In a recent poll conducted by German state broadcaster ZDF program “Political Barometer” 51 percent of the German spoke in favor of a Greek exit form the eurozone. “Only 41 percent said that the country should remain in the euro,” notes magazine Der Spiegel in an article “Half of Germans favor Grexit”.. For comparison: Beginning of the year [i.e. before SYRIZA came to power] it was still 55% of the Germans who wanted Greece to remain in the eurozone.
A clear majority of 70 percent of respondents also rejected further concessions to Greece by the EU partners. Only 24 percent were in favor. For the survey, the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen [the Elections Research Team] interviewed 1,230 randomly selected registered voters from Tuesday to Thursday.
28 percent of respondents said that they expected “a strong or a very strong economic damage to Germany, should it come to a Greek state bankruptcy.” In March, it was been 33 percent. 65 percent expect a “not so strong or no economic damage to Germany.” (source: Der Spiegel)
I suppose, 51% of the Germans do not know that a Grexit is not possible. As I don’t know what the remaining 8% of respondents answered, I can assume, they checked “Don’t Know/Won’t Answer” or just subcategory “Not possible”…
On second thought, if the question would have been “do you want to live on Mars?” and the results were 80% YES and 18% NO, how would these results influence the decisions of the German government in terms of “housing policy”, for example?
The mistake of the Greek people was that they started to believe their own propaganda lies, after muting critical voices.
Greece will grexit, as it needs to impose capital controls (which break European law), ELA will be cut off (no Greek collateral acceptable by the ECB) and the Greek government needs to disburse IOS or a new currency as they run out of Euros (again breaking European law).
I told you so many times.
Greece is 1.8 % of eurozone GDP. So no big damage for Europe in case of Grexit. Plus Greece receives about 5 billions from EU budget and other huge money on sub market rate funding from ECB. This will end and thus Grexit will be a good deal for Europe in long term.
On the other hand, there will be unstability in Greece – NATO member. Greece might ends up in hands of Putin. Greeks are now calling their situation – humanitarian crisis, but just after Grexit they will understand the real meaning of those words.
Sure, it might only be 1.8% of EZ GDP, but to say there won’t be a big damage for Europe is severely oversimplifying it.
However, I do believe that other countries then Germany would vote similarly. In Sweden I think we would also favour a Grexit. I would absolutely vote for a grexit.
Yes sure we can expect some tubulences/problems, especially when so called humanitarian crisis will turn into real one. But what can you do with borrower that does not want neither to pay, nor cooperste and wants just more and more?
“We can expect” YOU can expect nothing, you can’t even see or feel or are you unemployed in Greece to “expect”? No humanitarian crisis? 500.000 Athenians living in cars and similar situations, so they are the (hidden?) homeless, 1.200.000 unemployed didn’t get nothing until SYRIZA made a reform against the humanitarian crisis, a real reform, not cuts!
10.000 suicides count up to minimum (so far known) 5.000 patients murdered by Troika by “reforms” in hospitals aka kicking out thousands of doctors – 2.500 of them now work in Germany! – and nobody will figure the real numbers as so many people never seen by a doctor and how comes that ND accuses Troika and Troika accuses ND for the humanitarian crisis?
I quote your answer to me from 9/6 “If you wanna feel a stampede or just go straight to a madhouse you should tell this the 500.000 people from Bulgaria, Romania and Albania that still live and work in Greece”
Now what – humanitarian crisis or paradise even for some EU members?
Of course this is not humanitarian crisis yet. This is just first result of Greek wasting an cheating. It is of course sad that people are suffering, but you can not repair result of cheating and wasting by more cheating and more wasting with SYRIZA. Plus your neighbours are suffering more than you do, and they do not call it humanitarian crisis. They do not even get so much money as you do from EU and they pay their debts.
Hopefully they and all the other Europeans have enough money on their banks when the crisis will export their bank robbers to come.
Anyway the Anglo Saxon media still writes “cooked books” with a question mark that the German just spared out because their paper space is so expensive and true believers like you spread their lies against all Greeks like in the thirties against the Jews and when Greeks shops and restaurants burn it wasn’t you with your Greek-baiting.
