Greece stood on its own two feet in creating the current problem!

And includes a history of employing three public servants for every one real position?

And where the money lavished on maintaining the great dinosaur of a public railway, would have been less costly, if their fare paying passengers had been put in taxis and run to their destinations for free!

Greece as a country has a proud history of almost everyone engaging in massive tax avoidance as if it were the public sport!?

Time for the Greeks to stop whining about the teat being removed and just come to terms with what must be done.

As occurred in another small country with a basket case economy!

Ireland, which before they fatuously allowed debt laden foreign speculators to kill it of in its infancy, so to speak; created the celtic economic miracle!

And as simple as investing in their own people and their better ideas; all while remaining in the euro and the common market!

The real key to their own initial success!

This is basically what Greece needs to also do! and avoid like the plague debt laden foreign speculators, which spectacularly killed not only Ireland's economy but, among others, Iceland's and Spain's as well

Whinging that the road is long and hard, won't make it shorter or easier!

Head down and bum up; and get on with it!
Rhrosty.

Rhosty is correct.

I too don’t quite understand the article writer’s point. He objects to the responsibilities placed on Greece by the Troika as a condition of the handouts and yet somehow thinks the funds should be gifted to Greece? Hello?

He demeans the very people who have saved Greece from financial Armageddon by calling them “The despised powers of occupation, known as Troika”.

He assails Alexis Tsipras as “irresponsible… [who] like his ‘right wing’ predecessors, promised one thing – freedom from the Troika's austerity -- but delivered the exact opposite – more severe austerity”

Unlike the writer, Tsipras was mugged by reality.

He claims the Troika “are killing Greek freedom”.

He is wrong. Reckless government spending married to gross incompetence (or is it corruption?) across all Greek political parties caused the problem the Hellenic Republic has found itself.

He adds that “President Obama and the IMF have been saying the Greek debt is unsustainable”. But he doesn’t face the music. That is, that Obama talks a great deal but doesn’t put his hand in his pocket. Obama expects the “unsustainability” of the Greek debt to be paid for by German, Dutch and French taxpayers.

Not by Uncle Sam!

The writer compares the “humiliations” of Greece today with that of the Germany post World War I and insinuates that what happened in Germany may repeat in Greece.

Sorry pal.

Bad example.

By 1914 Germany was the most powerful economy in Europe. Greece is not nor was it in the same economic or political league.

Six years after the War, even with all of the devastation, from 1924 to 1929 Germany became increasingly prosperous and peaceful.

The economy was rebuilt, joblessness was reduced and people began to feel secure.

Significantly, the writer ignores the very different mindsets of German and Greek leaders. Not to mention their electorates.

As to economic potency, today Greece is a bit player.

I do however think the writer’s forecast of a likely Athenian embrace of Russia is spot on.

Evaggelos epitomises the attitude that got the Greeks where they are today.

They had their Big Fat Greek Wedding, at others expense, & now don't want to pay for it. They expected it to go on for ever, with the bill never coming.

Well sorry Evaggelos that bill has arrived, & it's time to leave the reception & go out to work. That's real work too Evaggelos, no more fat pay packets for painting rocks white a few hours a week. If you can't find work, you just might to have to live rough for a while.

It is nice of the Greeks to hold this mirror up for us to see our future, if we don't stop paying ourselves more than we earn. Pity too many of us, blinded by the entitlement mentality, refuse to look.

You should save this little dissertation Evaggelos, with just a few changes to who is blamed, you will be able to use it again to explain our failure quite soon.

In ordinary parlance, “standing on one’s own two feet” means taking responsibility for oneself and the consequences of one’s actions. What Evaggelos is asking for is the opposite – for debts to be wiped out, and the Greek people to magically escape the misery of austerity without any regard for how they will pay for their brave new world of affluent abundance.

As for the dream of autarkeia, good luck with that. Look where it got Greece’s Albanian neighbours under Hoxha

I may be misremembering, but in the Aeneid didn't Virgil write:

"Beware of Greeks' bearer bonds."

Hi Jonathan,

A few months back, Tsipras tried sucking up to Putin for, presumably, a massive bail-out. In the video shot, Putin sits utterly unmoved. He was probably thinking, given Russia's 20 % economic contraction in the past year, 'Darn [Yob tvoi matj] ! I was going to ask for a few million drachma.'

Remember BRICS ? Brazil has relied too much of Vale, but it's heading for an economic cliff. India doesn't seem to be getting its act together too quickly. China may hit the shoals of economic reality sooner than we would like here. I suppose that leaves S. Not exactly a bloc.

We can't laugh. We've laid back in the sun of the mining boom, and now that's over. We've traded our manufacturing for a high standard of living. Fair enough, but we should have been innovating, scrambling, taking more of a punt of what should be our comparative advantage, whatever that might be.

In ancient times, young Greek maidens were always, it seems, in danger of being caught out by Zeus, in the shape of swans, or bulls, or frogs. [No, maybe not frogs]. If we're not careful, if we just frolic in the sun, we too might get well and truly.

Joe

Hi Joe

Nice to hear from you.

I agree with your analysis of the BRICS so far as it for the present.
For my money, I’d still wager that economically speaking, the world in the long run belongs to the BRICS.

Certainly not to the Anglosphere.

