In a poll conducted June 3rd and 4th but before Greece decided to ‘bundle’ its four trances to the IMF into, the overwhelming majority of Greeks responded that they wanted the country to remain in the eurozone and the Euro as currency.
Question: Euro or Our own Currency?
Answers: 74% Euro, 18% Own Currency 8% Other
* “Other”? US Dollar, for example, Ruble, Yuan?
Now, if you ask
why do Greeks want to remain in the euro despite all odds?
my suggestion is that:
after the fierce Grexit- scaremongering of the last 5 years and the strict austerity that caused people to lose more than 30% of their income, Greeks are afraid to exit the euro and have own currency that would be immediately devalued 40% to 50%, if not even to 60%. In addition, they take into consideration the outbreak of a economic and political instability.
An additional factor is people’s mistrust towards politicians and the local elites. I remember to have asked around about Euro or Drachma in 2012 and 2013 and the majority of my middle-class friends had told me: With drachma the usual people will make their profits again.
I am not sure that something has changed in June 2015 in people’s perception about politicians and the local elites.
However, two years ago, it was more than 80% of Greeks supporting the Euro. Apparently the scaremongering was more pressing at that time.
In other Poll results:
Question: Is the government on the right track in the way it negotiates with creditors?
Answers: 47% wrong track 34% right 14% don’t know/don’t answer
Question: What should the gov’t do if Greek proposals not accepted?
Answers: 50% Gov’t should retreat 41% to resist
47% want that the Govt’ proceeds to agreement with creditors even if it steps back from the “red lines“.
37% want early elections.
On the vote intention, SYRIZA seems to lose in respondents’ preference when compared to other recent polls.
SYRIZA 31.3%
ND 20.4%
To Potami 5.2%
Golden Dawn 4.8%
KKE 4.5%
PASOK 3.5%
Independent Greeks 3.2%
The poll was conducted by ALCO 3-4 June 2015 among 1,000 people across the country.
So you think that the “scaremongering” is working with the Greeks’s attitude towards the currency, but no with the Greek’s attitude towards Sysriza’s hard line? – My goodness…
I tell you how to interpret the facts:
74% of the Greeks understand that Greece is not able to stand on its own feet and need constant transfers from Europe in order not to collapse. Staying in the Eurozone should facilitate blackmailing and threats with congestion.
This attitude will not really contribute to the reputation of the Greek nation.
Hey Chris are you from the “EU troll patrol” how much do they pay u?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/9845442/EU-to-set-up-euro-election-troll-patrol-to-tackle-Eurosceptic-surge.html
http://www.seisachtheia.gr/en/news-publications/view/eu-funds-cyber-trolls-to-silence-critics.html
lol really? I’d never thought…
Can you please slowly come to terms with your opiion whether I am German or British?
Hint: I am neither German nor British nor a paqid troll.
I am just fancying to call the bluffs of liars.
Wow, a jerk with a national identity, who writes “Simbabwe” instead of “Zimbabwe” and shortens “millions” with “mio” will face his boss, who will be pleased as it’s Zambia.
“the majority of my middle-class friends had told me: With drachma the usual people will make their profits again.”
KG, can you please ask those people (if you are still in contact with them) to elaborate a bit more how this would happen… and if the euro currency is the only obstacle for this to come to reality, or there are some more prerequests.
And if they say by devaluation of the currency, pls ask them if they know that devaluation of the currency means also (further) devaluation of people’s earnings (for that 30-40%).
This was a real question, not the hypothetical one… but obviously I will not get an answer… and that’s exactly my point, a lot of people here in Greece are not aware what they are wishing for. They think that since the situation now is bad, any change must bring something good without event analyzing it, but in essence I would describe this idea as “jumping from the frying pan into the fire”.
It’s a lame question as only a question like “currency or no currency at all” would really question capitalism.
In reality it’s always the same question about how the polls are conducted: To call 1000 people at home is representing nothing but only the people who still have a phone at home and time to answer, beside that 90% of the phoned will refuse to answer anyway; that’s also the reason for that in the end they will ask if it’s o.k. to call them again next time.
That these polls are nonsense shows also it’s constantly ignoring of the non voters and if Delphi would conduct a poll under non-voters they probably have many good ideas regarding a society without money-system.