Giaourti. Repeat after me – We Greeks are just 1,8 % of Eurozone economy. We are second largest fund receiver in EU, higly dependent on funds from EU. Our economy is not sustainable even if all debts are gone.
(of course you – now Russian tool – can trigger problems on unstable markets, bigger than your economy size, but do not act like Russian with inferiority complex)
I have a feeling that European tourists will not be welcome any more after a Grexit. Reading your comments, I will certainly not feel safe visiting Greece. If more Europeans feel like me, brace yourself for empty beaches.
Your crisis is your own creation. The Greek economic system is totally unsustainable, and that is the reason that nobody wants to lend you any more money. The Greek people simply refuse to make their economy realistic, and the people of the EU don’t want to finance ridiculious dreams. Time to wake up, Greece ! Or grow up.
The mistake of the Germans is that they have rediscovered the achievements of Herr Goebbels, and actually believe their own lying propaganda.
And what your garbage about “breaking European law” is about I have no idea. The eurozone itself is a very dubious entity legally speaking, with suspect rules and implementation. The first countries to break the eurozone rules (“laws” in your language) were Germany and France. These are political rules, not laws anyway: and that is why the debate is so dirty.
And it is also why dirty people like you are engaged in open propaganda and vilification of others — to further a clear German neoliberal agenda. It’s not going to work, so you may as well shut it.
Please be more specific – what is the lying propaganda? An example please.
Even your financial statistics are misleading or lies. Another clear lie is what the Germans said at the start of the eurozone crisis — that it was caused by Greece. Forgotten that lie? I haven’t.
There is scarcely anything said by the Troika that is an accurate picture of reality, and the German mass media and government are far worse. It is such a tsunami of propaganda that one doesn’t know where to begin.
1. I am not German, but anyway what statistics are lies?
2. Well I do not think Germans say it that way, but even if – Greek ignorancy of rules was really one of the main reasons. The trigger was in USA, but without Greek neverending borrowing and cheating on statistics there will be no problem with Graccident today. NOT A LIE
3. The rest is like from Russian newspapers. Nothing concrete, just words about bad German media – that is propaganda.
Meanwhile there are books written about these little German white lies that often publish their shit in English too, state broadcaster “Deutsche Welle” also in Greek:
-It took hundreds of Greeks and supporters to constantly inform German media for a 2,3 years long time until they couldn’t hide any more that there is no public assistance in Greece, still they spread their fantasies of a Greek “welfare state” and if you ask average German people still every third will believe that Greeks get welfare like their German Hartz 4 and when they get the true information it’s getting “oops” very interesting …
-They lie about the AVGI as the “official government gazette” when it was putting up a cartoon of Schäuble in historic uniform, also it was no SS-uniform; AVGI has a print edition of 4000.
-The Swiz “Neue Züricher Zeitung” asked to resign Mr. Günther Jauche for the “fingergate” and still 90% in Germany think Varoufakis showed Germoney the finger, NZZ claimed that he said “I could but I don’t”
-Until today they lie about a bank-run, first they tried to provoke it and as it wasn’t happening they just took the normal end of the month pictures of pensioners waiting in line to proof a bank run, they were even that stupid that they didn’t recognize that Greek banks close over the weekend, Fridays at half past 2 and until today they lie about a money flight abroad, but still more than 80% of it stays inside Greece
-They never realized that a lot of ATMs get sabotaged
-They ignored that the money outflow started – never recognized also by “the markets” – already end of November
-They never asked why Samaras’ candidate for president was not like tradition member of the opposition; Manolis Glezos would have made it!
-They lie about the last quarter of 2014, their lies of “better with Samaras” were proven bullshit by statistics published April 2015 and ignored
-The average German thinks as a result of a media campaign that Greeks get some 980 Euro pension, more than Germans but in reality it’s about 665 Euro average!
-They don’t inform about that in 2022 Greece has to pay back 3 times the money it has to pay back in 2021; no “investors” will takes this risk!
