Why are people angry at Greece? What is going on in the EU

[Simon]

the royal family is just a side show they don't really do much except cost us money. You lucky, when i lived in Italy most English tourists we met were rude and did not want to talk to us, my grandmother tried to suggest a good place to park to a couple that were discussing their problem in a shop but they headed of in case she was going to ask them for money for telling them where they could park.

oh and another nice little story about the EU ? it was the then Italian UE president that did a deal (that got him back hander money) whereby the good Italian rice (from his OWN country) was change for poor quality German rice. So the Italian sold German garbage with their name on it while the German company sold the nice rice with their name on it, who gained ? the man that had nothing to do with growing rice and betrayed his own people who have to fight to have their unique products recognized. I hate to think how many "British" people think that parmigiana cheese is just grated cheese because that is how any grated cheese is labelled in the UK, in reality is it cheese made ONLY in Parma in Italy and is normally used grated, not any old hard cheese ground up and sold in a salt dispenser !

[Kiriakos-GR]

In comparison with the " Italian rice " story ,  I have the  " Greek Olive Oil " Story ...

Its the best ever  " In quality "  Olive oil, world wide ..

Italy and Spain gets the Greek Olive oil so to mix with their own , so to gain some of it taste.
And exports this oils with their flag..

Now that we will start export in China , I like to see with what they will mix their oils ?
Soon or later their inferior product, it will be relieved.

And when I am talking about " inferior " ,  I am not saying that is garbage, but if you pay for the best ever ,
you must getting it ..
The inferior Oil  , has lower price , and thats the reason why all this are happening .   

 

[Simon]

well I know a lot of Spanish oil is sold in Italy although it is unmixed, I think that because the Spanish economy is weaker and the pay less in Spain imported Spanish oil is cheaper than locally produced oil. I think the same might be true for Greek oil

Now I'm not sure about which oil is of better quality and will not get into that argument as it will get down to a "my country is better than yours because it's my country" but i know that there are various qualities of oil and it is mostly based on the sort of filtration the oil undergoes, and which "pressing" the oil came from because the olives and resulting pulp get more than one pressing but the more you do the worse the oil gets I think 4 is the norm, there is in fact an oil sold in Italy which is called of "sansa" which is the name of the remaining pulp that is virtually useless but gets that last pressing to get the last dregs of oil which is not the best but it is sold cheaply.

In the UK their idea of "extra virgin" oil is oil that is practically transparent with a suspended green filament of real oil which is probably the "extra virgin" bit, it is so unlike the other 99.999999% of the bottle that it won't even mix. But then the English really do not know a thing about food and most don't have time to cook so they like gimmicks

If we want to talk about mixing one countries product with another lets turn to our French friends. Do you really believe that all of the champaign made really comes from champaign ? Now I have driven trough France and through champaign and seen the little village from the motorway (with the sign up telling you it is champaign), the quantity of grapes in the region begs belief for one of the worlds most famous wine making areas. it is impossible that they really produce that much. But ah listen to our friends in the EU parliament and what do they say ? that is there is 10% of french wine in the champaign it can be called french champaign (it is a rule valid for any wine in fact), so where does the other 90+% come from ?: Italy, the grapes undergo initial fermentation after which the juice is transported in tanks to france, and it is small wonder that the border police were so interested in our trailer (that we had made higher) when we crossed the border end of September because they had decided we were trying to smuggle wine out.

So the Italian wine becomes champaign and people feel really good about drinking this drink and feel so stuck up over a lie that was discovered back in the 50's. Oh I tried telling people here how it works but they will not have it lest their illusion be shattered ! champaign is also in the north part of france where the weather is as shit as it is in the UK and in fact guess what we see lots of fields of instead of grapes ?: weat and sweetcorn !!!

