Answers To Crazy Basement Dwellers (you) -part II

Who really is the Schismarch?

Is the situation in Greece really as bad as the Media portrays it?

If the Media portrayed anything accurately, it wouldn't be called the Media; it would be called Bloggers United! ;P

From an economic perspective, nobody in Europe is doing well.

The difference here is that people don't quite accept that if Athens has to borrow its total requirements of 53 billion euros this year at current market rates, it would cost AT LEAST an extra 500 million euros a year in debt service charges. We're being raped by interest rates, paying a 12.5% when Germany -Europe's only country that isn't majorly eating shit at the moment- pays less than 3%. After years of political corruption and recent bank bail-outs, the result is that we -along with Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland and now Belgium-, owe hundreds of billions. It is estimated that this year, every greek citizen (population: 11.000.000) owes 23.600 euros. Basically, I already owe 23.600 euros and I don't even have any loans -not to mention an income. or a porsche.

Being a member of the European Union and all that jazz means they won't let us go bankrupt because the euro will get fucked if we do. Which means we have to borrow more and more and more at unbelievable rates, making it quite impossible to pay back anytime soon, not to mention that corporations are withdrawing funds from greek banks. In the meantime, austerity measures here include a 10% cut in wages, increased taxes, higher retirement ages and of course an increase in fuel prices. Greeks don't have the mentality of yeah-let's-eat-shit-for-the-following-ten-years-because-our-politicians-failed-miserably-and-we-owe-the-good-people-who-lend-us-money-at-excruciating-rates. So we take it to the streets, rioting and all...

The crisis here became obvious almost half a year ago. That's when we started running around in an effort to do bond deals with other european countries -which basically means Germany because everyone in Europe knows that Germany is the one who calls the shots. Germans didn't want to be arsed, basically saying that we screwed up and it's not their problem. That makes sense, only it doesn't because in a union such as the european, if one country gets screwed, they all will eventually, one after the other. Now, 6 months later, germans are starting to realise this and wish to lend us money, only it's kinda late. The euro is starting to get fucked and the financial problems here are much more difficult to be solved than they were 6 months ago, because that's the way things work in economy: you have to react fast, or the situation dramatically changes from one day to another.

-What the fuck do we do now?

Greece cannot devalue its currency or print money because we gave up those sovereign powers to the European Central Bank, upon becoming a member of the euro-zone. So, foreign economists suggest getting out of the euro-zone. If we get out of the euro zone, and therefore go back to the old currency (and therefore GO BANKRUPT) we will starve. As simple as that.
Not that there's any way to control the downfall in a worldwide scale even if we were left to starve on our own: all of the countries central banks are printing money (Euro, UK, US etc.) as they are engaged in continuous competitive devaluations of their currencies. In other words, economy can only be understood as a global phenomenon and shitty economy even more so.

Basically, there's no solution, I predict all four riders of the apocalypse throwing a party over Europe's remains, capitalism dying, and me becoming a farmer girl growing potatoes.

Answers To Crazy Basement Dwellers (you) -part II by The Schismarch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Greece License.