On fiscal and economic policy, society, democracy and Greek MPs

In the best of British Maecenas traditions, Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise challenged the lateral thinkers of today to come up with a plan providing for the «orderly exit of one or more member states from the European Monetary Union». The good lord is offering a reward of 250,000 pounds to be attributed by a «panel of leading academic economists» — probably by some of the same guys who contributed to the mess we?re in.

Some observers would probably agree neither with the proposed research emphasis nor with the profile of the super-econometrician thus looked for. Yet, the task of preventing the eurozone from falling — and drawing most of us into a black hole — is indeed formidable and urgent. But gesticulations notwithstanding, it cannot be accomplished with magnetic compasses while the magnetic field — i.e. the disciplinary mooring of our currencies in real values — has disappeared.

As with «Banks and the real economy may need a firewall against fiat money» and «We better throw away our broken compass!», here is a radically different approach:

1. Convert the IRS’s hidden and unconstitutional global $500 billion/year (est.) money laundering machine — QI and its upcoming super-QI complement FATCA — into a global, all-members-equitably-benefitting cooperative, perhaps under BIS or IMF control.

2. Strengthen the back of citizens everywhere, and help him/her to recognize, assert and apply him/herself as the sovereign, particularly in his/her relations with the authorities here and there (translation: reconvert to exclusive allies and fiduciaries of citizens all those who have gone astray by losing their mooring, where-they-came-from memory, and orientation, notably the IRS’s QI agents).

3. Create politically, well-connected private and cooperative banks in Switzerland that, supported by Maecenas and other visionary sovereign citizens, will effectively see to it that, for generations to come, Switzerland’s obliging banking traditions will be upheld, strengthened and developed, and that the lowering of bilateral criminal and administrative assistance standards will be prevented and possibly reversed, and betrayed clients will be assisted in their own country, beyond the call of duty (e.g. in cooperation with solidary diaspora Greeks and members of Greece’s civil society, all acting voluntarily, a local content-oriented complementary currency — e.g. Nomos — would be developed and co-financed with the objective to rapidly mobilize and put to Nomos-paid work the locally idle productive forces by way of suitable infrastructure, education and training, cadaster and related works and 5 percent micro-loans).

Anton Keller

Democracy

Democracy is all relative; perfection does not exist anywhere.

Here in Melbourne, a group of hairy young men and women, never more than 200 in number, declared they have occupied the city, as a protest to what the multinational banks have done to Australians. One thousand migrants are coming to Melbourne every week and unemployment is at 5.2%, and the economy is slowing down a little at last as it was overheated and dangerous. All pensions have risen to make Australians number two in their generosity to the poor.

The protesters occupied a very small open space, full of blocks of concrete and stone, to deliberately make it as unattractive as possible as a place to protest.

In great contrast to Athens, after a few weeks they were thanked by the Mayor of Melbourne for keeping the place clean and free of violence, but as the Queen of Australia was going to visit central Melbourne, they wanted the tents and chairs removed, and for them to go home to bathe, as the people walking past were offended by the smell.

When they refused to leave, or go somewhere else to save the world after much talking and begging the 140 police pushed the 140 hairy people down the street. Anyone who was violent or refused to move was arrested.

Melbourne is a far more democratic city in every way than Athens.

After all the marches and violence why is the square in front of Athens Parliament still open? Why do people think they have right to throw bombs in the streets and they can get away it?

Attempted murder is a serious crime in any civilized society.

The Greek history of criminal behavior that goes unpunished in the last 50 years, is probably the root of all the problem. The colonels? crimes, and the unpunished crimes of the right and left during the Civil War have given Greece a culture that shows no respect for any citizen. A corrupt legal and political system also gives people excuses for violence.

No matter how bad a government may be there is nothing worse than living in a lawless society. Civilization and violence cannot exist together.

Athens is like Melbourne in that they are very new cities in the world, with the same population numbers, and most of the people being migrants. No one is a Melbournian and no one is an Athenian; all have come from elsewhere with different cultures.

The difference between Athens and Melbourne is the understanding that looking after your neighbor brings you direct benefits very quickly. Even picking up a small piece of paper dropped by someone else adds to the society?s strength.

Charilaos Lithoxopoulos

Re: Political default.