[Polossatik]

Just to throw in a little fact that gets not enough media coverage, the German government did not decided to help Greece because they like Greece so much, but under tremendous pressure from the German banks who fear that Greece stepping out would also trigger the same problems with Italy, Spain etc... This little graph put it nicely in perspective

While those loans stay "in euro" even if one of those country's would "step out", the nett result would be they would never see that money back because the country would default and introduce the "new drachma" or so, needing huge write off's , who will be far bigger than the write off's of the DE banks during the US derivates crisis, and they barely survived that... Basically that is what all the fuzz is about, if this happens the DE banking system collapses.

ho and , I'm maybe biased as Belgian, but I do think the EU is a good idea (not worse then any "local" government that is being bullied by pressure groups), the only real problem is that for some area's, like finance or foreign politics the EU itself simply has not enough power to do things properly.
Note that I'm not saying the EU should take everything over...

I've lived in the UK also a few years ago, and frankly I must say that I found the country in a lot worse state than I thought it was. And I'm not only referring that what is considered "food" in the UK (and yes, I do agree , belgium is silly and has it's own stupid problems, but still...)

[Simon]

yes and as I said Italy and Spain bought into the Euro, their economies were too weak to match the other EU countries so that had to pay money to get into it. For me this obliterates of object of the Euro but then money is money.

Yes the UK is in trouble on all fronts, the country is in debt and people are irresponsible and won't even look out for themselves. Yes you can blame banks for giving people loans who could not pay them back but for christs sake anyone should be clever enough to figure out how much debt they can afford. Really I think that it is safe to say that the average Italian is far more savvy about life than the dipstick UK population.

[VladKEasternTiger]

yes and as I said Italy and Spain bought into the Euro, their economies were too weak to match the other EU countries so that had to pay money to get into it. For me this obliterates of object of the Euro but then money is money.

Yes the UK is in trouble on all fronts, the country is in debt and people are irresponsible and won't even look out for themselves. Yes you can blame banks for giving people loans who could not pay them back but for christs sake anyone should be clever enough to figure out how much debt they can afford. Really I think that it is safe to say that the average Italian is far more savvy about life than the dipstick UK population.

What makes it even worse is manufacturing seems to be non existent all I am seeing is jobs in call center environments its now more service based economy 

[VladKEasternTiger]

I've lived in the UK also a few years ago, and frankly I must say that I found the country in a lot worse state than I thought it was. And I'm not only referring that what is considered "food" in the UK (and yes, I do agree , belgium is silly and has it's own stupid problems, but still...)
[/quote]

Please kindly explain more about the uk ?

I want to see your argument

[Simon]

yes and as I said Italy and Spain bought into the Euro, their economies were too weak to match the other EU countries so that had to pay money to get into it. For me this obliterates of object of the Euro but then money is money.

Yes the UK is in trouble on all fronts, the country is in debt and people are irresponsible and won't even look out for themselves. Yes you can blame banks for giving people loans who could not pay them back but for christs sake anyone should be clever enough to figure out how much debt they can afford. Really I think that it is safe to say that the average Italian is far more savvy about life than the dipstick UK population.

What makes it even worse is manufacturing seems to be non existent all I am seeing is jobs in call center environments its now more service based economy 

The problem is that manufacturing is virtually non existent and most of the UK is service based but then plenty of british companies (That probably are not british anyway) use indian call centres. The strength of a countries truly lies in it's manufacturing power. If europe and the rest of the world stopped trading with the UK how long would we survive ? I work for an engineering/manufacturing company and in reality we make very little and spend a lot of time modifying and correcting chinese, UAE and romanian junk we buy in cheaply, we have no control over quality (and I know that as I'm the one and only goods in QC inspector) and even if stuff is faulty with a 3 month manufacturing lead time and another 3 months in transit you won't exactly ask for a replacement if you can hash it for a customer that wanted it last month. It is sad to say that we are still in business only because we do military contracts because our commercial lines are only just picking up after a year.

[Kiriakos-GR]

And I thought, that I was the only one working in military contracts..  

At list my own gain was , free testing of the Fluke 87-5 with the calibrator .
( at the ballistic quality control department) 

[VladKEasternTiger]

yes and as I said Italy and Spain bought into the Euro, their economies were too weak to match the other EU countries so that had to pay money to get into it. For me this obliterates of object of the Euro but then money is money.

