So Greece caved in and accepted harsher terms from Europe than the ones they had 98% agreed two weeks ago, when suddenly they put the deal to a referendum, advised the electors to reject it and won the vote. Is that clear?
Greece would be better out of euro, the euro wouldn't suffer much (though if it did that might be a good thing) but Greece doesn't want to leave Europe. So what someone called the lethargic dance continues.
Since Greek independence, the government has gone bankrupt six times and they have been in default, I read, for longer than they have been solvent. I think it would have been better had they defaulted years ago, while their debts were owed to private lenders like Goldman Sachs, before the French philanderers, Sarkozy and Strauss Kahn, had the public institutions take over the debts. The banks were foolish to lend to Greece, they should have lost their money but they are being bailed out, not Greece. And Greece, while she suffers, needs to restructure her economy and society, needs a Margaret Thatcher.
Here is an interesting analysis from the Washington Post. I find these analyses convincing until I read the next one. Political analysis sticks in my mind, economics not.
The problem, of course, is that the Greeks are not Europeans. At least not in the sense that people in Catholic or Protestant Europe think of as Europe. They are Levantines. Greece, like Romania, is or was part of the Near East. Thinking about Greece I remember Graham Greene, as epigraph in his wonderful collection of stories May We Borrow Your Husband? quoted a Lebanese Prime Minister who said in a radio broadcast
In Homer's time Greeks were known for cunning and duplicity, but no doubt this was Homer's racism.
Greece would be better out of euro, the euro wouldn't suffer much (though if it did that might be a good thing) but Greece doesn't want to leave Europe. So what someone called the lethargic dance continues.
Since Greek independence, the government has gone bankrupt six times and they have been in default, I read, for longer than they have been solvent. I think it would have been better had they defaulted years ago, while their debts were owed to private lenders like Goldman Sachs, before the French philanderers, Sarkozy and Strauss Kahn, had the public institutions take over the debts. The banks were foolish to lend to Greece, they should have lost their money but they are being bailed out, not Greece. And Greece, while she suffers, needs to restructure her economy and society, needs a Margaret Thatcher.
The problem, of course, is that the Greeks are not Europeans. At least not in the sense that people in Catholic or Protestant Europe think of as Europe. They are Levantines. Greece, like Romania, is or was part of the Near East. Thinking about Greece I remember Graham Greene, as epigraph in his wonderful collection of stories May We Borrow Your Husband? quoted a Lebanese Prime Minister who said in a radio broadcast
Let us always be guided by the virtues traditionally associated with the Levantine peoples.
In Homer's time Greeks were known for cunning and duplicity, but no doubt this was Homer's racism.
Actually, Romania although less technologically developed is in fact MORE European as Greece.
ReplyDeleteClearly Greeks have this kind of childish ethnocentric self-entitlement that bizarrely hallucinate that everyobody is out to utterly destroy them with one way or another including that unlimited gigantically OMNIRETARDED mentality which I can call it exactly "backwards"(cave men had extremely smarter mentality), but something that is extremely far far FAR beyond of a pathetic complete joke...and not in a good way either.
To accurately tell you how it is as Greek myself(a rare specimen indeed), Greeks take this obnoxious fundamental mentality as a part of ethnic identity and ethnic pride which like taking paranoid schizophrenia as ethnic identity but even worse than that since that island mentality is more than just a paranoid schizophrenia, more than a ridiculous illogical rambling, more than an unlimited gigantic omniretardation.
It's a thing...far FAR worse. You will get into the shittiest deepths. I get this fundamentally different mentality I have which is at least extremely far FAR trillion times smarter from being in forums, YouTube conversations and generally speaking English in the Internet and getting enlightened.