New Efforts to Bail Out Greece
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-02-21/new-efforts-bail-out-greece
After haggling into the early hours of this morning, Europe agreed to a new bailout package for Greece. The package provides $172 billion in financial aid for the Greek economy. After months of teetering on the brink of bankruptcy the deal will allow Greece to avoid a looming default in March. But the deal comes with new, strict conditions. Many economists now say E.U. imposed austerity measures are strangling the Greek economy. Join us to discuss whether the new deal will save the Greece or merely delay a deeper default.
Guests
Scheherazade Rehman
professor of International Business/Finance and International Affairs at George Washington University
Miranda Xafa
President of EF Consulting and former board member for Greece at the IMF
Uri Dadush
senior associate and director in Carnegie’s International Economics Program, former director of international trade and former director of economic policy at the World Bank.
Stephan Richter
publisher and editor-in-chief of The Globalist, a daily online magazine on the global economy, politics and culture.
Comments
Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Terms of Use before posting your comments.
Our future.
Unemployment has run out so now workers are "insane". Makes you wonder if the system is so easily gamed, how much of SSDI is a total sham??
Thousands of banks went belly up in the "Great Recession",including my home town`s National City Bank.My Governor was reported to have sold $700 million in worthless junk bonds to Public Employees Retirement fund. Bernie Madoff ripped off millions. Enron ripped of investors,customers,and employees. Everywhere you look the people we`re supposed to trust are scamming us.Nobody`s going to jail. Nobody seems to care about the truth. BLAME THE VICTIM. Why not? If right wing talkers say so,it must be true,it`s gospel.
Just be happy neither you nor your 401(k) invested in Greek bonds.
The Government of Greece should have left the E.U. and at least temporarily taxed the decriminalized use of marijuana (etc) and prostitution to help repay its debt. They should have taken liberal government in a new direction.
Hello Diane,
Your guests are talking about democracy and productivity, ignoring the fact that democracy has been violated in Greece and that Greece is no longer a sovereign nation. The most recent bandaid will not work as it eliminates any hope even based on neoliberal economic principles. The ordinary citizen that is now making peanuts as a salary (330 euros) while unemployment is at 48% (official quote is about 25%) and is obligated to pay solidarity taxes (illegal contributions to a bankrupt government) knows that s/he is paying to save the big banks. The EU remains a union by means continuing a coups d'etat
Dear Diane; Where all that money went ??. What did they spent all that money on. . We should ask where is the beef? Inquiring minds need to know ! !
When Greece joined the Eurozone, it was essentially a cash economy on the ground. Giving them "unlimited" credit without guidence and mentoring was like giving a college kid a credit card, shipping them off to college, and saying, "Have fun". The Eurozone leaders bear responsibility too. The Germans, Dutch, etc. all spent their vacations in Greece. They knew what it was like.
The logic, if it's too good to be true it probably is. Why this goes unrecognized when national governments offer all the free goodies is puzzling. When it starts unraveling the foolish blame faceless banks and corporations for the collapse and not the lying politicians who created the problem.
THX 1138 wrote:" When it starts unraveling the foolish blame faceless banks and corporations for the collapse and not the lying politicians who created the problem."
Great point! They probably don't blame the politicians because that would force them to look in the mirror and they would know that the "victims" are the perpetrators.
The guests stated,25% or 1 of every 4 tax revenue dollars go uncollected. In Greece you`re saying,politicians are bribed to allow the elite to evade their liability. In the U.S.politicians are bribed to create and keep the loopholes that favor the elite.Knowing these facts conservatives continually attack Social Security and Medicare,which are fully funded and add nothing to our debt.
AUSTERITY= an ideology that says your road to riches is poverty.
Great point THX 1138
This play has occurred many times, in many different countries, and very few countries seem to learn from their history or the history of other countries. One cannot out earn their stupidity...
"conservatives continually attack Social Security and Medicare,which are fully funded and add nothing to our debt".
You mean funded with borrowed money? Last time I checked Medicare is in the hole for about 3 to 1. SS is in the red as well, the new Obama tax cut made it worse.
I wonder if anyone has kept track of how many government employees have been laid off in the past four or five years.
I suspect if this figure was calculated and released it would be seen that we have given up at least 20% of the government jobs - including federal, state and county and city government jobs I suspect that figure would exceed 20%.
Austerity measures in the extreme have been taken in our country - it has not been put in the media as such.
WHile government jobs go away the taxes that would have been paid by those unemployed people do not go into the government coffers, more jobs go away as these previously employed people do not go to the lunch counters, buy fuel to get to and from work, etc.
Read all about the (possible) future: 2030, The Real Story of What Happens to America by Albert Brooks.
Without knowing the details of the Greek IRS, my guess is that part of that is due to the inability of the system to collect taxes correctly from declared incomes and another part is due to the fact that 30% of the Greek economy is "black", i.e. it is cash economy and never gets taxed, or taxation is avoided by bribe. The corruption is not at the highest levels necessarily. I recall the case of someone showing up at a night club, impersonating an IRS agent and expecting to be bribed! You could call that business acumen!
Can you believe someone buys into the idea that the government is a jobs program. The government is nothing more than a parasite that lives off a productive host. Any service the government does that is not done in a efficient manner is wealth destroyed. Any service the government does that's not needed is wealth destroyed. Figure all government programs have about 25% outright waste through fraud and abuse. Figure that half of all government programs are not even needed at all and the reality is they have done nothing to improve the things they were created to do in the first place. Understand all this and accept it because this is the true nature of the big government beast. thx
It is immoral to pay an immoral debt.
To Bill Haley:
It's the corporation that is full of fraud and waste and corruption. The government if it is anything is there to protect the people against the excesses of the monied elite.
And yes, the government is one of our country's key job creators.
It's the wealthy, paying themselves up to 500 times of their workers, who make money through investment and not work, who are the real parasites, living off the backs of the working and middle classes and the poor.