Trojan horses are still being used, so it seems....
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Trojan horses are still being used, so it seems....
Fox News Channel was JUST reporting on the Greeks rushing in to take out their money.
It's funny, how the news makes it here quicker than it does to National News Networks in the US now..... amazing.
Court official to be appointed Greek interim PM
By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press – 29 minutes ago
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece appointed a senior judge Wednesday as prime minister of a caretaker government that will lead the country to repeat elections next month. The move comes as Greece lurches through a political crisis that has threatened its continued participation in the European Union's joint currency.
Council of State head Panagiotis Pikrammenos, 67, was to be sworn in Wednesday night, at the head of a government political leaders said would not be able to make any binding commitments until new balloting, which is expected June 17.
The protracted political uncertainty has worried Greece's international creditors as well as Greeks themselves, with the country's president warning wrangling political leaders that millions of euros had been withdrawn from bank deposits in the aftermath of the inconclusive May 6 election.
About €700 million ($898 million) in deposits have flown out of Greek banks, President Karolos Papoulias told party leaders Monday after being briefed by central bank governor George Provopoulos.
"The situation in the banks is very difficult," Papoulias said according to a transcript of the meeting's minutes released Tuesday night. "Mr. Provopoulos told me that of course there is no panic, but there is great fear which could turn into panic."
There were no queues at banks in Athens after the elections, but Greeks have been gradually withdrawing their savings over the past two years as the country's financial crisis deepened, either sending the money abroad or keeping it in their homes.
"I would expect the population to quietly be doing what it has been doing in the last days. In other words, some of the Greek citizens are afraid and are taking a portion of the money, but I'm not expecting a bank run," said Theodore Krintas, managing director of Attica Wealth Management.
The May 6 election saw a massive rise in popularity for parties that advocate pulling out of Greece's commitments to its international bailout deal, under which it agreed to strict austerity measures in return for billions of euros in rescue loans. The spending cuts and tax hikes have left the country mired in the fifth year of a deep recession and sent unemployment soaring to above 21 percent, and many argue the country cannot hope for recovery if they stick to the deal.
"I want to believe that next time the people will express their opposition to the bailout agreement even more adamantly so that a strong government will be formed without the current parties," civil servant Christina Papadopoulou said of the repeat ballot.
Negotiations to agree on a coalition government collapsed Tuesday, nine days after voters furious with the handling of the country's financial crisis deserted the two formerly dominant parties in favor of smaller anti-bailout groups. The election left no party with enough votes for a majority in parliament.
"In a democracy, new elections are the natural consequence of the impossibility to form a government following an election. It will now be for the Greek people to take a fully informed decision on the alternatives, having in mind that this will be indeed an historic election," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
"We will of course respect the democratic decision of the Greek people," he added. "At the same time the Greek citizens should be aware that there are 16 other democracies in the euro area. The democratic decisions taken in the euro area must also be taken into account."
It is the bailout loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund that have been keeping the country afloat, and losing them would lead to state coffers running out of money, including for pensions, healthcare and salaries. It is unclear how the mid-June election will affect the continued disbursement of the loan installments.
"It is our wish, and I think the wish of all Greece's European partners, that a Greek government which is capable of acting emerge as soon as possible from these elections," German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in Berlin. "I am not going to say anything here now about the payment of tranches which are due at the end of June — that doesn't have to be decided on in mid-May."
The instability has led Greece's prospects of remaining in the euro top of the agenda.
"If the country's budgetary commitments are not honored, there needs to be appropriate revisions, which means either supplementary financing and additional time, or mechanisms for an exit, which in this case must be orderly," IMF head Christine Lagarde said in a Tuesday interview on France 24 television.
Greece leaving the euro "is something that would be extremely expensive and would pose great risks, but it is part of the options that we must technically consider."
Greece now faces of month of inertia, with a government hamstrung by party leaders' insistence that it can take no binding decisions.
"It will be a strictly caretaker government, which must not take any action at the EU or NATO that will be binding for the Greek people," Communist Party head Aleka Papariga said. "If there is an emergency or unforeseen event, that can be addressed by the consultation among the parties with the involvement of the president."
Alexis Tsipras, head of the Radical Left Coalition, or Syriza, which came a surprise second in the May 6 elections after campaigning on an anti-bailout platform, said he had requested "that the caretaker government should not implement measures that would involve further cuts in salaries, pensions and public spending, that would dismantle labor relations or allow privatizations. . I also asked for a freeze on every ongoing process regarding the sale of state property."
Tsipras is the frontrunner for the next election. Recent opinion polls have shown him as likely to come first, though with nowhere near enough votes to form a government on his own — meaning more coalition negotiations will be needed.
The two mainstream parties, conservative New Democracy and socialist PASOK, have warned that anti-bailout policies will lead Greece out of the euro.
"Two courses lie ahead of the Greek people: Either to change everything in Greece — with changes which can be carried out in a Europe that is also changing — or to experience the terror of an exit from the euro, the terror of isolation outside Europe and the collapse of all we have built so far," said New Democracy head Antonis Samaras.
A win by Tsipras would put him in a dominant position to make a coalition deal with other anti-bailout parties, even if he cannot form a government alone.
"This will make reaching an agreement between the next government and Greece's international creditors extremely difficult, raising the risk of a Greek exit from the euro and sovereign debt default," said Robert O'Daly, Senior Economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. "The consequences of this would be dire for Greece and probably the rest of the euro area."
Geir Moulson in Berlin, Raf Casert in Brussels, Annita Mordechai, Derek Gatopoulos and Nicholas Paphitis contributed.