-In Germany people wonder “what, they didn’t get “our” money since August 2014″
-They hoax about that “Greece was always broke since the beginning”, ignoring the fact that it was occupied for 400 years by Ottomans, that after founding, Greece had to pay reparations to them and that Greeks had to buy weapons to free the rest 2/3 of their country
Now back to my question. What German or creditors statistics are lies?
Every statistic is a lie, as you very well know. All statistic do is make those who read them with tinted classes feel good. But a good statistic can be read with any fantasy colour you like, and will always look good.
Here’s a simple one for you which gets rammed home constantly.Greek tourism is officially booming, so says everybody. figures of up to 22% increase are being quote. You want o come and have a look and show us those increased numbers. I live close to what it is tourist resortand although it is 30C now and a beautiful day, the beach is empty. 1 hotel by the beach is empty, another is occupied to only 30% of its capacity. The restaurants, usually packed to the rafters, are empty. Staff is being layed off already because there is nothing to do for them. So how does that tally with an increase in tourism? Cruise liners and rip off package tours. A cruise liner docks in Chania, the herd is left on shore for 30 minutes and the figures notch up by 1500 units. Nobody asks what these 1500 units spend, because the answer is “nothing”. A good friend, who has a shop in Chania dreads the arrival of these packs. To her it means extra staff. Not because sales suddenly boom, but because shoplifting booms. The extra staff is security staff… The torusim statistics and figures are indeed lies, VERY big lies. And the little money that is being made goes to the foreign tour operators…
WOW!!! Russian propaganda methods!!!
We Bolsheviks know, we lie and nobody will believe us, plus we have no positive story to tell, so we start to make picture of everybody lying – even statistics. Result: nothing happened when we produced false numbers about our debt, because “Every statistic is a lie, as you very well know.”.
The same propaganda methods are used by Russian GRU in Donbass region and Central Europe now. There are many signals, not just this similarity, that SYRIZA is hand of Russian advisors.
What you don’t understand is that Crimea belongs to the Tartars, not to Russia, not to Ukraine. Russian-German Katerina the Great stole it away but there also live Crimean Greeks, like in Marianopoli 100.000 with barricades against Russian and Ukrainian Nazisshit
If a newspaper has 30% of the national readers market, does it mean that 30% of those readers read the paper, or does it mean that 70% of the readers don’t read the paper? Using such a statistic depends a little on which side of the fence you interpret the 30 – 70 figures from, not? As for the hollow, non-sensical Bolsheviks slurr, in case it had escaped you, Bolshevism died in 1991 with the USSR to be replaced by one of the most aggressively capitalist economies in the world. But still maintaining a “social” aspect so sadly lacking in the EU/US neo-liberal version of economics…
I will again invite you to come and show me those thousands of extra tourist we are supposed to be enjoying, and more importantly, the implied extra revenue they are supposed to bring in… It is indeed nothing but a big lie, based on wrong use/interpretation of statistics. If you want to know the true value of your tourist industry, then don’t just count heads, but count how much each of these heads is spending. You’re in for a major shock, and not a very nice one if you happen to be working and operating in the “booming” Greek tourist trade. That is the simple reality that unfolds here every day. Sorry to burst your bubble on that one, resorting to idiotic name calling does however not change the bare facts here, on the ground in Greece. Which is what I am talking about, unlike yourself and a few others here who feel the need to be judge, jury and hangman from a position taken by reading Bild, the Daily Mail and other dispicable rags posing as newspapers rather than fact…
Giaourti Giaourti. Tatar prince was my colleague, but you know better what I do not understand of course:)
“a social aspect so sadly lacking in the EU/US neo-liberal version of economics”
If that implies that the EU countries are neoliberal without a social aspect, I completely disagree!
In Denmark people pay about 60% taxes of their income, they have a luxury tax on cars at 180%, every university student gets 700€ a month by the state and still they are committed to capitalism. I firmly believe the European way of policy works very well!
Denmark is No 1 in the Corruption Perception Index 2014, Greece is on rank 69. If you hand over a lot of your money to your state, you must trust it not to misuse it. I think corruption and a social system are incompatible.
And Russia advises Greece to give the NATO Karpathos as a 2nd base in the Aegean.
I guess if the Greek government would do what Russia wants they’d invade Lybia then.
