Greece is the wordFollow

A Bankrupt state, voting on whether to accept a loan from the EU/IMF (at extortionate Credit Card level rates of interest). Even if they accept the loan, they'll have to make drastic cuts to public sector pay and raise taxes. OK, their system is already corrupt, with the wealthy paying hardly any tax, and a 'jobs for life' mentality to huge swathes of unproductive made-up jobs. . .

So they're rioting in the streets (3 dead so far) and all going on strike.

Plato and Aristotle must be spinning in their graves

So which EU nation is next to crash and burn? Smart money is that Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland are on the brink.

NobbyRack TM

Slovakia.

Good lord the EU is complicated:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Supranational_European_Bodies.png

Latvia, for example is in the EU but not Eurozone, meaning they don't use the Euro as currency and thus (I am guessing) they cannot tank the economy of other nations as easily?

Come oooooooooooooooooon, Belgium!

Ouch. 348 point drop in the Dow attributed primarily to the Greece situation.

Also partly due to someone hitting B instead of M possibly.

That must be one hell of a fat finger, since there's a whole 'nuther key in between them. And I doubt the system would have accepted "nillions" as an order.

Um, hello,

Greece is going through now what the USA did a couple years ago. Crash, burn, have to borrow a SHITLOAD of money from other nations so you didn't default on your debt, and have to introduce extreme measures to stabilise the economy, leading to needing to repay a huge necessary public debt by either major cutting spending or raising taxes, or both.

Edited, May 6th 2010 11:57pm by Aripyanfar

Properly targeted government spending and entitlement programs enable citizens to turn into better and more productive assets*, that generate more income for the nation in the future. Enlarging the Government slice of the economic pie doesn't necessarily take away from the Private Sector slice. In fact, the aim with Government spending is usually to increase the pie overall, so that the Private Sector slice grows as much or even more than the Government slice.



*Well educated, healthy, free-moving people

Edited, May 7th 2010 12:34am by Aripyanfar

Har de Har har har.

This entire post is complete and utter Utopian bullsh;t.

Jophed,



And the Democrats keep telling me this will never happen in the US no matter how socialist we become.

Aripya,



All entitlement programs do is create slaves to the state. Of course that's what Democrats want everyone, not affiliated with the govn, to be so they keep on stealing from the producers to support the non-producers. We see how well that concept is working in Greece.





Are you really this stupid? Denial is more than just a big river. All enlarging the govn role in the private sector does is kill competition thereby driving successful businesses out of business.



So Democrats where do we stop? Do we bailout europe then the uk? What do you think the little monkey in the whitehouse is going to do?


p.s. Until Obama apologizes for his teabagger comment I'm going to continue to refer to him as the little monkey in the whitehouse. Since obviously we're beyond any civility in political discourse.