Your diagnosis of the situation is right. It describes the political default of this country. We just have to wait for the other.

Hans van der Schaaf

State of affairs

It is high time for the government to resign en masse. We cannot have 300 parliamentarians who have formed their own dynasties. The royal family left as dynasty and then we received a new royal family in the form of the parliamentarians.

Greece needs to be run professionally in all aspects. The present ministers are shuffled from position to position, and are not experts in their fields. The entire government needs to resign. Further, all pensions of government parliamentarians must cease when they are out of office. They must return to the workforce as any other person does. They are elected to serve and compensated for their term in office. They must contribute their portion to the appropriate social security fund when in office. No privileges should be accorded.

Proposal 1: Greece needs to have professional heads of the ministerial departments who are experts in their fields.

2. Each department head will submit to the prime minister (after new elections are held) a list of proposals that will affect his/her department.

3. These proposals will then be reviewed by a peer committee of experts in that field.

4. Once these proposals are approved they will be implemented into practice.

5. Greece cannot afford to have rules and regulations changed every time a new party takes office.

6. A parliamentarian collects a salary while in office and receives no salary out of office.

7. Parliamentarians past, present and future participate in the social security just like ordinary citizens.

7. No pay raises for parliament or ministry heads.

8. MPs or directors must abide equally with all laws they impose on the Greek people.

9. The areas of the most importance to be addressed are the assets that can be used to fund the country:

1. Tourism: develop and make it a top priority.

2. Agriculture: develop and begin exporting the finest of Greek crops.

3. Sun: develop and harness solar energy and sell power to the people and to Europe.

4. People: appeal to the people for a unified approach and giving equally.

5. Health: develop hospitals in areas of Athens and outlying areas that will make it easy for people to have access to the finest care.

6. Youth: develop a strong education system that prepares our youth for the 22nd century.

Yiannis I.

Juncker – the public chatterbox

It is quite amazing that the EU elites manage time and again to surprise with their incompetence. Take the Eurogroup head Jean-Claude Juncker who just doesn?t want to understand that one does not give update interviews during negotiations (perhaps during collective bargaining but not when it come to the stability of the European financial system). It is also amazing that EU elites do not want to understand that a borrower who cannot pay his loans needs to reschedule. If he has more debt than he can ever handle, one does not simply forgive that debt after only three years of crisis. One reschedules the principal and interest over 30 years or more so that the borrower does not to service it until then.

Finally, when will the EU elites understand that one can only draw water from a dried-out well if one first dumps it into the well? Instead of doing all sorts of financial engineering to turn bad Greek paper into good paper (remember sub-prime), the EU should use all the brain power available to see that the Greek well can be repaired and generate its own water again!

Klaus Kastner

Austerity and the sad state of the Greek economy

The Greek economy suffering 11 quarters of decline will eventually have an upward turn only because mathematically it cannot go down forever. However, by propping it up with bailouts and debt bonds, you are simply prolonging the misery by slowing down the crash toward the eventual equilibrium.

The debt bubble that you are experiencing is the inevitable result of the government sector being too large and spending beyond its means with unsustainable deficits. You cannot continue to believe that you can micromanage something as complex as an economy, which is composed of the transactions of all citizens in everyday life, and think that there will not be unintended consequences. The private sector, which supplies all the funds for the government either directly or indirectly, cannot be diminished and regulated to the point that the public sector is cannibalizing it. The inevitable result is what we see in Greece today.

My concern is that you are hurting the citizens by making promises which cannot be kept and masking the truth behind a facade of debt. When that facade is pulled away, as it is now, you get what Greece is experiencing today.

Peter Dellas

More strikes planned for the new week

It amazes me that in a national economic emergency like the one Greece is in now, the unions continue with their criminal behavior as if Greece has the economic resources of Germany. Greece simply hasn’t. Greece has been made broke by the ministerial bureaucrats and the unions who have no concept of what is in the country’s best interest, which is liberalization, deregulation and privatization.

Greece is broke. Can?t the unions this get it through their thick heads?

It is absolutely criminal that there is a sit-in at the Greek Finance Ministry?s General Secretariat of Information Systems, disrupting the issuing of tax invoices.