Statistics dont lie, because math doesnt lie. Its the people gathering(or inventing) the data for the statistics that lie.
But people can lie whether they use statistics or just singular stories. The problem is that many people dont get the main point about it and that is statistics are only valid for large numbers of events/objects described. To say that there is any connection between a particular case and statistical probabilities is just a flat out logical mistake. I have found that most people know this conciously if you tell them about it yet they make the mistakes anyhow.
So your one example of an empty beach doesnt refute anything, just like a full hotel wouldnt proove the statistics right, there is simply no connection. If you have enough of those examples it might start to count.
This is not just one empty beach my friend, this is an overall collapse of individual, Greek owned, small tourism oriented business with their customers being diverted to huge mutlinational, cruise ship owning companies who don’t pay a penny tax anywhere because they are based in one of the many tax havens around the world. Meanwhile, the Greek (Irish, Spanish, Portuguese, etc) small business owner is haunted for imaginary income (In Greece it’s called “deemed income”) and labelled cheats, liars, etc thanks to the stereotyped image of the non taxpaying Greeks…
Ephilant: these guys are so caught up in their own bullshit that they cannot tell the difference between independent scholarly research and government propaganda. They are the type who joined the Hitler Youth and never questioned what was going on: just asshole conformists with no capacity for reflection and analysis.
And there is no point even discussing with them. In the past (not on this site) I have gone through detailed stats showing how they are faked, and what the correct figures would be. Their response: Oh, that’s just your personal opinion. The government figures are the correct ones. There is no way you can argue with idiots: they drag everything down to their level of stupidity.
Assuming you meant me with this, do you not want to understand me?
I said statistic dont lie, its the people setting up those statistics. So if you you uncover fraud by showing how the stats are faked, I firstly would congratulate you on it and then ask you as to who you might think have falsified it and why.
You say you went through it in detail, so that means through your understanding of stats the numbers let you see the lie, and possibly the motive and the person/group behind it. That is what i mean by stats dont lie, the people do.
And if you know that much, then you know that its true that single events no matter how large or extreme bear little to no weight compared to the thousands sometimes millions of events combined through statistical analysis. We discuss whole countries and continents and their economies on this blog, in that context only the statistical view is meaningfull and single examples are usless, unless to highlight a trend, and cannot refute the statistic. If they could any discussion would only be an endless pingpong between examples(and thats what so often happens in internetdiscussions), because in a large enough sample size you can always find one that supports your argument.
Now I dont see where I have given any offense or anything but argument or question so I dont get why youre starting to get insulting.
Id rather you gave me an answer to my other thread, the please enligthen me wasnt ironic, I always like to hear arguments.
I know, but I must say that constantly referencing them to or with Nazi’s etc. doesn’t do your otherwise very valid arguments any good. Just like their kneejerk reaction of labelling any sane thinking person as “communist” or “Bolshevik” simply annihilates anything valid they may have to say. Name calling is best left to the likes of Bild and the Daily Mail. fighting fire with fire only results in a larger fire…
Yes – good point ephilant, unless that (about Bolsheviks or Russian Imperialists if you want) is the most important thing in discussion to stress out.
SYRIZA is not much more than just a vehicle.
Look:
1. The whole problem with Greece’s unsustainble social system started in cold war when East and West were competing in this territory (Greece, Turkey, STOP in oder not to include Syria e.t.c.) Other countries in the region were also destroyed by Otomans, but did not receive help from both sides, because they were already in Russian hands.
2. For example I am from soc. country and we received Greek young orphans after WWII, who are now old people. The same with west and here somewhere (+-) started also the support of Greece by west, but also support of Greek communists, socialists, agents … by Russians.
3. Therefore this was for may be for 50 years a political question not economical to help Greece. Greece must stay with west and NATO. That was not about money.
4. Now howewer, when there are much poorer countries in EU with average pensions may be about 200 EUR, Greeks are still receiving (net) about 5 billions EUR per year (second largest portion after Poland) instead of receiving about zero or even pay to Bulgaria, Romania … It does not make sense of course to donate unsustainable system, but it can not stop, because Greeks just do not want to understand, that they are just Balkans, and their social system works only because of EU money inflow.