What does Phan Thi Kim Phuc have to do with anything?
Arbeit Macht Frei means Work makes you free. This is the only relevant part of the sign. Since you lazy Greeks don't want to work, you are not free. It's a simple concept really.
See, Peterle, you got it right...
The PROBLEM is those who made the problem aren't the ones to PAY.Quote:
They made everything with debt.
Now it is time to pay the debt.
And since they are pretty smart usually, they are already in some other country or on the Riviera, or in Argentina.
I spend other people's money pretty much every day. It's great :)
Unlike the government, everything I buy for my company, with my company's money, is so that the company can either fix an asset or use a new asset to make money easier or cheaper. I don't get to keep any of it.
The government has figured out a million ways to skim.
And thus you have the difference between private enterprise and government mismanagement.
lol
This explains Greece. Think debt explosion.
-------
"Imagine a magic pipette. It is magic because every drop of water that comes out of it will double in size every minute. So the first minute there is one drop, the second minute there are two drops, the third minute four drops, the fourth minute eight drops and so on… This is an example of exponential growth. Now, imagine a normal sized football stadium. In this stadium you are sitting on the seat at the very top of the stadium, with the best overview of the whole stadium. To make things more interesting, imagine the stadium is completely water-tight and that you cannot move from your seat. The first drop from the magic pipette is dropped right in the middle of the field, at 12pm.
Here’s the question: Remembering that this drop grows exponentially by doubling in size every minute, how much time do you have to free yourself from the seat and leave the stadium before the water reaches your seat at the very top?
Think about it for a moment. Is it hours, days, weeks, months? The answer: You have exactly until 12:49pm. It takes this tiny magic drop less than 50 minutes to fill a whole football stadium with water. This is impressive! But it gets better: At what time do you think the football stadium is still 93% empty? Take a guess. The answer: At 12:45pm. So, you sit and watch the drop growing, and after 45 minutes all you see is the playing field covered with water. And then, within four more minutes, the water fills the whole stadium. This means that you think you are safe because it seems that you have plenty of time left, whereas due to the exponential growth you really have to take immediate action if you want to have any chance of getting out of this situation."
Ah... the old give me a penny and double it trick - Maxwell Smart, Agent 86.
The point is that most people don't see the problem until it's too late.
Greece to Leave Euro Zone on June 18: Wealth Manager
Published: Monday, 28 May 2012 | 7:19 AM ET
By: Shai Ahmed
CNBC Associate Editor
Greece will leave the euro zone on June 18 if the populist government wins the country’s elections on the 17 as the rest of the euro zone rounds on "cheaters," Nick Dewhirst, director at wealth management firm Integral Asset Management, told CNBC.com Monday.
http://media.cnbc.com/i/CNBC/Section...mage%20Six.jpgBloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Greek national flag is seen flying above the parliament building on Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece, on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012.
“The euro zone is a club but you get cheaters who get away with it until everyone finds out and at that point you need to remove them otherwise everyone will cheat. It’s better for Greece to leave,” Dewhirst said.
He added that Greek society was built on cheating and scheming, saying “everyone does it” but that voters elsewhere in the euro zone were now calling Greece to account.
“The basic question is that a German has to increase working from 65 to 67 and that is to pay for Greeks retiring at 50. The 17th of June is the perfect opportunity to say either 'we’ll behave' or 'we’ll carry on cheating,'" he said.
Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sparked criticism in Greece after saying that Greeks needed to start paying their taxes, with Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos accusing her of "insulting the Greek people." Greece was forced to call for a new round of elections, which will take place on June 17 after the country failed to pick a decisive winner in elections earlier this month.
Far left parties against the country’s bailout agreement received strong support from the electorate disheartened by harsh austerity measures in a country now in its fifth year of recession. However, polls at the weekend showed support for the pro euro bailout parties increasing enough to form a coalition.Dewhirst said that there had been a significant amount of "scaremongering" from the euro elite about the ramifications of a "Grexit" but that it would be feasible and even orderly.
“It’s a bit like Y2K, [also known as the Millennium bug, the much- hyped problems that would affect computers globally as the year changed to 2000] there would be a lot less to it then everyone thinks.
"The Greek banking system would close for a week and there’ll be a new currency. Not the drachma but ideally it would be two Geuros (the name given to a possible Greek parallel currency) to one euro so they devalue and fix to the euro,” Dewhirst said.
He added that this would transform Greece and the rest of the euro zone for the better.
“Greeks would no longer be able to afford German cars and Germans would be able to buy Greek villas and the young unemployed in Greece would have jobs as tourism booms. The best thing would be that they [Greeks] could blame the foreigners,” Dewhirst said.
He said suggestions of a bank run and contagion have been overplayed by some quarters.
“Yes, the banks would run dry but it can be done, there is a lot more money electronically than there is cash. In Argentina they closed everyone’s bank account and then they were reopened using Pesos.
The club would rally round the rest so the weaker members - Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal -would receive a massive support mechanism. The Germans would provide support to the rest of the euro but not to the Greeks,” he said.
Kit Juckes, global head of foreign exchange at Societe Generale, told CNBC’s “Worldwide Exchange” that the best outcome was “the status quo.” “A Greek economy in depression, austerity that guarantees they’ll stay in depression and living on life support from the rest of Europe is the best,” he said.
The Euro is currently at 1.241 to the dollar. Two Weeks ago it was 1.30. One week ago it was 1.275.
Until a solid plan is made, it will continue to slide down. If Greece announces an exit from the Eurozone, the Euro will immediately climb. This would be a great money making opportunity if you had a ton of extra dough just sitting around.
Buy low, sell high.....