Backpackers guide to the euro crisis

Sunnyisland

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15239660

Welcome to a country where the money could run out by mid-November.
You have seen the headlines about debts, defaults and deficits. But what does a country on the financial brink look, sound and even smell like?
Arriving in Athens, we immediately saw the boarded-up shops, the abandoned building sites, the bins groaning with what seemed like weeks of rubbish. There was a provocative poster, hastily glued to a wall in the street glorifying the riots in London a few months ago. "Greetings from London", it reads, with a picture of hooded youths carrying away boxed-up DVD players from a shop.
It is clear that a debt crisis is about much more than numbers with lots of noughts on and political brows with lots of furrows on.
Many accept that Greece has borrowed too much money and the economy is too weak to generate the growth to pay it back, but if Greece admits it can't pay its debts in full the country will default.
So, the government is cutting back, and cutting back drastically. They are attempting to cut the size of the state by a third. That means a big cut in the number of people employed by the government, and it means big tax rises. The latest charge is a new property tax, which is added on to each home's electricity bill. We've been told that for some families it is a bill that could run to thousands of euros.
'People are hungry'
The social scars of economic and political turmoil are not difficult to find. In the flea market in Athens, traders tell us what is happening here is chipping away at the fundamentals of what it is to be Greek.
Demonstrations have continued in Athens
Muriel runs a goldsmiths. "When a country drops there is more crime. People are hungry. They need money, so they find a way to get their money. Stealing - breaking in," she tells us, wagging her finger. "Before this we could leave our doors open. Now we can't do this - they have to be shut."
Mikis, 20, works in a restaurant a few blocks away. When we ask him about tax, we are greeted with a facial expression that says much more than any spreadsheet could about Greece's perilous fiscal position. His coy grin acknowledges Greece's open secret. Tax evasion is rife, and people are proud to admit it. Prouder still as taxes are cranked up in an attempt to bring in much-needed revenue.
"Sorting the tax situation would solve many of the problems in Greece. If the government could get all the taxes that people are hiding from them, Greece's debts would be much lower." We ask him straight out. Is tax dodging endemic? "Yes," he says, without hesitation.
"You asked for a receipt for your food just now, so we will pay tax on that. But most people never ask for receipts, so they can save money," he adds.
'It is terrible'
Late in the evening we wander into Syntagma Square, in front of the Greek parliament. It is nearly midnight, but still a small gathering of people are listening to a range of angry speakers bellowing into a microphone.
We get chatting to George. His face is red with anger, his arms in a constant swirl to emphasise his points.
"It is terrible. There is a big part of the Greek population which is really suffering. I am talking about people who up to a few months ago were okay. They had their businesses or their salaries or their pensions, and now they can't eat properly. They can't even pay their electricity bill, or for their water."
So middle-class families are struggling to pay their children, we ask. Again, there is no hesitation: "Yes."
Later, Trashy Petropoulos, news editor of the Athens News, tells us this is no exaggeration.
"We are coming across cases of genuine poverty here now, which we're simply not used to. The wrong people are suffering the most. One guy asked me this morning: 'How much more of our money are they going to take away to try to solve this?'"



This makes sombre reading & is the reality of what is happening to the greek people and all the demonstrations and opposition wont change that, Will this happen here ?

Lando Griffin

realies wrote: »

Will this happen here ?

I'll keep it short.
No.

the drifter

Morning....

Lando Griffin

the drifter wrote: »

Morning....

Hiya.

Cee-Jay-Cee

No.

stovelid

I didn't read it.

Is the solution to not wash, live on a dollar a day and then go back to uni full of soporific anecdotes about sleeping in bus stations?

Snakeblood

Trashy Petropoulos- The best name.

listermint

But wasnt the Greek Attitude to Taxes one of the fundamental problems and always have been. Now the credit line as blown the real problem with the society there is exposed for all to see.

Wibbs

listermint wrote: »

But wasnt the Greek Attitude to Taxes one of the fundamental problems and always have been.

Yea, like I said in another thread on here...
In Greece the government ran up huge debts feathering the nests of the electorate and PS, an electorate that make tax evasion a national fcuking sport. I'm not talking about a sparks doing a nixer for 50 quid, it goes through Greek society like words in a stick of rock. Try paying a professional by credit card in Athens. Good luck with that. Cash is king and has been for years. Half of doctors surveyed in established well off practices claimed earnings of less than 30,000 a year, some hammerheads claimed they were on minimum wage so they weren't taxable at all. These are doctors in the equivalent of Dalkey FFS, where the rents of their declared offices were more than the minimum wage. Swimming pools attract a tax and in Athens 300 people(3/4 of whom weren't Greek) declared they had a pool. How many pools are in Athens? Nearly seventeen fcuking thousand.

There are many more examples. Greek farmers claim subsidies on land that doesn't even exist, to the degree that going by the stats nearly the whole damn country is an olive grove(it isn't). One reason the stats showed that Greeks had such a high longevity(they didn't) was because surviving family members kept claiming pensions for people who died years ago. Often this was a legal "perk" in that unmarried or divorced daughters of dead PS workers could continue to receive their pension. That alone is costing the Greeks half a billion euro a year. The Greek PS worker can retire on full pension in his or her 40's. They got a bonus for showing up to work or using a computer and were paid a 14 month "year" not 12. Forestry workers even got bonuses for working outside. I shít thee not gentle reader. You wouldn't believe the half of it.

The sense of entitlement that PS workers are often accused of here doesn't begin to approach the Greek level, even at our worst and that sense of entitlement filters right throughout Greek society private as well as public and has done so for a generation. They expect to get loads of benefits without paying any tax for them and their government borrowed massively(with little collateral and bugger all chance of repayment) to fulfill this expectation. We may be a bit screwed, but we're nothing like Greece.

ejmaztec

Greek Passport = Licence to fiddle.

Badgermonkey

Surely EU mandarins were aware of the ingrained culture of indulgence and entitlement enjoyed by the Greeks, gifted them by their own political elite.

Greece may have cooked the books big time to meet the criteria for entry to the single currency but the fetish for political union at EU level meant the examination of those numbers was conveniently cursory, so as not to slow the Brussels express.

Wibbs

Oh I agree BM and it goes even more slimy than that. Goldman Sachs, that bastion of fiscal morality helped them cook said books. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,676634,00.html

foxyboxer

Do not ever, EVER apply to stage an Olympics.

ringadingding

Those crafty bubble n squeaks

ejmaztec

The Italians aren't much better, having allegedly fiddled the country's books to get Euro membership in the first place.