5. Putin’s Russia does not want to stop in Krymea and Donbass, they are activelly using their aged network of political parties in Europe, and their agents – oligarchs who own now those countries to large extent, judges, politicans… to gain influence in Hungary (agent Orban), Poland (now govt. crisis with surveillance of politicians), Czechia (agent Klaus – Privatisation created oligarchy, agent Zeman), Slovakia (govt. crisis with surveillance destoyed right parties and agent Fico is in power). STOP in order not to include Lega Nord, Le Pen, Bulgaria, Baltics, Ukraine…
6. When Greek SYRIZA friends are argumenting, lot of arguments are just copy/paste from Russian propaganda sources – everybody lies (also statistics), fascism – Germans sholud pay bastards, bloody Jewish imperialists led by USA and IMF, STOP here:) but there are more important signals showing, that Greeks do not know source of their argumentation.
7. Why it is so important to stress out? Because taking into account all developments in Russian sphere of intersts, SYRIZA leaders are probably just agents gambling with Greece.
Greeks should at least think abot such possibility.
Just like idiots at happy hour their level depends on how much they drink as they all sit together in a Vienna Kebab run by a Greeks hating MHP-moron who gives them for every anti Greek bash Raki for free
It’s all inside what I’d written, German mouthpieces should read before shitting in my head but I have another example for the German hunt, demagoguery against Greek students as Nazis:
http://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/videos/wirtschaft/Steuerzahlerbund-warnt-Bundestag-article5560256.html
RE: propaganda. What you have described is not propaganda Giaourti. This is just plurality and sometimes low quality of articles. Plus do not forget – there is demand and supply also in journalism. People in Europe disliked Greeks, because they are cheating, wasting, playing victims, calling their situation humanitarian crisis (and using the largest loan in IMF portfolio that could help many many people in Africa with their real humanitarian crisis) and lot more. Journalist just write what people want to see, sometimes with very low quality. But there is usually a discussion if there is really a HOAX in German media.
But in my opinion propaganda is cheating repeatedly without discussion about it. For example – repeated lies to Greek people about how close to deal with creditors Greeks are. Or for example articles in pravda.ru about a year ago about Ukraine – under big headline – Kiev is preparing new holodomor (starvation) in Ukraine.
You guys just do not know what really is humanitarian crisis and propaganda. The first I do not know either, but I am sure Greece is paradise even for Bulgaria not mentioning Doneck or Afrika.
Freedom of speech as the will of the consumer and the Greeks as the new Jews for the scum to hate: Goebbels-media!
Nobody cares about your Ukrainian or Russian Nationalists except from every time they die, means less Nazis are around and more flags for toilet-paper.
There was the chance for freedom between 1918 and 1922 with the Machno-Movement, destroyed by “communists”, nationalists and democrats and all parties are lying about it until today, with even some Ukrainian Nazis stealing the colours of the anarchists and copy cat the molotov-parties of Greek riots into perversion.
But what’s your problem: Ukraine gots it’s welfare system paid by Greeks to IMF and Greeks have no welfare.
Ukraine gots it’s welfare system paid by Greeks to IMF and Greeks have no welfare.
You just want to kill us by jokes – see Monty Python killer joke.
Xenos, it’s very simple : if you don’t want to take a new credit, then don’t ! And if you don’t want to pay us back, then don’t ! You’re a free nation. Actually, gthe new Drachma will benefit your economy enormously, a Grexit will make your tourism and your olive oil extremely competitive. And nobody will lend you money any more, so your government’s budget will be responsible automatically.
Just don’t use democracy any more to convince us to donate our money. Greeks seem to forget that all EU countries are democracies, and that we the people of the EU don’t want to give you any more money without reforms.
«If Syriza really wants to change society, to avert national ruin, to put the economy back on a developmental track, to secure a new dynamic position for Greece in the international scheme of things, there must be an examination of alternative ways forward.»
