Well the initial posts makes some statements that are "100% certain" and a number of % that don't necessarily stack up, which I disagree with. Just because you present them as sureties does not make them so.
Firstly it is ok to again have a go at the "evil" banking systems, without reference to the fact that banks and governments actually have NO money, except what we give them in savings and taxes. So that money is our money. But forgetting this allows us to abdicate a good portion of our responsibility and say it is all evil baby eating bankers.
To remove the need for banking, which goes back 600 years, is not going to be easy. Most people want to keep their money safe and want it to earn a bit more for themselves.
As to Greece, it is indeed complex. And Anna, I'm sorry but I am not a Ukipper, I don't think my opinion is Ukip!!!
It is interesting that when banks borrow money and gamble it, lose it, can't pay those who invested, we are the FIRST to be out with our pitchforks and V for Vendetta masks, saying how beastly capital is.
YET when it is a country like Greece who has borrowed, an eye watering amount of not nebulous cash from the font of evil banking, but actually EU taxpayer money. Then we are content to say how the Greeks are not to blame. They are. You don't feed a heroin addict more heroin do you, you attempt to alter their behaviour?
Of course you would have to be made of stone to see people worried as ordinary Greek people are. And I hope we reach some sort of solution, but it cannot go on. Paying, for example, so that people can retire a decade before we can is anathema. If you want to retire early, there has to be some sort of economic justification for it. I know many here will blanche at that being left of centre, but early retirement costs, and usually the economic active pay for it.
I do agree with Amanda, I am happy to be British and European, but this one size fits all especially currency is bullshit. Countries need their own fiscal controls to allow them to adjust to situations. Part of the Greek problem is they do not have that, the scary thing is they don't want their own currency back!
We talk simply about "austerity", a phrase I bloody hate. Invented by those who want to crowd out discussion about balancing economic books. Hell the EU haven't bothered for two decades so why should we, right? Wrong. If I don't balance the books in my business and produce legally signed of accounts I can go to jail. However I do agree that shackling Greece with random cuts is counterproductive. They need to remove themselves from the Euro and like any advanced economy, balance their own books, but I am sorry they do owe the money back to the EU taxpayers who loaned it.
Anna salutes the Greeks for taking a stance. I see your point. But what stance is it? A stance to demand more money from taxpayer funds with no hope of ever seeing it back. Remember Greece promised a decade ago to reform their systems, collect taxes properly and signed up to repayments they have now reneged on. that cannot be right. Again I say, if a bank did that, just think of the bile that would be written here and elsewhere.
And MR, how is this "not of their making", they in the end could have refused a decade of bail outs surely, could have stayed out of the Eurozone and set their own fiscal policies?
I see I've gone on too long. I'll sign off for a mo and see what else comes in!