Yes the UK is in trouble on all fronts, the country is in debt and people are irresponsible and won't even look out for themselves. Yes you can blame banks for giving people loans who could not pay them back but for christs sake anyone should be clever enough to figure out how much debt they can afford. Really I think that it is safe to say that the average Italian is far more savvy about life than the dipstick UK population.

What makes it even worse is manufacturing seems to be non existent all I am seeing is jobs in call center environments its now more service based economy 

The problem is that manufacturing is virtually non existent and most of the UK is service based but then plenty of british companies (That probably are not british anyway) use indian call centres. The strength of a countries truly lies in it's manufacturing power. If europe and the rest of the world stopped trading with the UK how long would we survive ? I work for an engineering/manufacturing company and in reality we make very little and spend a lot of time modifying and correcting chinese, UAE and romanian junk we buy in cheaply, we have no control over quality (and I know that as I'm the one and only goods in QC inspector) and even if stuff is faulty with a 3 month manufacturing lead time and another 3 months in transit you won't exactly ask for a replacement if you can hash it for a customer that wanted it last month. It is sad to say that we are still in business only because we do military contracts because our commercial lines are only just picking up after a year.

So what do you suggest? I totally agree with you, nothing irritates me more than making a call to my bank only to speak to someone from India, dont get me wrong they are very bright people but I like dealing with people in my own country.

Just curious the job you do are the people you work with all trained and self taught or do they have years of university under their belt? It sounds interesting

[Kiriakos-GR]

I had also some experiences  with  Help desks located in India ... Norton Symantec  and even from APC ( UPS systems) ..

I could hardly understand in the phone their English accent ..

The biggest mistake than all , are that we gave all our power to the stock market ..

You get help from people that are unable to help , just because some stock holders needs to see large numbers as return of the investment .. simple as that.

Any wise company , must move away from the stock market as fast as possible.

[VladKEasternTiger]

I had also some experiences  with  Help desks located in India ... Norton Symantec  and even from APC ( UPS systems) ..

I could hardly understand in the phone their English accent ..

The biggest mistake than all , are that we gave all our power to the stock market ..

You get help from people that are unable to help , just because some stock holders needs to see large numbers as return of the investment .. simple as that.

Any wise company , must move away from the stock market as fast as possible.

Mabie for you having difficulities understanding their accent but for me its not a problem, what gets me is I want to speak to someone in my own country who understands the situation not only about the service they deliver. From what ive seen Indians in India speak a good level of English, a lot of the population speak the language, add that to the country churning out thousands or million of engineers every year working abroad so what do we make of this?

[Kiriakos-GR]

so what do we make of this?

We keep the stock holders happy , because they had lower cost ... and you are just an number to them.

Thats why I ring the alarm to all , to become citizens again.

I am against globalism ..  I have not see any emigrant to be far from his home , and be happy.
Did you ask the people of India , if they are happy too, just because some one takes advantage of them temporally ...  

If they are smart to become engineers , how they are so silly to believe that this "advantage" that they have, like to be payed with less , will last for ever , and offer them prosperity and what they are seeking as happiness ??

The Greeks was get paying with 700 - 800 EUR as minimum , and was hopping that some day they will get 1.200  like the Italians do , or 1500-2000 like the Germans do..

And the earth turned upside down , and now they get even less .
Every family in Greece lost their financial control ...  and are unable to handle the monthly expenses ,
like food -  electric Bills - Bank doses - cost of life - fuels ..

With an tremendous effort  I am staying calm ..  my future got stolen ... and I am one hard worker like every one else.

[VladKEasternTiger]

so what do we make of this?

We keep the stock holders happy , because they had lower cost ... and you are just an number to them.

Thats why I ring the alarm to all , to become citizens again.

I am against globalism ..  I have not see any emigrant to be far from his home , and be happy.
Did you ask the people of India , if they are happy too, just because some one takes advantage of them temporally ...  

If they are smart to become engineers , how they are so silly to believe that this "advantage" that they have, like to be payed with less , will last for ever , and offer them prosperity and what they are seeking as happiness ??

