifices of the Greeks (the people). He also announced that the Greek bond swap (PSI) will be launched today. The massive debt restructuring is expected to be completed by April.

Everything is fine, so let’s go back to work and start earning the money to pay back the huge loan. We could do this, had we have jobs…. For the decades the majority of Greeks will  learn to live in conditions of economic hardship, ridiculous wages and recession, in a country with a collapsed welfare state.

Taxes will stop having a redeeming purpose, they will go to Greece’s lenders.

Even though the country has been ‘saved’, some do not believe in that.

Bus drivers in Athens have a work stoppage today form 11 am to 5 pm.

Fuel dealers demonstrate outside the finance ministry because the Finance Crimes Units (SDOE) fined a heating oil distributor with 202 million euro! The woman from Crete, said she made a mistake and wrote her tax number in the category “how many liters of heating oil you’ve sold”. Now anger is against the SDOE officials who has signed this fine.

Milk producers of  Northern Greece will launch a protest outside a big milk company, demanding to be paid. As they have several requests, among others better prices for milk, they will distribute free of charge milk, cheese and yogurt to the residents of Thessaloniki on February 28, 2012.

On Feb 22, public and private sector unions, ADEDY and GSEE, will hold a protest rally at 4 pm at Syntagma Square. They oppose the new loan agreement bills that cut pensions and wages.

My neighborhood baker was telling me that ‘nothing moves’, and that people buy just bread. A friend who works at the open market was telling me, that ‘nothing moves’, and that people buy C class apples instead of AA. A hairdresser was telling me that ‘nothing moves’, and that women go around with undyed hair. A pediatrician was telling me that ‘nothing moves’ and that parents would rather have a telephone consultation for their sick children.

Prices seem to have fallen at the super markets. A bit. In fact prices have gone up but they are offered with a bigger reduction. I used to buy a dish detergent for €1.45. Now I bought it for €1.02 although its official price is €1.52! And milk price went up from €1.20 to €1.45. However it’s been sold with a reduction for …€1.20. What’s the trick? Go figure…

The weather? Cloudy and chilly.

PS KTG moved to another server. We apologize for yesterday’s technical inconvenience…