Do you think these polls are very reliable ? I mean, do you really know a lot of people around you who would prefer more austerity than getting back to drachma ?
I’m pretty sure I won’t find a single one in my area if I ask, so why these results ?
I have the same experience: most people I meet, rich, poor, left, right, business people, unemployed…99% just want to default and get it over with and – or grexit – and go back to drachma. “It will be hard at first but at least that way lies recovery”. This is Ilissia-Pangrati – Kolonaki – Nea Smyrni neighborhoods. An ordinary cross section or not? I don’t know.
Sorry – forgot to add, and from voters of every party.
As for oligarchs they do well under any currency – but they did especially well under the euro, both before the crisis and during the crisis when Troika, TAIPED, HRSF looked after and safeguarded their interests. So well, that over the course of the 5 crisis years Greece’s richest fortunes grew from 14 BN in 2009 to 18 BN in 2014. That’s right, HUGE fortunes have been made in this time.
The point is to dismantle their power. And that depends on the political party in government and their will to do so.
quite ordinary and yet I get a different point of view. Anyway, go ask those outside Athens. conservative middle-classes.
On an entirely different note. Im not faulting you for running a few ads on this site KTG, in fact this site is enjoyably free of the ad harassment you so often get these days. But I have to say that its supremely ironic that i get an ad asking me if I have more then 250000€(which i most certainly dont) and then telling me that because of the possible grexit I should buy their analysis on how to protect my assets in the case of a grexit.
Im not sure if you could somehow change the content/the kind of ads that get run, but if you have any way to change that then do. Like I said I presume you dont know about this and I dont fault you, but to the unsuspecting eye this looks like the motherload of hypocracy.
LOL I had no idea. but see it in the context of the often ironic comments on this blog.Much to my knowledge, these kinds of ads are displayed according to what key words you via your PC have recently researched/visited websites. Sometimes ,they depends also on the key words of the wbesites. and also they depend on the country your pc is.
It’s inevitable that if your blog talks about financial markets, money, economic crisis, etc etc the money vultures will target you for stinking rich potential clients:-)
possible.thanks
i know that all of my friends have total scorn for the various polls taken in greece.
who is ALCO? or all of these other political ‘think tanks’ – especially in the context of greece.
it is public knowledge that the tv stations and print media are owned and serve the concerns of the oligarchic families that rule greece.
one would hope that the intuition and ‘daemonio’ of the greek people would help to guide them at this critical juncture…instead they choose to remain in denial, wanting their euro cake and eating it as well!
i hope there will be no more complaining about future austerity!
C’mon Costa, if the pollsters are corrupt and cr*p, then so are the results. Be logical!
The more trustworthy is the Univ. of Macedonia. That has shown support for euro at 50% and sometime just below 50%.
It also depends on how you ask the questions.
Greece determined to stay in eurozone
This is Syriza/Tsipras biggest mistake and proff of “amateurism”. Unless they are prepared to leave the euro, at the end of the day the sociopaths of the EU/IMF will always get their way. While the Greek government is more afraid to leave the euro than the EU/IV Reich is to kick them out the edge goes to the IMF/EU/IV Reich team.
Fortunately it seems that both the Greek government and people are reaching this conclusion. For sure they want to be in the euro, but more and more they realize it is not worth it at any cost.
As a great revolutionary once said:
the revolution sometimes needs the whip of the counter-revolution.
If you really think the EU is the 4th reich (as in successor of third one) then you havent been to any history classes in school. If you dont think this and just say it to highlight a point let me tell you that the only thing youll achieve by this is to make a trollfest out of any meaningful debate.
The problem is that unfortunately the 3rd Reich started to pay back their debts to Greece and the brave democrats of Germoney laugh at Greece: “What, reparations? Your houses you still refuse to sell cheap to our EU-civil servant lackeys you only own because we gave you the opportunity to work as “Gastarbeiter”
Also one might think about that the 21 member single currency of the 3rd Reich had very, very similar contracts compared to the ones of the Euro.