Your point on us lapping up the cream of the good life for so long and not preparing ourselves for a post resource boom era is spot on. The trouble now is that we cannot even reform minimally to get any economic traction. Witness the opposition to the Productivity Commission’s interim view on eradicating penalty payments. So many uninformed would rather a country where less Australians find well paid work rather than more Australians find not-so-well paid work.

And you are right in your prediction as to where the nation is heading if we continue to frolic in the sun like there is no manyana.

Oh Gawd. Another Greek blaming the stupidity of his own people on everybody else.

Memo to Greece. You can not spend more than you earn. If you borrow money, make sure it is for productive reasons and that you can pay it back. Don't elect socialist governments who will borrow billions to pay your generous pensions. Don't retire on borrowed full pay at 50 years of age. Pay your taxes. Grow a brain. Don't immigrate to Australia or Germany if you are so stupid that you can't figure out that nobody owes you a living.

Johno: If Sunday penalty rates are to go they should go for everyone not the lowest paid battlers in the country!
Rhrosty.

Hi Rhosty,

Yes, a downward adjustment of everybody's wage and salary, to match a compensatory rise in the wages of the lowest paid who may be currently subject, more than the average Goat Cheese Circle bureaucrat, to have to work on penalty rates.

I apologise for the term 'average Goat Cheese Circle bureaucrat' since they are all, in their own minds at least, well above average, certainly above the herd.

Joe

Greece is living in a fantasy land as part of the euro. It needs to issue its own currency, suffer the one off devaluation, and become economically viable. And default to teach the EU banks a lesson.

Hi Outrider,

And trade their what with whom ?

Joe

I've got a couple of questions for Jonathan

Stated "The trouble now is that we cannot even reform minimally to get any economic traction. Witness the opposition to the Productivity Commission’s interim view on eradicating penalty payments. So many uninformed would rather a country where less Australians find well paid work rather than more Australians find not-so-well paid work."

I'll accept your statements as an economist, but I'm sure if you were a trade unionist you'd have a different opinion on penalty rates.

Why as an economist is it good to eradicate penalty payments?

Why would you label the people who oppose this measure on penalty rates as uninformed?

Australians have been informed.
They've been told that for new home owners the dream of owning their own home is getting harder and harder.

Why do economists talk of a need for more immigration?

For Economists
Why should regular people have regard for economists who assume to know better, but who also failed to insulate the country against the GFC and are probably responsible for the financial mess in the world in the first place?

If they're so smart why cant they create a foolproof plan?

For Baby Boomers
You had a better work ethic than following generations but you also had better opportunities.
You worked hard for this country and deserve a decent retirement, but in saying that, I'm not sure you handed the country down to the next generation in a state better than you found it.

Younger Australians are will pay a huge price in health costs as Baby Boomers pass away.
But governments want to give them more money through super (dollar for dollar) for holidays in retirement.
Why is this?

If a deficit exists between income and expenses every week (referring to the economy) is it not fair to target wasteful spending as much as the need to earn more?

Why is it a rich businessman can buy a 250k Porshe and write it off on tax?
Is this what Australians should give up their penalty rates for?
So more businessmen can get more free Porche's??

Rhosty, you say “If Sunday penalty rates are to go they should go for everyone not the lowest paid battlers in the country"!
I agree.

Armchair: you say, with regards to my comment on penalty rates that

"I'll accept your statements as an economist, but I'm sure if you were a trade unionist you'd have a different opinion on penalty rates".

The problem is that most union leaders are focussed on maximising the pay and conditions of their members even if that comes at the cost of new members.

You ask "Why would you label the people who oppose this measure on penalty rates as uninformed”?

Simply because they don’t think too far ahead. Surely an economy should prioritise finding work for all those who want to work as well as prioritise the maintenance of social harmony. Ensuring maximum pay for the few ignores those two other objectives.

Also maintaining wages higher than what can be sustained in a competitive economy the long run will only delay the inevitable.

You want proof? Go grocery shopping and you’ll see as I have that most foods are made overseas (in my case China, Germany and NZ). Why? Because in many cases Australian workers are too expensive.

As for your comment "They've been told that for new home owners the dream of owning their own home is getting harder and harder”. I agree and the fault lies with successive governments whose focus is either to maximise state taxes (in the case of the states) or minimise unemployment numbers by mopping up building industry workers construct properties for foreign buyers. Local buyers young and old are not their concern. Sadly.

As to your comment on " a need for more immigration”. Many economists agree that more migrants is better. I however question not the numbers involved but (a) what type of immigrant and (b) what’s in it for Australia by allowing some folk to immigrate.

BTT.

Another bail-out deal for Greece has been announced, $ 86 billion.

Fascinating. So a party which was determined to carry out a Gramscian 'march through the institutions', i.e. the destruction of capitalism and its institutions, has been rescued by those institutions.

Oh well, other ways can be found. Same-sex 'marriage' might help it along. Anti-coal. Save the bony-arsed skink, and the cross-eyed Mittagong snail. Bike paths under each city. Make it up as you go along. Anything, as long as it cripples any post-Enlightenment initiative, and can take us back to the dark ages.

Joe

For Greece to be free to stand on its feet, Greece must be free of the oppressor. The dichotomy of the oppressor and the oppressor is not only a modernist theme however ontological and phenomenological historically. It was Heidegger who effectively stated that people should never be the property of people however people often act in ways where people are property - at best people are the property of freedom. Therefore there is a theft of spirit and not only the impost of indenture and slavery.

Gerry Georgatos