Can’t these selfish bureaucrats see what damage they are doing to their country?

Brett Oslo

The greek tragedy

It is astonishing to witness the modern-day Greek tragedy forced upon the Greek people by the corrupt and irresponsible politicians of Greece and the select class of people supporting them over the years. Now, these same people are calling on the ordinary Greek to sacrifice his or her wellbeing and the future of their children to right the wrong they perpetrated upon them, with immunity for so long. And that is shameful.

In a nutshell, the problem of modern-day Greece is the corruption that pervades Greek life. It was built and nurtured by the politicians of the two governing parties over many years of irresponsible governance. Some say that some of the responsibility also belongs to the people who made tax evasion an art and badge of honor to cheat the government, but indeed they are cheating themselves. That may be true to a large extent, but what can one expect, when the system itself encourages and promotes it? The laws of the land are not adhered to nor followed by either the government or the governed. The result is chaos.

I challenge you to name one politician who is behind bars, even when he publicly admits he took bribes. He is still roaming the streets of Athens free. The ordinary citizen sees this and he or she asks: If they can do it, and get away with it, why can’t I? The laws are kicked aside, as a piece of trash, by both government and its citizens with the tragic results we live through today.

As a native Greek my heart hurts and my pride erodes to see the country of my birth unravelling economically, socially and politically. But we Greeks can and will come back. It will take some time but it can be done. We should all remember our history, which is unrivalled to any other history in the world. Greece came back from almost 2,000 years in oblivion, first under the Romans followed by the Ottoman Turks. During that time we picked up some bad habits we must shed if modern Greece is to survive and prosper again.

Look at the Greeks of Diaspora. Most of them left Greece penniless and emigrated to new and strange countries. With hard work and against many odds, the vast majority succeeded and prospered. The Greek, by nature, is smart, industrious and does not shy away from hard work, as long as the system allows it. And the system in Greece for the last 30 or 40 years has promoted ?easy living? with borrowed money and with no understanding that some day that money must be paid back. That day has arrived and caught us totally unprepared. But now is the time that we must shine once again and regain our pride as people. We cannot and must not subjugate Greek autonomy and sovereignty to the Germans or any one else as they now demand. What they were not allowed to do at gun point must not be allowed to be done by holding Greece as an economic hostage. And those that agree to do that should be run out of Greece permanently.

Remember, if you owe the bank 1,000 euros you have a problem. But if you owe the bank 1,000,000, the bank has a big problem.

George K.

New York

Effectiveness of strikes

Collective bargaining emerged as a means for workers to protect their rights as decreed by labor laws passed in Parliament. However, this concept of social justice — a fair day’s labor for a fair day’s wages — only works when both sides honor its intent.

For decades, the labor unions in Greece have used strikes as a means of increasing their salaries, benefits and pensions without increasing their productivity or efficiency. The MPs, intent on remaining in Parliament, conceded to the demands without understanding or perhaps without regard to the long-term consequences of ever increasing labor costs on the nation’s budget. The end result was deficit spending to maintain standard public services such as education, health, taxation, transportation, trash collection, and police and fire department services.

Throughout Europe, these services are considered a right not a privilege. One could argue, therefore, that every time the public unions go on strike, they are violating the rights of every citizen. Furthermore, by demanding ever-increasing labor benefits without a similar increase in work productivity, they are violating their social contract to the people they serve. That’s right. Just like soldiers and MPs, public employees serve the citizens of the country in which they live. Their actions over the years have increased their standard of living at the expense of those who work in the private sector.

Mr. Pangalos has said that everyone has benefited from the redistribution of state money but he is wrong. Only the public employees have. The rest of us have been left out and are now being asked to foot the bill for their greed. And to add insult to injury, the public unions still believe that by holding strikes, they will reverse the recent Parliamentary vote regarding collective bargaining. Had they honored their part of the bargain, none of this would be happening now. Surely we would be facing budget deficit as the MPs continue to act as if they are above the law, but at least the debt would be manageable.

Now we, the citizens of Greece, continue to be held hostage by the public unions and the government until an outside third party decides our fate. In essence, we have lost our sovereignty.