In 1977 the Red Army Faction had held the former SS-Officer Hans-Martin Schleyer hostage and interviewed him, from what was leaked about it the project of SS-Schleyer in Eastern Europe was something like a forerunner to EU. But I guess “Che”, the T-shirt will know …
Also one might think about the fact that all the governments on the council are elected(even though i still dont like much of what they do). One might think about that there is a european parliament, consisting of members of about 160 different parties. One might think about the fact that the EU ended national borders, sends millions of students abroad to foster positive relationships between our countries. As for the german part of it, germans from the start have paid more then they receive, they have less members of parliament per citizens then most(or all???) other countries and have never held the position of either president of the commision or the ecb.
I freakin hate it when people start comparing everything to the nazis, it doesnt enhance your argument it just diminishes the weight of those horrific event that happened.
I happen to agree when you call the situation in your country a humanitarian crisis, but do you really want to compare the situation now to the slaughtering of millions of civilians and the flattening of whole cities and countries?
Thats way out of proportion and to say so doesnt diminish the pain felt today.
As for my name, im not a t shirt, this happens to be my real name although not the first but the second one. Most people call me by it, feel free to so too.
Just to inform you the term “4th Reich” came up in the early eighties, invented by German anarchists and German punk bands and it was never meant to trivialize the 3rd.
But if 80% of Germoney laughs about “the” Greeks regarding war reparations everything will sound just a little different!
Just think of the video shown in Athens Metro that pissed of the whole German media and later comes out that the Metro showed a total different video and like always no excuse from the liars for hire.
Anyway the term “Nazi” is used outside of Germany too or do you believe Germany owns a definition right on it?
F.i. the American Hardcore band Dead Kennedys’ song “nazi punks – fuck off” is often mistaken as about real Nazis but the lyrics were about behaviour.
I know, “Nie wieder Deutschland, nie wieder Krieg!” (Never again Germany, never agian war)
There are huge differences between the germany in 1980 and now. Then you still had large parts of of the decision makers that were “socialised”(for lack of a better word) in the third reich. There were actual old nazis in power, there were war criminals that had gone unpunished etc.
This is not the case today, noone of the current government or even the previous one was even alive at that time and as a nation germany has less rightwing populists then any other country. France has the Front National and austria the FPÖ, hungary has orban and then jobbik to his right and you have golden dawn. Germany has the AfD, a weird conglomerate of neolibs and rightwingpopulists that still couldnt get into federal parliament, that would be ignored by the other parties even if they did and thats on the path selfdestruction right now. We hada those stupid PEGIDA demonstartions last winter, but every time I went to the anti-demonstration there were at least 3 times as many people.
“Anyway the term “Nazi” is used outside of Germany too or do you believe Germany owns a definition right on it?”
I think there is a definition and it is defined by what the actual nazis did. Now if you use it like its sometimes done in english as “nazi=stickler for rules and order” thats a different context. But if youre telling me the demand to raise the VAT on electrictiy is in the same ball park as euthanizing children, then that is wrong.
Merkel isnt a Nazi, but jsut because she isnt the ultimate evil doesnt make her good.
All I want is a little nuance and thats what gets taken away by inserting the nazi card where it doesnt belong
As for the 80%, Im among them and the reason for it you will find in my post to Tsigantes below. Unless you are 90 year+ and actually were there at the time you are as much a victim/perpetrator of this as me. Neither of has in any way shade or form influenced that time(how could we) so Im not resposible and you dont have a claim(orvice versa) because of what happened then. Now im totally for payment to actual victims that are still alive, frankly this shouldve been done decades ago and the fact that the german governments have blocked this is a shame on them. But that very much different from saying we owe 250 billion for that time. I dont owe anything just because im german. Ill give you my solidarity because we are fellow human beings, but thats a totally different thing.
The case here is much more difficult as it was Helmut Kohl who betrayed in calling the reunification not reunification but joining, because he was aware of that the German debt was 50% cut in 1953 and deferred until after reunification.
So this is not 70 years ago but only 25
Its not a matter of legal fineprint. its a question of ethics.
And a child is not responsible for the crimes of its parents or grandparents.
Father Gauck should visit Greece again, the last time he denounced it all, months later he is saying that he now learnt a lot about the history of Greece he didn’t was aware of. So the next time he shows up he will surely visit a village with a higher number of victims than the last time.
Oh, wait, that means the first time he was lying but that would be a cool tube: “Sorry, Dear Greeks, I was lying!” unthinkable
Your “fineprint” goes further: For this rip-off François Mitterrand wanted the Euro as a deal.
Your friends stay a the G7-camp? What?