The Looming Austerity Package –
The European “institutions” are seeking a public defeat of Syriza and the closing off of any alternative.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/06/syriza-troika-lapavitsas-austerity-tsipras/
A mandatory article by Costas Lapavitsas
Since this conclusion (the part that you quoted) was not the part of SYRIZA pre-election promises (but quite the opposite), my opinion is that the most honest way now is the Greek people to decide on which path they would like to go… because this proposal is one way street with no returning back.
The same applies to Greece accepting a deal with the “institutions”. So, in any circumstance either new elections or a referendum should occur. Although the current government has legal legitimacy to go either way.
I totally agree that elections or referendum should occur.
Regarding this part of legal legitimacy… well, if they decide (without elections/referendum) to accept the deal, people can go on streets and overthrow the government, force new elections and then scrap the deal. If they decide (without elections/referendum) to exit eurozone, no further action can revert that back (this is one way street).
I think this is a big difference, and that’s why I think that they can play with accepting the deal (and then bear the consequences), but not with leaving euro before verifying this with the people.
No government with a mandate from the people can or will engage in elections for legitimising their decisions. Only those constitutionally obliged to do so, will — albeit reluctantly. Those governments, such as the current UK ratbags, that promise referenda on important issues are merely playing political games — and have no desire to follow the will of the people.
Why should we put up with your abusing us all the time ? Stop borrowing from us, don’t pay us back. We already know that we lost our money, OK ? Bye Greece !
In 14 days there is the summer break, any people getting into the streets then will have a totally different agenda as what the “alternatives” seem to be but guess everybody will try to go for a few days to the islands or in the mountains and let the government put some laws through parliament and the troika-institutions will not realize anything, stupid as they are.
Greek government is not forced to renew its legitimacy by new elections or by referendum just because other governments in Europe are unwilling to put an end in austerity – the core of the current mandate. Otherwise we would have to accept that democracy is not the ability of people living with the consequences of the decisions to be empowered to take the decisions in their hands. If someone thinks the opposite, better say it clearly, like Henry Kissinger regarding the government of Chile:
The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves. (Citation here)
Exactly. Northern Europe (like Kissinger) has no interest in democracy. They just attack Greece with every weapon they can find, in order to discredit a popular mandate.
Just because we wouldn’t vote for Syriza, doesn’t mean we don’t understand why lots of Greeks did. We like Syriza for a few reasons: They are probably the only party really committed to fighting against cronyism and corruption. They speak out loudly, such that a real debate here could get started (war reparations, telling us about unacceptable consequences of spending cuts).
We are interested in democracy and scoial market economy, both of which we believe to have in Northern Europe.
There is a hypocritical theatre of democracy in northern Europe — but not a reality, since big business and banks are pulling the strings of the neoloberal politicians (who usually leave politics to take up multimillion dollar salaries). And the social market economy is systematically being dismantled across the EU — inevitably, as pensions cannot be financed, and most of the EU has terrible real economies, with weak production and consumption (Germany a partial and temporary exception).
So no, northern Europe is abandoning both of these two things. The fact that you haven’t worked it out is in indication of your weak grasp of reality.
Social market: Slaughtering 6 million Congolese to get the Coltan they are sitting on for consumers “needs” of cells phones and play stations, BRAVO!
That’s probably the reason why there are not so much refugees from Congo, they have all already died for the social market.
Well, the Greek government can do whatever it wants (it was legitimately elected). However, its position is very difficult and probably will be forced by population to resign in less than one year. Its performance seems to be very poor (Greece moved back to recession during their mandate), and it is clear that SYRIZA’s promises cannot be respected (to stay in EU and continue to spend EU money without any reforms in the Greek bankrupt welfare system).
You must enjoy talking out of your arse. Despite the chaos and uncertainty in Greece, the Syriza government retains the support of much of the population. Indeed, there is no political rival — especially as the ND approach consists of complaining about Syriza, but they have no advice to offer on how to negotiate with the German crooks other than to give up (as Samaras did, and was punished for so doing).
So, your propaganda is sadly miscalculated. Better luck next time.
German crooks ??? My God, they lent you billions of Euro’s ! What the hell are you talking about ????
Stop borrowing money from us, we already know that you will never pay us back. Grexit will make everybody happy.