But all is not without hope. We still have the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution. So we can peaceably demand that the MPs voluntarily reduce their number, their pay, their benefits and their pensions so that they too participate in the austerity measures they are forcing upon us. We can demand that they are not immune from prosecution and that all alleged crimes involving state funds or other injustices to the state be investigated by an independent judicial panel appointed by the troika. That any guilty party must return the state property post-haste and serve time in prison like any other common thief. Failure to return state property will result in seizing assets until the money is returned. No exceptions and no time bar. This rot has been going on for decades it’s high time that law and order was restored in Greece.

This principle applies to tax evaders as well. We should insist that an independent auditor be appointed to review the tax authority records. Anyone working for the tax authority found complicit in aiding tax evasion should be punished. The parties that do not pay their fair share under the current tax system should have their property seized until the bill is paid. If they refuse to pay then the property should be sold and they should serve time in prison. Social services cannot be maintained when less than 50% of the citizens pay taxes. The idea of socialism only works when everyone agrees to and pays their fair share.

As to the public unions and their often ridiculous demands, it’s time to put up or shut up. This means that if they honestly believe that their compensation structure is fiscally sound, then put up the money to privatize their respective organizations and see how long that business can stay afloat. It is a safe bet that in short order the new entity will be bankrupt and they will all be out of work. Only then will they begin to understand the concept of sustainability.

In short, the message I hope to convey is that there are solutions to the crisis we are facing in Greece. It only requires a collective mindset to save our country. Our government cannot work the way it is structured and therefore must be changed. We are no longer living in isolation. It is a globalized world and in order to be a part of it we must change the way we think and act. Greece has sufficient natural resources to be one of the leading economies in Europe. We only lack the will. By remembering our history, we can honor those who came before and made our country great. Only in this way do our children have a future here. The time to start is now.

Jonathan Reynik

Greek ‘advice’ to the EU

It is rather humorous to hear PM Giorgos Papandreou’s ?advice? to the EU ministers on Sunday. His government has still not managed to implement legislated austerity actions required of the so-called troika lenders. And it is questionable what will be accomplished with the substitute measures legislated because of this lack of accomplishment. He should stay quiet with hat in hand. But it is a truism that politicians have no sense of propriety.

James F. Smeader

Greece a middle class country?

I suppose it depends on one’s definition of middle class.

Germany, France and Scandinavia are middle class countries, as are the UK and Ireland. They have had a solid developing and self-sustaining middle class for at least 150 years. I think self-sustaining is the key here. All these countries developed their economies, culture, societies, education, research and development largely under their own steam. Over hundreds of years. Their HE and technology went hand in hand with industry, trade and commerce. In the 19th century this was enhanced by coal and steel, and in the 20th by oil.

The Greeks had 400 years of Ottoman occupation followed by about 100 years of conflict.

As a result Greece has barely been a fully functioning nation state for more than 50 years of its 190 years of independence. Some sectors of her private enterprise economy may be affluent. But with about 50% of its working population employed by the state, paid with money the state doesn’t have, the middle class income level of many Greeks is an illusion. Just as the economic growth of the last 30 years has been largely an illusion.

A state-based economy cannot grow. The Greek private sector is doing well but this is mostly agriculture, fishing (20-30% pop) and shipping with tourism (another 30%). Middle class economic and social development do not arise from these on their own, though individuals may enjoy middle class incomes.

A middle class country is more than the sum total of its income level. It is the sum total of economy, culture, social development, education, scientific and technological research, and development largely under the nation’s own steam. In this sense Greece is not yet a middle class country. If it modernizes its administration makes it more efficient, less corrupt, brings in more private enterprise, makes business development and R thus recession.

This situation has been made much worse by these decision and has invoked negative reactions from the private sector, which will be hoarding its money or choosing to invest it abroad. This is perpetuating the problem and is frankly idiotic.

I”ll make the solution very simply to save confusion. The ECB should use its substantial reserves to buy the majority of debt, held by countries like Greece who are being forced to cut too deep, too soon. I’d like to see the ECB purchase this debt, allowing countries like Greece to reduce taxation, increase stability and market confidence, boosting economic growth. I’m not saying they should have the debt written off. They should be given a 5-10 year reprieve. In 5-10 years? time, they will be in a far better position to pay off their debts without cutting essential government funding, which damages the private sector.

Darren Murphy