So, the Germans shall be responsible decades later for what they grandfathers did, and the Greek want to vote away the responsibility for the debts they collected after vew years only?
Tom
The child is not responsible for its forbears, indeed. But the society remains culpable: that is the big difference. And one that Germans fail to grasp, in their modern neoliberal individualism.
“And one that Germans fail to grasp”
If we are talking about a people now and not individuals, I would contest this very much, but thats a longer discussion and totally off topic in this thread. Nevertheless im always willing to discuss, provided KTG doesnt mind the offtopicness and you are willing to give me more then sarcastic one liners as happens so often in internet discussions 🙂
@che: who represents the Volk? Who is able to speak for the German people? Is it Schaueble? Or the many Germans trolling the internet with anti-Greek propaganda? Or the ordinary Germans with no understanding of the eurozone crisis, but feel that the Nazis are not their responsibility? Or the newspapers and tv channels?
In the end, ordinary people decide what their society thinks — but this process can take decades. Nobody mentioned the Nazi invasion of Greece until quite recently, in sheer desperation to get Germany to be more flexible. A hopeless task, we all realise.
You mean he should have said 5th Reich?
That’s a good one…
Some people believe in trolls (Hollywood) and lemmings (“that commit mass-suicide”, Walt Disney fake with a mill) or think that an octopus is oh so evil that it gets everywhere but they never leave the neighbourhood and legalize Kalamata-Grass instead
You say the Eu today is full of Nazi, Putin say all the west is full of nazi, the right wing americans i tried talking to one explained to me how anyone thats pro environment or pro public healthcare is a nazi.
Theyre the ultimate evil and therefore the point of reference.
I once talked to a Russian guy, that loved Putin because he was ” a strong leader that will bring the russian people back to glory”, that thought gays lesbian and mentaly retarded people should be put to the death or at least be sterilzed, and that jews and “coloured people” were inherintly inferior. He then explained to me how “fascist” the west was.
I know what a Nazi is because my greatgrandmother was one, because i spent hours upon hours in school and with my parent talking and learning about that time, because I stood at the very place where thousand of inocents were gassed to death.
I am 31 now, nothing that happened then is any way my fault and therfore, german or not I do not accept any guilt or resposibility for what happened then. But as human being and after knowing all this I have resposiblity to never let anything like this happen again. And the first line of defense is to not let people trivialize those events.
Greece will not have bright future in the eurozone. It’s a doomed fixed-exchange regime without political or financial union. This, of course, will be fate of many other euro countries.
The major thing is that while being a member of EMU the country still issues debt of foreign currency. Greece, like other EMU-countries, do not have control of their monetary policy.
It is also said that Greek banking sector would collapse in an instant outside euro. But the banking sector is already in the deep trouble. Non-performing loans are reaching to staggering 45 per cent. The ECB must at some point deny more ELA-funding (which is more expensive than normal capital market money) and that would be that.
Before the Grexit the bank run will keep continuing. Funds stuffed under the matress or foreign banks will stay out until the this situation gets solved. If their solution is to keep the euro, the fallout will happen at some point later again, but with even more intensified. So then there will be yet another bank run.
However, Grexit with devaluation of the new currency turns the flow of capital back to Greece. Devaluation would help exports and make domestic markets more competitive against imported products. This means work for the people. Work means income. Income means higher living standards for individuals and taxes for the government.
If the Grexit does not happen “now”, it will happen later, but meanwhile things will most likely only get worse.
The best solution is to dissolve the whole unworkable fixed-exchange regime. This has happened dozens of times in the past.
The Greeks are playing a smooth game and the Europeans dont know how to respond, its simple game theory, which varoufakis is a master at and l would not be surprised if it is rubbing off on tsipras and his negotiating.
I would go so far as to say that Varoufakis is central in most of the decisions taken by Tsipras. I can even (as a native speaker) detect Varoufakis’ syntactical style in the English texts of Tsipras, not to mention politico-economic arguments.
@Tom:
“responsible” would mean they go to jail but the reparations fraud was done by Helmut Kohl 25 years ago.
It’s very logically to put that on the same level, as it appears that the miracle of the German phoenix isn’t that much a miracle but a result of pillage that went on and on the decades when Germany was doing it’s shell game with Greece. Pervert.