The Greeks was get paying with 700 - 800 EUR as minimum , and was hopping that some day they will get 1.200  like the Italians do , or 1500-2000 like the Germans do..

And the earth turned upside down , and now they get even less .
Every family in Greece lost their financial control ...  and are unable to handle the monthly expenses ,
like food -  electric Bills - Bank doses - cost of life - fuels ..

With an tremendous effort  I am staying calm ..  my future got stolen ... and I am one hard worker like every one else.

Yes I agree I am against globalisation aswell for the fact that indeginious cultures and language and terrority will dissapear, look at the native people in India, Mexico, Amazon rainforest and Parts in Africa.

Yes all we are are numbers, my question is how come Turkey is not struggling and greece is? I heard Turkey at least has a strong manufacturing base there

From my point of view when I travel to German, UK, france and any northern european country they tend to look down on Greece, Italy and Spain as lazy southerners who want something for nothing, Im trying to figure where they came to this conclusion

[kc1980]

Just like communism, the idea of globalization is not fundamentally flawed, per se.  The underlying problem is that we, as humans, are not disciplined nor sophisticated enough to implement such systems in the real world with good faith.  Inevitably, our own greed and selfishness ruin any chances of us establishing an egalitarian and equitable society.

Globalization will probably prevail in the long-term, but "globalization" -- as we know it today -- is simply a power-grab initiated by the elite and spun to the masses as a push for economic efficiency.  Think about it -- the large corporate institutions move manufacturing to countries that have a so-called "comparative advantage", but the produced goods are sold at different prices depending on the region in which the goods are sold.  Basically, the corporations -- and shareholders -- profit immensely and the consumers get a small price break at the expense of a weak domestic economy and high unemployment rates.  I may be biased, but I really think that the fancy, over-paid MBA's are foolishly selling out the Western world and brutally exploiting engineers, scientists, and skilled tradesmen.  JMHO.

[Kiriakos-GR]

Yes all we are are numbers, my question is how come Turkey is not struggling and greece is? I heard Turkey at least has a strong manufacturing base there

Thats an 3000 pages of a book as answer .

So I will respond with titles ..

15 Years back or so , the Turkish economy destroyed .
Their  stock market become dust.
International saviors like the Germans, they got all the hotels next to the sea ,
forcing the Turkish to work as waiters.    
Other Germans got the industrial zones ,  and started to assembly  Power tools - refrigerators etc etc ..
Turkey is not an unified country as population, the democratic Government its a puppet show,
an military group behind the scene are still pulling the strings.
This  military command group, they have in mind only the war , and the gain of getting benefits by participating in wars.
They was sold out in to the American interests ( fake wars ) , and was partners of the American army ,
by helping in any dirty work,  and receiving as balance more weapons and privileges and money.
The 95% of the Turkish people has non of education.

Greece and Greeks are the only true "Free"  country, in comparison with the Turkey as citizens,
the 98% of the people are educated, and openly disagree with any dirty work that the Americans plans in the Mediterranean - Balkans - Arabia.
Thats another major issue , why the Greeks called as Terrorist by the Americans.
The Missile who strike the Greek economy , came from the Wall Street,
and all Greeks are aware of it .

The Americans are aware too , that the Greeks are the most crazy uncontrolled freedom fighters,
thats why they tried to blow the country in a economical level..
And I will say .... Nice try  but no Cigar ...  

No one in Greece will ever buy a FLUKE ... or smart weapons ..   thats a promise ..      
  



 

[Kiriakos-GR]

Basically, the corporations -- and shareholders -- profit immensely and the consumers get a small price break at the expense of a weak domestic economy and high unemployment rates.  I may be biased, but I really think that the fancy, over-paid MBA's are foolishly selling out the Western world and brutally exploiting engineers, scientists, and skilled tradesmen.  JMHO.

As long you speak the truth ... be as much Biased you like ..  

No scrip - No fear - All opinion ..  ( I think that Dave stolen this one of some Greek book )